Plex and unraid.

[DD58]

Hey everyone I spent the weekend getting my Dell r730 up and running with unraid. This is my first real dive into any kind of server work and networking. So what I have is 2 tb on the r730 so far just ripping my dvds and getting them into a folder on drive1. I have a plex account and was wondering what’s the safest way to make sure all the other files I will have on my server not be visible if someone gets ahold of my plex access. 
im a complete novice when it comes to all of this. 
I added a bonus shot of my rack. 

[HomeLabAddict]

If I'm understanding correctly, you are asking if anyone who by chance gets access to your plex will be able to see your files like backups and such on your server? The answer is no plex will only index the shares you tell it to as long as you don't have a root share you are pointing plex to.

also edit: that is a beautiful case

 

[DD58]

1 hour ago, HomeLabAddict said:

If I'm understanding correctly, you are asking if anyone who by chance gets access to your plex will be able to see your files like backups and such on your server? The answer is no plex will only index the shares you tell it to as long as you don't have a root share you are pointing plex to.

also edit: that is a beautiful case

 

Ok. I wasn’t to sure how plex did file share. I’m just way too new at all this. Still getting my feet wet. Any good books you could recommend for beginner networking and server setup? I’d much rather read then sit on YouTube all day. 

thanks I found the case on eBay for 50 bucks. Once I get everything working and in place I’ll do alot of cable management. 

[HomeLabAddict]

47 minutes ago, DD58 said:

Ok. I wasn’t to sure how plex did file share. I’m just way too new at all this. Still getting my feet wet. Any good books you could recommend for beginner networking and server setup? I’d much rather read then sit on YouTube all day. 

thanks I found the case on eBay for 50 bucks. Once I get everything working and in place I’ll do alot of cable management. 

Yeah Plex, doesn't really do any file sharing of any type in the usual way like google drive, just indexing of the media you provide like pictures, music, movies etc... So I recommend making a "media" share on your server and putting folders in that share. From there you can add the folders to plex for each category you are looking to create.

Also unfortunately I am the opposite lol, I'd prefer reading articles, reddit posts, and watching Youtube, spaceinvader1 does magic work when it comes to Unraid. I'd highly recommend him. If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot me a message though

[voyager_]

what rack are you using? Im looking for one with more wife appeal 

[DD58]

1 hour ago, HomeLabAddict said:

Yeah Plex, doesn't really do any file sharing of any type in the usual way like google drive, just indexing of the media you provide like pictures, music, movies etc... So I recommend making a "media" share on your server and putting folders in that share. From there you can add the folders to plex for each category you are looking to create.

Also unfortunately I am the opposite lol, I'd prefer reading articles, reddit posts, and watching Youtube, spaceinvader1 does magic work when it comes to Unraid. I'd highly recommend him. If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot me a message though

I’ll have to check him out. That’s for the help!! It’s greatly appreciated. 

[DD58]

47 minutes ago, voyager_ said:

what rack are you using? Im looking for one with more wife appeal 

The company is SYSRACKS. I always watch eBay for deals and found this couldn’t resist for the price. It’s well made and looks nice with the front glass. 

[apharma]

I have Unraid and Plex, I set up my share as storage then had separate folders for films, TV/series and photos from there for organising.

If it's just you as a user for home stuff it doesn't matter too much. If you had to manage access for multiple people to access those files (add rips, remove lower quality) then I would stick the plex folders on their own share and add users to that share with read/write and your sensitive files on a different share where only you have access. I don't know if Unraid can restrict access to subfolders but it's just a lot easier to restrict shares as needed, a good rule of thumb is only give access and permission levels (read or read/write) to what people actually need and give each person a user account.

[Jarsky]

Plex you create "Libraries" which will only scan and build the library based on the files in the directory path that you specify for the Library.

It will also only add media content (video and audio). Plex requires read permissions to the shares to scrape the files and serve them through the player, but doesn't provide any file share access. 

[DD58]

Ok it’s alot easier than I was figuring. It’s definitely going to a while. It’s taking ages to rip all my dvds. 

[HomeLabAddict]

Damn, I'm still thinking about how much of a steal that rack was. $50 is so wild

[DD58]

19 hours ago, HomeLabAddict said:

Damn, I'm still thinking about how much of a steal that rack was. $50 is so wild

That’s why I jumped on it. Never get deals like that anymore. 

[vishesh999]

On 7/24/2023 at 3:53 AM, DD58 said:

I have a plex account and was wondering what’s the safest way to make sure all the other files I will have on my server not be visible if someone gets ahold of my plex access. 

 

I am assuming you want to be able to watch Plex outside of your network / over the internet, hence the question.

• Make sure that you configure your router to port forward to ONLY one port you choose on your Plex server. 
• DO NOT ENABLE DMZ on your router. This would forward all the traffic & bypass the firewall on your router to your system, and it is GUARANTEED that sooner or later your system will be compromised. This is not so much related to plex, but your network security in general.

Plex is pretty secure, and you shouldn't have any issues. Another option would be to disable Plex access outside your LAN, and remove all port forwarding on your router. 

[vishesh999]

On 7/24/2023 at 3:53 AM, DD58 said:

Dell r730

I am curious to know:-

1. What are the server specs? Processor / RAM
2. What is the idle power consumption?
3. How is the fan noise? 
4. Is that an 18U Server Rack?

 

[DD58]

5 hours ago, vishesh999 said:

I am curious to know:-

1. What are the server specs? Processor / RAM
2. What is the idle power consumption?
3. How is the fan noise? 
4. Is that an 18U Server Rack?

 

It’s a 12u track by sysracks 

the r730 is running 2 Xeon e5-2630v3 2.6ghz 8core pre on 128g of ram I have a nvidia k2 gpu for through put 

it has 8tb of sad storage right now. 
Os is unraid with windows 10 and Debian VMs running. 
haven’t load tested it yet and don’t know power consumption as of now. Still off network trying to get it tuned to run. 

[vishesh999]

39 minutes ago, DD58 said:

It’s a 12u track by sysracks 

the r730 is running 2 Xeon e5-2630v3 2.6ghz 8core pre on 128g of ram I have a nvidia k2 gpu for through put 

it has 8tb of sad storage right now. 
Os is unraid with windows 10 and Debian VMs running. 
haven’t load tested it yet and don’t know power consumption as of now. Still off network trying to get it tuned to run. 

 

Wow! That is a sweet setup! 

• Are you running the SSDs in the main UnRaid array, or created a new pool?
• Have you tried ZFS pools on UnRaid?
• What SSDs are you using, consumer or enterprise?
• To the best of my knowledge TRIM is not supported in the main array, but only in the pools. Have you had any performance issue due to TRIM?

 

[DD58]

1 hour ago, vishesh999 said:

 

Wow! That is a sweet setup! 

• Are you running the SSDs in the main UnRaid array, or created a new pool?
• Have you tried ZFS pools on UnRaid?
• What SSDs are you using, consumer or enterprise?
• To the best of my knowledge TRIM is not supported in the main array, but only in the pools. Have you had any performance issue due to TRIM?

 

I’m running them in the main array. I didn’t know you could create a new pool hummm! I’m super new to all this wanted to get my feet wet before I helped out at my company. 
 

I read some were zfs isn’t that great for movies and my main reason to set up the server besides 100gigs of iPhone pictures but to have a plex server. I have about 300 dvds and blue rays. I’m sick of looking at them on my wall so it’s time to dump them to ssds. 
 

for the ssd I’m using Samsung 870 qvo 8x1tb I was going to use something else but I got a great deal for buying 8 at once. 
 

[vishesh999]

10 hours ago, DD58 said:

for the ssd I’m using Samsung 870 qvo

 

• I hope you are aware that the QVO uses a QLC Nand chip, which generally speaking is the bottom tier. The EVO is a TLC, which is a step up. Here is a video on youtube explaining this in detail, i recommend to watch the entire video, or skip to 5:55 :-

 

10 hours ago, DD58 said:

I’m running them in the main array. I didn’t know you could create a new pool

• I would NOT recommend using SSDs in the main array. It does not support TRIM. TRIM helps in the garbage collection process and helps reclaim the blocks for writing in future. Without TRIM the drive does unnecessary writes (moving data around), thereby reducing the longevity & write performance of the drive. This wouldn't matter much in your case unless you are repeatedly deleting data and re-writing on your drives.
• Generally speaking, if you are to use SSDs in UnRaid, use them in ZFS pools. It is much more convenient, and supports Auto TRIM. 

 

10 hours ago, DD58 said:

I read some were zfs isn’t that great for movies

• ZFS is a very advanced file system, often used in enterprise environments. This is a great misconception, that ZFS isn't great for videos.
• If configured with a RaidZ1 / Z2 etc..., not only does it offer bit rot protection, but also helps in self healing of the corrupted files. It does that by verifying the checksum, and comparing it to when the files were first written. Incase there is a discrepancy, it uses the parity to self-heal the data. 
• You can also schedule monthly scrubs, to achieve this. ZFS also verifies the checksum and self heals the data once the file is opened. 
• Should your network allow, I can guarantee you will have a greater read / write performance as compared to having them on the main array. With the main array, you are writing to just one SSD at a time (plus parity), where as in the ZFS pool, you are writing / striping the data to several drives at a time. 
• Using ZFS in a single drive configuration in main UnRaid array does not offer the performance benefits. Furthermore, even though it would be able to detect bitrot in a single drive zfs file system, however it would not be able to self heal, since it does not have a parity drive to correctly rebuild the corrupted data.
• Before using ZFS pools, it is important that you configure them correctly. Do not, I repeat, do not configure the ZFS pool without a parity drive, incase one of your disk goes bad, the data across all the drives will be gone. 

 

Last but not the least, I hope you are running the latest version of UnRaid 6.12, since the ZFS filesystem is integrated natively. I highly recommend watching SpaceInvaderOne's videos for all things UnRaid. 

 

 

[DD58]

19 hours ago, vishesh999 said:

 

• I hope you are aware that the QVO uses a QLC Nand chip, which generally speaking is the bottom tier. The EVO is a TLC, which is a step up. Here is a video on youtube explaining this in detail, i recommend to watch the entire video, or skip to 5:55 :-

 

• I would NOT recommend using SSDs in the main array. It does not support TRIM. TRIM helps in the garbage collection process and helps reclaim the blocks for writing in future. Without TRIM the drive does unnecessary writes (moving data around), thereby reducing the longevity & write performance of the drive. This wouldn't matter much in your case unless you are repeatedly deleting data and re-writing on your drives.
• Generally speaking, if you are to use SSDs in UnRaid, use them in ZFS pools. It is much more convenient, and supports Auto TRIM. 

 

• ZFS is a very advanced file system, often used in enterprise environments. This is a great misconception, that ZFS isn't great for videos.
• If configured with a RaidZ1 / Z2 etc..., not only does it offer bit rot protection, but also helps in self healing of the corrupted files. It does that by verifying the checksum, and comparing it to when the files were first written. Incase there is a discrepancy, it uses the parity to self-heal the data. 
• You can also schedule monthly scrubs, to achieve this. ZFS also verifies the checksum and self heals the data once the file is opened. 
• Should your network allow, I can guarantee you will have a greater read / write performance as compared to having them on the main array. With the main array, you are writing to just one SSD at a time (plus parity), where as in the ZFS pool, you are writing / striping the data to several drives at a time. 
• Using ZFS in a single drive configuration in main UnRaid array does not offer the performance benefits. Furthermore, even though it would be able to detect bitrot in a single drive zfs file system, however it would not be able to self heal, since it does not have a parity drive to correctly rebuild the corrupted data.
• Before using ZFS pools, it is important that you configure them correctly. Do not, I repeat, do not configure the ZFS pool without a parity drive, incase one of your disk goes bad, the data across all the drives will be gone. 

 

Last but not the least, I hope you are running the latest version of UnRaid 6.12, since the ZFS filesystem is integrated natively. I highly recommend watching SpaceInvaderOne's videos for all things UnRaid. 

 

 

I didn’t know that about ssds I was mistaken they are the 870 evos. Thanks for the videos both were very interesting to watch. I actually learn a lot from the space invader video. This weekend I’m going to migrate mover the data and convert the drives to zfs and work on using a pool. I’m actually leaning more towards using jellyfin instead of plex. I’m not sure I might just try both and see what I like more. 
 

let me ask this then if ssds aren’t the best and I go with a hdd would the speed of the hdd matter so much. I know they’re 5.4k 7.2k and 10k. I have a bunch of the drive caddy’s laying around and might just set up a few with hdds and see what’s happens on testing. 

[vishesh999]

4 hours ago, DD58 said:

let me ask this then if ssds aren’t the best and I go with a hdd would the speed of the hdd matter so much. I know they’re 5.4k 7.2k and 10k. I have a bunch of the drive caddy’s laying around and might just set up a few with hdds and see what’s happens on testing. 

 

I think you misunderstood. SSDs are far more superior than HDD, however, not all SSDs are made the same. Furthermore, the cost per terabyte is much higher while using SSDs as compared to HDD. However, there are some great options on eBay, and you can find used Enterprise grade SSDs 2TB SSD for about $60 plus shipping. I would recommend reading the following article solution, where mariushm gives plenty of SSD options to consider:

 

 

What I was trying to explain was, that instead of having the SSDs in the main UnRaid array, you should use UnRaid Pools instead. You can have a single 250gb drive (doesn't matter if it is SSD or HDD) in the main array (it is necessary to have atleast 1 drive in the array, otherwise the array wont start), and then create ZFS pools with all of your SSDs with parity. This makes working with UnRaid and SSDs that much easier. If you are using SSD with Unraid Array, it is not the end of the world. It would work. however, I'd strongly recommend using pools instead, which would increase both performance and longevity.

 

Next, I am guessing you have a gigabit ethernet. You won't be able to measure any meaningful performance comparison between the SSDs and HDDs, since your network is the bottleneck here. 

 

As for HDDs, do you plan on using it in the Array or Pool? If you are using it in the array, I believe you won't be getting more than 70 to 100 MB/s read/write speeds maybe lower. The benefits of using HDD's in the array is that you can mix and match the drive capacities / RPM, have the benefit of UnRaid Parity, and limit your data loss only to the drive failed (in extreme cases, incase something goes wrong while rebuilding the drive), and not loose data across all your drives. However, when using HDDs in pools in RaidZ1 / RaidZ2, you will get much higher read/write speeds since the data would be striped across all the drives instead of writing them one at a time, but again your network is the bottleneck here. Furthermore, you won't be able to mix and match the drive size and get their full capacity, since your pool size will be limited to the "lowest drive capacity x the number of drives in that pool". Makes sense?

 

A way to get around using HDDs in the Array, and still have decent write performance is to use SSD as cache. However, this option would depend on how much you are writing to the array at a time, and need to configure mover script to move the data from SSD to Array. However, your read speed will still be limited to the speed of HDDs.

 

If you've already purchased the SSDs, you don't need to stress. I was merely pointing out the differences, hope you got to learn something new.

 

DISCLAIMER: I don't claim to be an expert, rather an enthusiast who is continuously looking to learn something new.