My next Plex server build

[Bigtruck747]

I'm hoping to get some help and/or ideas when it comes to storage servers.

 

Right now I have my Plex server running on a dedicated Windows 10 machine.  I have four WD Green 4TB drives set up in Windows Storage Spaces with redundancy. I also use my Storage Pool for data/document storage, not just media storage.

 

I'm thinking about building a new Plex server in the next year or so, and I'm trying to come up with ideas for what would be the best fit for me.

I watched this guy video; Dual Xeon 60TB Dedicated Plex Media Server - Meet Zeus ... and while it was impressive, I don't think I'll need something that bad ass!

 

After that I found this thread; FreeNas Vs Unraid 6 in Linus's forum here, it was helpful!

 

I guess to show what a newbie I am, my main question is; why/how is it better to use something like freeNAS, unRAID, NAS4free, or (fill in the blank) versus Windows 10 and Storage Spaces?

 

Some have told me just to go with a QNap or Synology box ... but I guess I just like the idea of being able to customize the hardware???  Any thoughts on this one????

 

Thanks for all of your help and advice!!!!!

[desertcomputer]

What is your server specs first? I prefer don't get any QNAP or synology box, you can't really upgrade anything apart from ram which is pain to ass to access and it you have buy ram specialised ram. 

 

For OS, i have been running plex completing fine on FreeNAS, for freenas the main advantage is the snapshots and ZFS and it can be run off a USB. Also love their file system, really easy to formant/backup/clone etc. 

[AshleyAshes]

For my Windows 10 powered media server I use FlexRAID and highly recommend it for a media storage solution.  I replaced DriveBender with FlexRAID.  FlexRAID pools drives but also offers snap shot parity based protection, you can mix and match any HDDs, your parity drives just have to be equal or larger than any storage drives.  You can expand it at will, just add more HDDs, be they small or large HDDs.  You can also build a FlexRAID setup with drives that already have data on them.  I brought all my drives in with their media files on them and it just pulled them all in and started building parity data.

[Bigtruck747]

On 4/1/2017 at 10:49 PM, MrUnknownEMC said:

What is your server specs first? I prefer don't get any QNAP or synology box, you can't really upgrade anything apart from ram which is pain to ass to access and it you have buy ram specialised ram. 

 

For OS, i have been running plex completing fine on FreeNAS, for freenas the main advantage is the snapshots and ZFS and it can be run off a USB. Also love their file system, really easy to formant/backup/clone etc. 

My current specs are; ASUS Sabertooth P67 MoBo, i5-2500K, 16GB of Corsair RAM (none of this over clocked) ... Running windows 10 Pro

 

But like I say, I have my eye on building a new system in the future (a dual Xeon system I think), & I'm trying to get a feel for if I should look at a different OS (like unRAID, freeNAS, etc.) for that build????

 

I'm wondering if I'm going to need to simply start using/playing with some of the NAS OS's & see what I like and/or what works for my situation?

 

In my future build, it's primary purpose will be a Plex server, and since the machine will be running 24/7, I like the idea of adding 1 or 2 GPU's solely for Folding @ Home.  Which leads to my next question; How hard will that be to accomplish if I go with a NAS OS?  (Am I showing what little I know about Folding @ Home!?!?)

 

Thank you everyone for your help!

[desertcomputer]

6 hours ago, Bigtruck747 said:

My current specs are; ASUS Sabertooth P67 MoBo, i5-2500K, 16GB of Corsair RAM (none of this over clocked) ... Running windows 10 Pro

 

But like I say, I have my eye on building a new system in the future (a dual Xeon system I think), & I'm trying to get a feel for if I should look at a different OS (like unRAID, freeNAS, etc.) for that build????

 

I'm wondering if I'm going to need to simply start using/playing with some of the NAS OS's & see what I like and/or what works for my situation?

 

In my future build, it's primary purpose will be a Plex server, and since the machine will be running 24/7, I like the idea of adding 1 or 2 GPU's solely for Folding @ Home.  Which leads to my next question; How hard will that be to accomplish if I go with a NAS OS?  (Am I showing what little I know about Folding @ Home!?!?)

 

Thank you everyone for your help!

Well the current FreeNAS 10 and upcoming update of 9.10.4 support VM such as Window and linux but I am not sure about the GPU pass through. You have head over to freenas forum and ask. 

 

For your question regarding if you need to try out the OS. If you really want to, you could go download the ISO and run it inside a VM and try it yourself or you could spend some day testing OS. Personally i just went straight to freenas as it meet basically my requirements and i just learnt from their. Personally if you just doing plex and file server you don't need dual xeon. I would suggest getting newer xeon for power efficiency, if most of your media can be direct play from it doesn't need strong CPU, you only need one if you are transcoding multiple stream at the same time. My own server have 10 active uses daily, and at most only 4 current stream (usually 3 transcode/1 direct) depending on what their watching. My Fx6300 is able to handle that without a issues, no buffering due to server but 100% is the user internet connection.