[Advice needed] Building a home NAS for Plex + Virtualizing Windows on it

[macminitosh]

So.... I've filled up all my storage. I've got a rather craptastic setup of a single USB-C 5TB hard drive with no failsafe, backup, or anything like that. So I'm looking into options for upgrading my available long-term storage as well as solving some other problems while I'm at it.

 

My current setup (aka how you shouldn't do things):

 

Sitting in my hallway, I have a Mac mini 2012 connected via LAN to my router, which shares my 5TB hard drive inside my home network. The Mac mini is also hosting a Plex Server for 6 users (2-3 users watching concurrently sometimes). There is no backup whatsoever. Everything "mission-critical" is backed up to the cloud, but what's on this drive is currently dying with it.

 

I also have a Plex Pass, so hardware acceleration is enabled. 

 

My wishes for a new machine:

 

- Run a NAS storage with some sort of Raid (5/6/10): I wanted to start with 4 drives, but add more as I go along. Capacitywise, I'm thinking of at least 20TB of usable space, to keep up with my current growth for a while.

- Run a virtualized version of Windows 10: As we are rather a Mac-heavy household, I would like to have one always-on instance of Windows 10 for running some programs and an instance of Minecraft for Windows 10 (Bedrock), which would be accessed like a realm by my friends over the internet. So not the normal MineOS extension for FreeNAS! 

- Run a Plex Server: It would be nice to have at least 4 simultaneous 1080p streams from my Plex server, but more would be even better. I've experimented with 4k but that doesn't seem to work properly, at least not with my hardware.

 

I know that RAID isn't a backup, so as I'm going along to build my server. there will be an offsite device at my brother's house, where I'll copy the most important data. I don't know specifically what device would be ideal, as it doesn't need to be as powerful as my NAS, but I'll figure something out along the way.

 

Parts I already have:

 

- Case: Fractal Design Node 804 (mATX)

- GPU: GTX 1060 6GB

 

These parts already sit here unused, so I want to use them in my NAS. This limits me to mATX motherboards, but I hope that is not a huge problem.

 

I don't want to invest all of my sweet student money into this project, as I got a car to repair and other bills to pay, but anything between 300-400€ for all parts except the hard drives 

would not break the bank. 

 

I understand that I would need something with at least 8000 passmark to run my Plex server on, which would as far as I understand run inside the Virtual machine on my NAS. As far as OS, I think FreeNAS is the way to go. What I'm unsure about is the actual hardware that I need in order to have everything work as I imagine above. I'm looking at the NAS Killer v4 for reference, but I'm unsure if an old Xeon or a current Ryzen processor would make more sense for my use case. And would I need a RAID Controller when using FreeNAS? Or would I only need to add more SATA Ports via e.g. a pcie card when the mainboard ports are all filled up?

 

so what should I do now? Is FreeNAS the right OS? Xeon or Ryzen? And which model specifically? Would I even be able to have a machine that fits my needs or am I missing something here? 

 

I'm really thankful if someone could enlighten me a bit here. 

[GOTSpectrum]

Personally I'd go with a first gen ryzen chip, like the 1600 or 1700, 16gb of ram so you can create a RAMdisk cache, a cheaper x370 mobo like the ASUS PRIME x370-pro, set it up with  at least 4x2tb drives striped together in raid 10. 

[Donut417]

42 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

Run a Plex Server: It would be nice to have at least 4 simultaneous 1080p streams from my Plex server, but more would be even better. I've experimented with 4k but that doesn't seem to work properly, at least not with my hardware.

I have used Plex for close to 6 months. 

 

Look at what your streaming to. Specifically what video formats the devices support. If you have your videos in the correct format, Plex wont have to transcode and you save yourself a bit of processing power. As its the transcoding that uses a lot of processing power. 

 

My Plex setup consists of an i5 3570K, 16 Gigs of ram and an HD7950 ( Because I have no other use for it), as well as an SSD with Ubuntu as the OS. I can do multiple streams easily. Though most of my content is DVD quality and OTA TV from an HD Homerun. 

 

48 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

so hardware acceleration is enabled. 

I think you need Intel or Nvidia to take advantage. Id assume the 1060 should work great. I only do software transcoding rather than hardware, as my Intel chip I guess is a generation too old, doesnt have the features in it that Haswell on up have to do the transdoing, at least from what I have read. 

[2FA]

37 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

I think you need Intel or Nvidia to take advantage. Id assume the 1060 should work great. I only do software transcoding rather than hardware, as my Intel chip I guess is a generation too old, doesnt have the features in it that Haswell on up have to do the transdoing, at least from what I have read. 

You're correct, and the 1060 requires a driver hack to transcode more than 2 streams simultaneously. Also, you wouldn't want to use Haswell for transcoding anyways, the quality was still shit then and was until Skylake really (speaking from experience).

[macminitosh]

12 minutes ago, 2FA said:

You're correct, and the 1060 requires a driver hack to transcode more than 2 streams simultaneously. Also, you wouldn't want to use Haswell for transcoding anyways, the quality was still shit then and was until Skylake really (speaking from experience).

So I should use nothing lower than a 6th Gen Intel CPU? 

 

What about Ryzen? Can it transcode?

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

Ryzen? Can it transcode?

No because any thing outside the APU lineup has no iGPU. It’s GPUs that are used when hardware transcoding is in use. 

 

So you will be stuck like me using Software transcoding. If you don’t use a dedicated GPU for transcoding. 

[macminitosh]

Just now, Donut417 said:

No because any thing outside the APU lineup has no iGPU. It’s GPUs that are used when hardware transcoding is in use. 

But I thought that's what my 1060 is for... So if I chose an Intel CPU I would get more capacity for transcoding (because the iGPU and my 1060 would be capable to)? 

[2FA]

7 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

So I should use nothing lower than a 6th Gen Intel CPU? 

 

What about Ryzen? Can it transcode?

Hardware transcoding uses the video encoder/decoder of GPUs, and Plex only supports Intel and Nvidia graphics for that. Your GPU is fine like I said before, you just have to do a driver hack if you absolutely need to transcode more than two streams simultaneously, but ideally you should have your media in a format that doesn't require transcoding (H.264 or H.265 and AAC audio). Your CPU doesn't really matter that much except for the rare occasions where you need to transcode audio which doesn't support hardware acceleration and will only be transcoded on the CPU. Honestly, a Raspberry Pi could be a Plex server if all your media is in the right format.

[2FA]

1 minute ago, macminitosh said:

But I thought that's what my 1060 is for... So if I chose an Intel CPU I would get more capacity for transcoding (because the iGPU and my 1060 would be capable to)? 

No, only one device will be used for hardware acceleration, and in this case just stick with the 1060 for that.

[macminitosh]

14 minutes ago, 2FA said:

No, only one device will be used for hardware acceleration, and in this case just stick with the 1060 for that.

Okay!

 

The lion's share of my media is in 1080 x264, the sound is mostly DTS. 

 

The problem is that apparently some guys who are using my server can't seem to stream the native resolution because of their internet speeds (I didn't bother to check if that's the case, honestly), so at least two users are always playing in 720p... Others are mostly streaming in original resolution.

 

 

I would really like to play x265 natively, as the file sizes are so much smaller than x264, but my current Mac mini can't seem to play them. Would both the server and the device streaming my media need to "work" with x265? Or what would I have to do to make that work?

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

The problem is that apparently some guys who are using my server can't seem to stream the native resolution because of their internet speeds

If they are outside your home, using the server over the internet, then its most likely your ISP. Because that means you are Uploading the content. Most ISPs have shit upload rates. Hell Comcast can give you 1 Gbps down, but only 45 Mbps or so on the upload side. 

 

5 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

ut my current Mac mini can't seem to play them.

I wonder if the version of MacOS your on supports the codec. Its not like every video format is supported be defualt always. Sometimes you have to add the support. By downloading the codec to your machine. I dont know enough about MacOS to say for sure however. 

 

6 minutes ago, macminitosh said:

Would both the server and the device streaming my media need to "work" with x265?

Not 100% sure. I would imagine as long as the file is in the right format that it should be fine. Also, if your planning a new server, most likely your not going to have any issues. All that matters is the files are formatted in a way that the streaming device understands. @2FA pretty much pointed out the most "Universal" format that seems to be supported by most devices.