Dual Purpose NAS?

[Ghostman45223]

New to the NAS idea here. But what I am looking to do is build a dual purpose NAS with a Ryzen 2700x processor I have. I was planning on running unRAID only for PLEX/NAS use but then i thought i would like this to back up as a second gaming PC during the summer while my son is home and the once in awhile HTPC use. It looks like PLEX trans-coding works better with Nvidia GPU's. So I want to run a GTX 1660 to support the 1080P gaming and also the PLEX trans-coding when I stream to my laptop or phone while traveling. My question is which OS would be best for this? I know I could run unRAID with a VM for the Windows Gaming side but I really do not want to have 2 discreet GPU's (one for VM one for PLEX trans-coding). Can I make all this work on Windows home with some redundancy (like RAID) safety net on all my saved media? TIA for any help insight.

[Theguywhobea]

If you just need it to run Plex I think you can just run a plex server on regular old windows. Plus unless you have more than like, 5 HD transcodes going at a time an intel iGPU will do fine, so you might even be better off buying something like a NUC for a dedicated NAS / Plex machine for cheap on craigslist.

[Windows7ge]

What you want to do is possible but not with your choice of hardware. Chances are if I started going over what you'd need you'd abandon the project.

 

I wouldn't recommend mixing these two tasks. A gaming computer really shouldn't be a NAS/Plex server or vise versa.

 

Also, RAID isn't redundancy for your data. It's fault tolerance for your array. You'll still want at least one if not two complete copies of your data saved elsewhere.

[Ghostman45223]

I don't abandon many projects but I guess i could build separate systems i was just hoping to knock out 2 birds with one stone. I guess i misunderstood RAID. I do under stand to have another physical and or cloud back up as well.

[Windows7ge]

49 minutes ago, Ghostman45223 said:

I don't abandon many projects...

Well, if you're still curious it is possible to segment off portions of a single GPU to multiple virtual machines where one VM could run PLEX and another could run a gaming machine where you could interface with it using something like PARSEC but this would require server grade video cards for two reasons.

1. NVIDIA does not allow the passing though of their desktop series cards to VMs (supposedly there are hacks but their success is spotty).
2. NVIDIA's desktop series cards do not allow the division or allocation of parts of the GPU to Virtual Machines.

If you wanted to stay on NVIDIA's side you'd have to buy something like a GRID K2. On AMD's side you'd have to buy a Workstation series GPU that supports SR-IOV (though AMD does allow you to pass-though their desktop series GPU's to VMs so you could always just run more than one of their desktop cards.)

 

The next issue you would run into is your choice of CPU/Motherboard. I don't know if the RYZEN AM4 series CPU and associating chipsets allow the enabling of IOMMU groups. I can vouch for Threadripper/X399 though. This will enable PCI_e device pass-though among other items such as USB ports, etc.

 

If you used Intel's platform you would need support for VT-d for PCI_e device pass-though which is available on their Xeon platform but not all of their Desktop chips (quite a few though).

 

Quote

I guess i misunderstood RAID. I do under stand to have another physical and or cloud back up as well.

What's important to understand is that RAID is not a backup. It just keeps the pool/array online (with the exception of RAID0).

 

And that's good.

[Ghostman45223]

I was unaware you could not pass through to a VM with Nvidia desktop cards. That definitely will cause an issue. I guess the best possible option would be an Intel CPU with IGPU set up as a typical NAS?

[Windows7ge]

32 minutes ago, Ghostman45223 said:

I was unaware you could not pass through to a VM with Nvidia desktop cards. That definitely will cause an issue. I guess the best possible option would be an Intel CPU with IGPU set up as a typical NAS?

Kind of bogus but NVIDIA did that to protect their Quadro series and other professional series cards. What happens is the card checks if it's running in a Virtual Environment and if thinks it is it disables itself and you get Error Code 43. AMD on the other hand doesn't care. Some AMD GPU's work fine passed-though (I can say the 290X works great) some don't but if you wanted to use one GPU for multiple Virtual Machines you'd need a server/workstation grade card.

 

Depends how proper you want to do it. You can turn any old desktop into a NAS or you could pick up a server motherboard which would have build-in/onboard VGA, a Xeon E3 or E5 and some ECC memory.

 

If you no longer plan to virtualize did you still want to go with UnRAID? There's lots of free alternatives for both NAS and Hypervisor type applications.

[Ghostman45223]

Ill definitely look into a older server platform. Since i wont be using virtualization i think FreeNAS maybe the better option.

[Ghostman45223]

How do the XEON platforms transcode? Im going to try to keep everything 1080p but may some 4k mixed in especially for in home use.

[Windows7ge]

17 minutes ago, Ghostman45223 said:

Ill definitely look into a older server platform. Since i wont be using virtualization i think FreeNAS maybe the better option.

Something you may like if you ever have a use for running just about any other type of VM or for testing/experimenting purposes is PROXMOX. It's basically FreeNAS but with a better hypervisor. Based on Debian, supports ZFS. You can setup containers & virtual machines for Network Storage or hosting PLEX.

 

21 minutes ago, Ghostman45223 said:

How do the XEON platforms transcode? Im going to try to keep everything 1080p but may some 4k mixed in especially for in home use.

This is outside my field of expertise. I have no experience with PLEX but based on what I've heard it favors higher clocks over more cores (single threaded application). If you wanted to go with an old server platform I'd look into the Intel Xeon E5-2690v1. Socket LGA2011. Old today but still very powerful for a small homelab. The chip can do a lot.