NAS and Plex in one box?

[baconborn]

Is there a way to set up a Plex Server and NAS in 1 box using Ubuntu Server?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Does it have to be Ubuntu server? You could go for something like FreeNAS which is very simple to set up with Plex. 

[baconborn]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Does it have to be Ubuntu server? You could go for something like FreeNAS which is very simple to set up with Plex. 

Doesn't have to be, but I was going to make it headless. Can FreeNAS be headless?

[WereCatf]

6 minutes ago, baconborn said:

Is there a way to set up a Plex Server and NAS in 1 box using Ubuntu Server?

Sure, I have a server with quite a bunch of different services running, including Samba for networked storage and Plex for serving video.

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, baconborn said:

Doesn't have to be, but I was going to make it headless. Can FreeNAS be headless?

It can run headless, but I've found it won't boot headless. A headless HDMI dummy for like $10 will work though. It's not necessary though, I just suggest FreeNAS because I've had good experiences with it and Plex. 

[baconborn]

12 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Sure, I have a server with quite a bunch of different services running, including Samba for networked storage and Plex for serving video.

Can plex use the samba share for hosting while being installed on a different drive in the PC? Would plex even treat the share differently from unshared space?

[WereCatf]

Just now, baconborn said:

Can plex use the samba share for hosting while being installed on a different drive in the PC? Would plex even treat the share differently from unshared space?

Plex doesn't care if you have a directory shared or not. I mean, it's just a directory with files in it.

 

That said, I'm getting the feeling you may not be very experienced with Linux (Not dissing on you, not meant as an insult) and thus I think going with the FreeNAS-route like Oshino Shinobu suggested might be best for you. If you go the Ubuntu Server - route, you'll have to manually managed your filesystems, including RAID, setting up all the services and such and it's very easy to screw it up, if you don't know what you're doing.

[baconborn]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

Plex doesn't care if you have a directory shared or not. I mean, it's just a directory with files in it.

 

That said, I'm getting the feeling you may not be very experienced with Linux (Not dissing on you, not meant as an insult) and thus I think going with the FreeNAS-route like Oshino Shinobu suggested might be best for you. If you go the Ubuntu Server - route, you'll have to manually managed your filesystems, including RAID, setting up all the services and such and it's very easy to screw it up, if you don't know what you're doing.

Hmm okay. So what about FreeNAS vs UnRAID?

[WereCatf]

Just now, baconborn said:

Hmm okay. So what about FreeNAS vs UnRAID?

I cannot say anything about the latter, I've never tried it or anything. I've only played around with FreeNAS, never actually used it myself, but it seems pretty robust and easy enough to set up and install Plex on it.

[dalekphalm]

50 minutes ago, baconborn said:

Is there a way to set up a Plex Server and NAS in 1 box using Ubuntu Server?

Yes. Plex Server is a "service" that runs on Linux, BSD (FreeNAS, FreeBSD, etc), and Windows. There are even plugins for Synology, QNAP, etc.

 

You can install Plex Server on any of those devices - all of which can act as a NAS.

 

You just need to choose the OS you want to use, and what storage layout you want.

[paddy-stone]

17 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

It can run headless, but I've found it won't boot headless. A headless HDMI dummy for like $10 will work though. It's not necessary though, I just suggest FreeNAS because I've had good experiences with it and Plex. 

Hmm, do you mean completely headless, as in no video card at all? or just that you need the initial setup to be used with a console?  I haven't tried this myself as I am using a CPU with an iGPU on my main server, and my backup server is a microserver with on board video. Only asking as this interests me, mainly why the hell do they need to check for video capability on startup? as it runs headless fine after booting. I apologise if I mixed up any terminology here as my brain is running shite today. lol.

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

8 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Hmm, do you mean completely headless, as in no video card at all? or just that you need the initial setup to be used with a console?  I haven't tried this myself as I am using a CPU with an iGPU on my main server, and my backup server is a microserver with on board video. Only asking as this interests me, mainly why the hell do they need to check for video capability on startup? as it runs headless fine after booting. I apologise if I mixed up any terminology here as my brain is running shite today. lol.

 

Actually, I may have a made a mistake here. FreeNAS can run headless just fine. Initial setup needs to be done via console, but after that it can be made to boot into FreeNAS automatically without a display. 

 

I had issues with booting into FreeNAS without a monitor recently, but that is due to my motherboard, not FreeNAS. My Motherboard won't go past POST without a display connected and doesn't have a headless boot option. 

 

For some reason I was thinking that FreeNAS can't boot headless, but from my understanding, it's actually just the board I have. After the initial setup, FreeNAS is basically entirely remote, controlled through the web interface. 

 

@baconborn My mistake on that part. I believe after initial setup, it's completely headless, controlled through a web interface. I basically never have to interact with my FreeNAS server directly, I just boot it with a monitor (because of my board) and then disconnect it and control it from my PC. I've never had it crash on me, the only time I've needed to go and turn it on with a monitor again is when there was a power outage or when installing a new drive. If you have hot swappable drive bays, you don't even need to turn it off for that. 

 

Once I add a dummy HDMI connector to my board, FreeNAS will be completely headless for me. I just adjusted my DHCP to free up from 192.168.1.200 and set it to a static address do it doesn't get pushed to a different address by DHCP. 

[paddy-stone]

6 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Actually, I may have a made a mistake here. FreeNAS can run headless just fine. Initial setup needs to be done via console, but after that it can be made to boot into FreeNAS automatically without a display. 

 

I had issues with booting into FreeNAS without a monitor recently, but that is due to my motherboard, not FreeNAS. My Motherboard won't go past POST without a display connected and doesn't have a headless boot option. 

 

For some reason I was thinking that FreeNAS can't boot headless, but from my understanding, it's actually just the board I have. After the initial setup, FreeNAS is basically entirely remote, controlled through the web interface. 

 

@baconborn My mistake on that part. I believe after initial setup, it's completely headless, controlled through a web interface. I basically never have to interact with my FreeNAS server directly, I just boot it with a monitor (because of my board) and then disconnect it and control it from my PC. I've never had it crash on me, the only time I've needed to go and turn it on with a monitor again is when there was a power outage or when installing a new drive. If you have hot swappable drive bays, you don't even need to turn it off for that. 

 

Once I add a dummy HDMI connector to my board, FreeNAS will be completely headless for me. I just adjusted my DHCP to free up from 192.168.1.200 and set it to a static address do it doesn't get pushed to a different address by DHCP. 

Ahh I see, yes that is what I thought was the situation, but thought I might have been wrong, lol.

I didn't have a headless board to use for testing though, the only reason I remembered is because of researching this stuff before deciding which motherboard/cpu combo to use.

Although I do have an iGPU, I haven't used the actual console for a long time unless there was a problem that needed rectifying that I couldn't sort out through the webGUI... like IP address of the servers GUI for instance, then it's just like 2 mins later and can use the webGUI again. I actually bought a little GT710 for about £25 a while back just to use if I ever was in a situation where I needed a GPU, and have this in my HP g6? big server as I needed the HDMI out so I can use picture in picture etc from my main monitor to keep an eye on things or just because I needed the console.

Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean anything by questioning your info at all, just have memory problems and thought I might have been remembering incorrectly

[Oshino Shinobu]

18 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Ahh I see, yes that is what I thought was the situation, but thought I might have been wrong, lol.

I didn't have a headless board to use for testing though, the only reason I remembered is because of researching this stuff before deciding which motherboard/cpu combo to use.

Although I do have an iGPU, I haven't used the actual console for a long time unless there was a problem that needed rectifying that I couldn't sort out through the webGUI... like IP address of the servers GUI for instance, then it's just like 2 mins later and can use the webGUI again. I actually bought a little GT710 for about £25 a while back just to use if I ever was in a situation where I needed a GPU, and have this in my HP g6? big server as I needed the HDMI out so I can use picture in picture etc from my main monitor to keep an eye on things or just because I needed the console.

Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean anything by questioning your info at all, just have memory problems and thought I might have been remembering incorrectly

I believe you can actually change the GUI IP address from the GUI. At least, I think the option is there, but I've never tried it. 

 

Your asking reminded me I was confusing my board's inability to boot headless with FreeNAS, so no problem

[paddy-stone]

43 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I believe you can actually change the GUI IP address from the GUI. At least, I think the option is there, but I've never tried it. 

 

Your asking reminded me I was confusing my board's inability to boot headless with FreeNAS, so no problem

Ahh yeah, cool... yes you can change your IP address inside the GUI. But I meant if you were having problems getting into your freenas for some reason, like DHCP got turned on somehow, or like it booted into the wrong version for instance after re-boot. I had that happen a few times, but believe it was down to my Global config not being set correctly. Anyway, after I couldn't get in, I needed to change the IPv4 config from the freenas console instead.. then I could get into the GUI and make the necessary changes.

I have it all set up how I want it now, runs beautifully

It's handy being able to save config BTW for those times where you may have messed up your install with tinkering around. Just reset to defaults and then load in your previously saved config... helped me out once or twice. Also it#s a lovely feature of freenas/zfs to be able to import volumes, I have used that a few times when changing servers but keeping the drives, for upgrade for example and extending the volume.. works great.