Like everyone: NAS and Plex server

[Silent Node]

Here's the hardware. The CPU will just be picked up from my local Canada Computers whenever the last parts arrive. That case is so that it blends in with the other media components nicely.

I'm assuming RAID 5 for 16 TB of storage. The M.2 was on-sale, so is my probably-overkill boot drive. I do have PLEX "Lifetime".

I'm not a data hoarder (yet), so here's how I imagine dividing up the storage. I'd like to set aside 4TB for storing backup images of my main machine. The remaining 12TB should be for media that can be served by PLEX and used as a network drive to just-store-stuff. I'd rather not pay for a premium OS. I ran Linux fulltime 15 years ago, and think it would be fun to have a Linux box around to "play with" again.

Like everyone, I'm here searching for software and configuration recommendations from those-who-know.

edit: this will be always-on, attached to a UPS that also powers my router (for a little while anyway). I'm in the city, so power outages are infrequent, and usually short lived.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Silent Node
added stuff as noted

[Slottr]

Depends on what you're comfortable with

 

Windows works just fine with Plex, and setting it up as a NAS is fairly easy

 

If you want something simpler with more control, unraid running plex in a docker container is also very viable

[Silent Node]

4 minutes ago, Slottr said:

...

If you want something simpler with more control, unraid running plex in a docker container is also very viable

I kind of ignored unraid because I didn't want anything running off a USB stick. I'm assuming running it in a container gets around that? I don't see myself using Windows for this, I'd be more likely to do a Linux install.

[RONOTHAN##]

TrueNAS Scale should do pretty well for this. You'd setup a RAID Z1 with the drives (similar to RAID 5, but using ZFS), it's quick to implement a Plex VM instance, and it's pretty easy to create network shares that are easy to use for backups and similar. 

 

The only two issues you'd run into when using TrueNAS Scale for this is that you can't use the 2080 Super for Plex video encode in the current setup and you're a bit limited on RAM for this. The docker container (the easy way to setup the Plex instance) only allows video encode with Intel iGPUs, and the virtual machine only lets you pass through a GPU if you have a second card to dedicate to the main system (a limitation of the UI, not of the underlying software). Both of those would be fixed if you spent the extra ~$20 on a 12100 non-F instead of the 12100F, and you could probably remove the 2080 Super as well, saving power usage for this system. As for RAM, ZFS uses RAM as a cache for the storage, with the general recommendation being to have 1GB per TB of storage you have before services. If it was just the storage you would be at the recommended, but when you take into account Plex you're a little low. It'll still be fine and can be upgraded in the future, but don't expect the read/write performance to be spectacular. 

 

Other options would be UnRAID and just plain Ubuntu server, though UnRAID would fall in the "premium OS" category that you wanted to avoid, and vanilla Ubuntu server would work but just be missing a lot of the quality of life improvements, so you'd manually have to setup things like Docker, the Plex instance, Samba, some sort of software RAID like ZFS or Linux RAID, etc. I'd go with TrueNAS Scale and swap out the CPU, IMO that makes the most sense here, but if you'd rather do everything manually and use your system exactly as you have it with exactly the services you want with nothing you don't, that's an option as well. 

[Silent Node]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

TrueNAS Scale should do pretty well for this. You'd setup a RAID Z1 with the drives (similar to RAID 5, but using ZFS), it's quick to implement a Plex VM instance, and it's pretty easy to create network shares that are easy to use for backups and similar. 

 

The only two issues you'd run into when using TrueNAS Scale for this is that you can't use the 2080 Super for Plex video encode in the current setup and you're a bit limited on RAM for this. The docker container (the easy way to setup the Plex instance) only allows video encode with Intel iGPUs, and the virtual machine only lets you pass through a GPU if you have a second card to dedicate to the main system (a limitation of the UI, not of the underlying software). Both of those would be fixed if you spent the extra ~$20 on a 12100 non-F instead of the 12100F, and you could probably remove the 2080 Super as well, saving power usage for this system. As for RAM, ZFS uses RAM as a cache for the storage, with the general recommendation being to have 1GB per TB of storage you have before services. If it was just the storage you would be at the recommended, but when you take into account Plex you're a little low. It'll still be fine and can be upgraded in the future, but don't expect the read/write performance to be spectacular. 

 

Other options would be UnRAID and just plain Ubuntu server, though UnRAID would fall in the "premium OS" category that you wanted to avoid, and vanilla Ubuntu server would work but just be missing a lot of the quality of life improvements, so you'd manually have to setup things like Docker, the Plex instance, Samba, some sort of software RAID like ZFS or Linux RAID, etc. I'd go with TrueNAS Scale and swap out the CPU, IMO that makes the most sense here, but if you'd rather do everything manually and use your system exactly as you have it with exactly the services you want with nothing you don't, that's an option as well. 

Ok, that had a lot I should think about. I was kind of aiming for having the GPU there to transcode, and figured it'd "sleep" when not being used (meaning it only needed power on-demand, rather than sucking down juice all the time). I'm sure it takes a bit extra just to have it powered on, but is the GPU (that is really just there because I have it and am not otherwise using it, and I have PLEX Lifetime) really gonna draw a lot when it's not dealing with anything?

I actually considered going for the non-F anyway, just to make trouble shooting easier at some point in the future, might do that anyway. The cost of unRAID ($60 for me from what I can see) isn't a big issue. Ubuntu server would be fine/fun to set up (it's been a while, but I did like having full time Linux back in the day.

 

Thanks for all of that though. I've probably got a week or two until I build, and hopefully I have it well sorted what direction I'm going to go with the software by then.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Silent Node said:

I'm sure it takes a bit extra just to have it powered on, but is the GPU (that is really just there because I have it and am not otherwise using it, and I have PLEX Lifetime) really gonna draw a lot when it's not dealing with anything?

From the bit I remember, those cards do still draw 20-30W at full idle. It's nothing crazy but it adds up over time, especially since that's going to be the majority of the system power. 

 

6 minutes ago, Silent Node said:

I actually considered going for the non-F anyway, just to make trouble shooting easier at some point in the future, might do that anyway.

For this system, I probably would no matter what. Even if you do keep the 2080 in there and maybe upgrade the CPU to a 12400 so you can have a gaming VM for whatever reason, having an iGPU would be pretty helpful for this type of system. 

 

8 minutes ago, Silent Node said:

The cost of unRAID ($60 for me from what I can see) isn't a big issue. Ubuntu server would be fine/fun to set up (it's been a while, but I did like having full time Linux back in the day.

I do know UnRAID also has a trial period, and it's a bit more lenient about how you can upgrade the drives, so you can always experiment with it if you want to. Same with TrueNAS Scale, but that's at least free so you can attempt to see what it would be like to run and use. 

 

If you like neither, Ubuntu Server is there as the backup. If you go for that, most of your configuration will have to be manual through the command line. If you like that, by all means go for it, it should be a hell of a time. If you want something that just works/has a bit more training wheels so you get it setup in an hour rather than 6, the other solutions probably make a bit more sense. My method has usually been run one of the hypervisor OS releases (Proxmox until recently, now TrueNAS Scale) then have all the VMs for hosting various services running on Ubuntu Server. 

 

That would be another option if you want to look into it, having Proxmox running with VMs and LXC containers running for everything, though with the overhead that they take up I'd probably want a bigger CPU if I were to be running that. 

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

Install proxmox and run VMs.

One for the NAS and a second for plex. If you later on want to add networking stuff just add a third VM for pfSense.

 

 

[Silent Node]

2 minutes ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Install proxmox and run VMs.

One for the NAS and a second for plex. If you later on want to add networking stuff just add a third VM for pfSense.

 

 

Both you and RONOTHAN## have mentioned Promox now... I've got a little reading to do to see if that's something I want to add to my options. Thanks!

[Silent Node]

On 8/15/2023 at 7:14 PM, RONOTHAN## said:

...

For this system, I probably would no matter what. Even if you do keep the 2080 in there and maybe upgrade the CPU to a 12400 so you can have a gaming VM for whatever reason, having an iGPU would be pretty helpful for this type of system. 

...

Part of my thinking in not getting a 12400 is that I don't have any need for a gaming VM right now, and down-the-road if I want to upgrade then getting a used CPU will be easy enough after it's aged a bit.

I may go for the non-F though

edit: I am pretty sure I'm going to go with running an Ubuntu server. It adds flexibility, I enjoy configuration and administration, and I like the idea of having a full-time Linux box around again.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, Silent Node said:

Part of my thinking in not getting a 12400 is that I don't have any need for a gaming VM right now, and down-the-road if I want to upgrade then getting a used CPU will be easy enough after it's aged a bit.

I may go for the non-F though

Fair enough, it was just the only use case I could think of for keeping the 2080 in the system. 

[Silent Node]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Fair enough, it was just the only use case I could think of for keeping the 2080 in the system. 

Yea...it is overkill. If I don't like the power consumption, or use it for transcoding enough, I have smaller used cards hanging around that can replace it.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Silent Node said:

Yea...it is overkill. If I don't like the power consumption, or use it for transcoding enough, I have smaller used cards hanging around that can replace it.

Or just using the iGPU for encode. Intel's H.264 encoder is very solid, about on par with Nvidia's, so unless you were planning on throwing the 2080 in a different VM and doing something other than Plex there isn't much point in having a second card in this system. 

[MG2R]

Regarding transcode horsepower: I recently acquired a couple Odroid H3+ boards. They have 10W Intel N6005 chips in there. I can push those to multiple 4K Plex transcodes using quicksync, even while the GPU was rendering a full Windows UI. 
 

even without hardware acceleration, CPU transcoding was possible. 
 

you really don’t need much anymore. 

[Silent Node]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:15 AM, MG2R said:

...
you really don’t need much anymore. 

That does serve to put it in perspective. Thanks.