Plex NAS Server (+ temporary gaming) build – Good to go or tweaks needed?

[Nachtmann]

I’m planning on building a Plex Media Server + NAS setup for my household. The requirements are fluent 4K video transcoding capability and the ability to handle 2-4 streams (~ 1x 4K and 3x 1080p). As a base system I’m thinking of unRaid with a Plex-Docker installation.

The current build looks like this:

• Intel Xeon E3-1245v6
• ASRock C236 WSI (mini ITX)
• 16gb EEC DDR4 2133
• 400W fanless Power Supply
• Dual M.2 PCIe Adapter Card with two NVME SSDs as cache (e.g. Samsung 960 Evo)
• Up to 6 HDD NAS drives

Here comes the twist. I am planning on building a gaming pc sometime in the next 12 months, but since this server already has a lot of horsepowers, I am thinking of using it as a temporary gaming station as well. To do that I’d temporarily change the configuration a bit. First putting the NVME SSDs in a Sata drive case to free the PCIe slot. Then putting a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1060 Mini there and installing a virtual Windows 10 on top of the unRaid installation and passing lets say 3 cores + 3 HT cores as well as the graphics card to it.

My questions to you:

• Do you see any conceptual problems here?
• Would you recommend a specific switch of certain hardware parts?

[exercutor5]

12 minutes ago, Nachtmann said:

First putting the NVME SSDs in a Sata drive case to free the PCIe slot.

Does not work that way. NVMe drives when put in a SATA enclosure and plugged into a SATA port just outright won't work. You need to change your SSDs to SATA ones.

 

P.S. Change your font colour to automatic, for the sake of night theme users like me.

[domandric034]

2 hours ago, Nachtmann said:

I’m planning on building a Plex Media Server + NAS setup for my household. The requirements are fluent 4K video transcoding capability and the ability to handle 2-4 streams (~ 1x 4K and 3x 1080p). As a base system I’m thinking of unRaid with a Plex-Docker installation.

The current build looks like this:

• Intel Xeon E3-1245v6
• ASRock C236 WSI (mini ITX)
• 16gb EEC DDR4 2133
• 400W fanless Power Supply
• Dual M.2 PCIe Adapter Card with two NVME SSDs as cache (e.g. Samsung 960 Evo)
• Up to 6 HDD NAS drives

Here comes the twist. I am planning on building a gaming pc sometime in the next 12 months, but since this server already has a lot of horsepowers, I am thinking of using it as a temporary gaming station as well. To do that I’d temporarily change the configuration a bit. First putting the NVME SSDs in a Sata drive case to free the PCIe slot. Then putting a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1060 Mini there and installing a virtual Windows 10 on top of the unRaid installation and passing lets say 3 cores + 3 HT cores as well as the graphics card to it.

My questions to you:

• Do you see any conceptual problems here?
• Would you recommend a specific switch of certain hardware parts?

That is god damn good server build but you should run Windows Server 2012 R2 + Ubuntu VM or FreeNAS and change PSU to EVGA 430 Bronze or something like that. And try RAID 1 for boot and RAID 5 for NAS drives in Windows Server

[Nachtmann]

2 hours ago, domandric034 said:

That is god damn good server build but you should run Windows Server 2012 R2 + Ubuntu VM or FreeNAS and change PSU to EVGA 430 Bronze or something like that. And try RAID 1 for boot and RAID 5 for NAS drives in Windows Server

Thanks a lot for the input.

What is your rationale against unRaid? With a classical Raid-5 my concerns are, that I cannot flexibly mix drive sizes, that's why i would like to go for some kind of hybrid-Raid solution as well as a designated server file system compared to NTFS.

 

Quote

Does not work that way. NVMe drives when put in a SATA enclosure and plugged into a SATA port just outright won't work. You need to change your SSDs to SATA ones.

Thanks, I tried to look it up, but have not found a 100% trustworthy answer. I will address that.

[ChalkChalkson]

An NVMe drive is pretty overkill for a NAS anyway, your home network probably can't handle more than a SATA SSD offers anyway (6Gb/s >> 1Gb/s)

9 hours ago, Nachtmann said:

Thanks a lot for the input.

What is your rationale against unRaid? With a classical Raid-5 my concerns are, that I cannot flexibly mix drive sizes, that's why i would like to go for some kind of hybrid-Raid solution as well as a designated server file system compared to NTFS.

I'd say go with unraid, pretty easy to configure, performs fine and I promise you won't spend as much time fiddleing around with stuff that doesn't work.