Plex & Web accessible NAS/Home Server

[HomeNetTinker]

Hello everyone!

 

I am looking to build a home server that will be capable of running Plex and storing other media and backups that I can access from around the globe. I travel away from home for months at a time and would love to be able to access my movies and save files to the server back home. I have a list of priorities for this project that I will include below. I would love to build this project for under $1000 but I am flexible. I want the ability to expand my media and Plex storage, as well as running some sort of raid so I envision a starting storage capacity of 10+ Tb running a raid that will let me lose 1 or 2 drives and be able to rebuild. Being able to manage the server from abroad would be a massive plus. (i.e. if/when a drive fails I can ship a new HDD to my wife, have her swap it out plug and play style, and be able to rebuild the drive from wherever I am at the time. With all that being said, what does everyone suggest for quality but not super over the top system hardware and OS to install. 

 

PSA, I have Never Built a Computer Before :0 I feel like I am trying to jump off the deep end before I learn to swim, but due to my travels I have no purpose for a regular desktop so here we are!

 

Requirements:

1) Ability to Run Plex and watch movies from abroad with, lets be honest, crappy internet speeds at best.

2) Ability to back up home systems and save/access files such as photos, PDF and Microsoft Office documents securely from the internet. (Also will use of a 3rd party VPN affect this?)

3) Ability to remote manage the server via internet (primarily for the situation noted above) (If I cannot do this, so be it. It would simply be nice) 

4) Portable (basically just not a huge rack mounted monster) as I plan on moving my "permanent" place of residence in the next 3 years

 

 

Thanks in advance for all the help!

[WereCatf]

Personally, with your requirements, I'd recommend just getting one of the better-quality SOHO NASes, like e.g. some Synology- or QNAP-box. They already provide VPN, Plex, backup and some sort of a home-cloud-system. I don't know about remote-manageability, but then again, you could always SSH-tunnel back home and manage them from there.

[HomeNetTinker]

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Personally, with your requirements, I'd recommend just getting one of the better-quality SOHO NASes, like e.g. some Synology- or QNAP-box.

From what I've been seeing, pre-built NAS boxes don't have the power to trans-code HD videos via Plex. Is this incorrect?

[WereCatf]

15 minutes ago, HomeNetTinker said:

From what I've been seeing, pre-built NAS boxes don't have the power to trans-code HD videos via Plex. Is this incorrect?

They do, they use H/W-accelerated encoding/decoding instead of doing it in software, so CPU-speed/grunt doesn't really matter. For example the boxes that use Intel CPUs use their QuickSync-technology for it. (Note, this only applies to recent models. Old, used ones may not have QuickSync)