Nas for a Hotel

[fabgarsan]

We have 34 rooms in our hotel, there we want to make available some videos in each tv per room. So, maybe, I will have between 15 to 25 users using this service at the same time.

How should I choose the proper NAS for that?

Should I use SSD against HHD?

 

Thanks.

[Mr Technician]

You will likely run into bandwidth problems since you likely only have gigabit networking. Are you planning to use something like plex for this?

[fabgarsan]

35 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

You will likely run into bandwidth problems since you likely only have gigabit networking. Are you planning to use something like plex for this?

For sure. I just read about Plex 3 days ago and I liked it. I was making my test with Kodi and a basic NAS that a friend lent me (zyxel nas325), but this NAS got stuck with just 3 tv working at the same time.
What I going to do is to serve video in 720p.
For sure, I have one gigabit networking. For that reason I don't want to server grater resolutions.

 

I apologize if it's a bit hard to understand me but english is not my native language. Thanks for helping me.

[alex75871]

Gigabit will be sufficient if you are only streaming 720p. Your bottleneck will be your CPU if PLEX is transcoding the media. Try converting the media to a native format that the clients can interpret so PLEX does not have to transcode (convert) to a different format. If you are using FreeNAS, make sure to have enough RAM so the ARC can cache the media to prevent storage bottlenecks.

[Jarsky]

 

8 hours ago, fabgarsan said:

For sure. I just read about Plex 3 days ago and I liked it. I was making my test with Kodi and a basic NAS that a friend lent me (zyxel nas325), but this NAS got stuck with just 3 tv working at the same time.
What I going to do is to serve video in 720p.
For sure, I have one gigabit networking. For that reason I don't want to server grater resolutions.

 

I apologize if it's a bit hard to understand me but english is not my native language. Thanks for helping me.

What are you using Kodi on? That NAS should be able to provide plenty of IO for far more than 3 concurrent streams...Kodi is client side (unless youre using the Plex plugin)

[Salv8 (sam)]

things like plex aren't going to work because of many problems.

and i'm not talking about the tech stuff.

you are better off using a service like:

http://tvforhotels.net/

or 

https://www.dvdnowfreemovies.com/index.php

as they have done all of the hard work for you, always keep their library's up to date with new content, and don't require trial and error because it's be sorted out already

almost every hotel (and motel) in the world uses a system like this as it's easier then something like plex (and won't land them in legal trouble)

oh yea the rest of you, plex may be nice but they SPECIFICALLY SAY THAT IT'S NOT MEANT FOR COMMERCIAL USE!!!!

as stated here: https://www.plex.tv/en-au/about/privacy-legal/plex-terms-of-service/ at 1.2 General Plex Solution Grant.

this is to ensure that a commercial business (e.g our friend here) doesn't just load up plex on a couple of tvs and play copyrighted content.

your best option (that won't get you in trouble) is to use one of the services i provided as an example and get on with it

[kasugatei]

Just use professional streaming solutions like Wowza

[leadeater]

On 9/26/2018 at 4:42 AM, fabgarsan said:

What I going to do is to serve video in 720p.
For sure, I have one gigabit networking. For that reason I don't want to server grater resolutions.

What devices are going to be used to play back the video?

 

You will want to transcode everything to the correct supported codec in 720p, you don't want to be transcoding anything otherwise the CPU requirements will be huge. Last time I looked at GPU accelerated transcoding you could only do a limited number of streams due to imposed limits by Nvidia and GeForce cards so for this number of users I'd just rule that out.

 

Not sure what internet access speeds are like for you but an online service would be a lot easier.

[Quinten Verhelst]

On 25-9-2018 at 5:52 PM, fabgarsan said:

We have 34 rooms in our hotel, there we want to make available some videos in each tv per room. So, maybe, I will have between 15 to 25 users using this service at the same time.

How should I choose the proper NAS for that?

Should I use SSD against HHD?

 

Thanks.

Personnally I would, although not a superb solution. Have a moderatly powerfull nas on each floor (5 - 10 rooms) and let a low power server sync files across mulitple of those devices from a single device.

 

This lowers your points of failure since a single nas fail will not cause the entire hotel to lose access. 

The individual nas' could be wired into a gigabit switch,while the sync server could be wired into 10 gigabit. I thought asus had a fairly priced 10g switch with 8 gigabit and 2 10 gigabit ports. So each nas would be getting 1 gigabit , while the sync server would have to bee SSD based and could handle syncing to every nas at the same time

[Mikensan]

For that many streams I would have a dedicated box instead of a prebuilt NAS. HDDs will be fine especially if you plan to use 720p and pre-encode the media. A single disk can saturate a gigabit link, so if you raid 3 or more you'll definitely be fine. IOPS for media playback isn't an issue.

 

As others have pointed out, it's good to know what will play these movies (Chromecast? Roku? AppleTV?).

 

Depending on the age of those going into your hotel, I don't think you'll even get half when fully booked. Lot of people get frustrated when it requires more than 1-2 clicks. Most will resort to Youtube or some other online media outlet. I would say don't stress too much about over-building your solution.

[kladzen]

If you want to go with plex server here is my suggestion for one way of doing it...

1 Gbit will be enough for this setup... 34/1000 Mbit = 30 Mbit for each room. Normal 1080P movies are about 8-10Mbit! So alot of headroom already and no need to downscale to 720p. However don't go 4K!

1 NAS server with raid 5 or 6 to store all the video content.

Install plex on a server etc ryzen 2700 cpu with 32/64gb ram that will load the files from the NAS. ( this server will just act as the plex server / transcoder if needed however! read this carefully below if the server is going to transcode!)

 

If using plex make sure to have the content being played "directly" from plex so the server does not need to perform any transcoding as this is a demanding task for the CPU - This depends what TV supports (codecs, audio and so on) if the TV can't natively play the content the plex app will automatically ask the server to transcode the content to the TV so it can be played.

 

However if you need to transcode then see below notes
 

1x 1080P transcoding stream takes about 2000points in cpu passmark - I have made that to 3000 just to be sure !

 

So 15 streams being transcoded at the same time x 3000 passmark score = 45.000 cpu passmark

 

the above mentioned ryzen 2700 CPU gives about 15.000 cpu passmark points - which means you will require 3 of these plex servers all connected to the NAS (via a switch). split the 34 rooms up so they are connected equally to these 3 servers and if any issue occurs with buffering. Just add another "plex transcoding" server.

 

 

The above method will 100% however it is a DIY solution compared to a PRO hotel TV setup.