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Advice on first NAS server?

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Gilmore21

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I'm looking at picking up a NAS Server and don't really know what I'm looking for in all honesty. I have a couple of 18tb WD Element drives I'm planning on shucking and would like to add them to a NAS. I'm not sure how easy it is to set up but I'd like to run my movies through plex if possible save constantly doing it all through my PC. Any help, advice or recommendations would be helpful. Thankyou
 
As a Synology Fanboi I can suggest those ...
When you say "a couple of 18tb" ... I would start with at least a 4bay device
I would not bother with something lower than the Plus series
Code: 
https://www.synology.com/de-de/products?product_line=ds_plus%2Cds_xs
Setting up is easy as pie ... put your disks in, start up, set your admin login, set the storage pool (RAID) and have fun :cool:
 
Synology or QNAP devices are good. The things you need to decide that would dictate what model you want are items like NIC speed, number of bays and if you want to run Plex on the NAS. If you are going to run Plex on the NAS then you need to be concerned with the resources on the NAS especially as it relates to video transcoding.

I use a NAS but just for storage for Plex. My plex server is a dedicated PC so that I can use a PCIE tuner card and have more transcoding resources (a 4060 in this case).

Either method for Plex works well you just need to figure out what you want to accomplish and that will dictate what you need.
 
As a QNAP fanboi, I'm currently building my own. Already have everything from Controller Card to Expanders to drive cages. Just deciding which system to run.
One thing you'll quickly learn is that no matter the brand, they are way underpowered. DQ gives good advice. A 4060 is an exceptional value right now for transcoding.
 
Forgot to mention, apart from Plex server I'm also running Tautulli (Plex statistics collector) as docker container on my Syno (y)
1704920211763.png

And that's just one of many applications you can use it for.

As Jimc115 mentioned, those thinks are hopelessly underpowered compared even to a medium-range PC
So if you transcode much in high resolutions ... don't use the NAS ... for Direct Play it's great ;)
 

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cartman0208 said:
Forgot to mention, apart from Plex server I'm also running Tautulli (Plex statistics collector) as docker container on my Syno (y)
View attachment 76800

And that's just one of many applications you can use it for.

As Jimc115 mentioned, those thinks are hopelessly underpowered compared even to a medium-range PC
So if you transcode much in high resolutions ... don't use the NAS ... for Direct Play it's great ;)
Click to expand...
I use Tautulli as well. In my case I just run it on the dedicated Plex PC.

Another interesting thing to do with a dedicated PC for Plex is it will of course use a Temp directory for transcode files. I make a 20GB RamDisk and I put the transcode directory there. It's technically faster than an NVME but the real upshot is you are not endlessly beating up a SSD with zillions of reads/writes.
 
Esphyx said:
@Jimc115 : Can you share some hardware you picked for that?
Click to expand...
So far, using mostly old parts. An X470 Taichi MB, Ryzen 5900x, an NVidia 3060ti, an LSI 9305 16e HBA Controller and
2 Adaptec 2283400 Expander cards. Expander cards don't actually need PCI slots. You can power them separately.
The 3060ti should easily handle any transcoding needed and the 5900x will easily handle anything else I want to run.

Most Important thing right now is Emby is just beginning to use AMD on-board graphics. Plex isn't at all. So plan on
an Intel Quick Sync CPU or a good Video Card for transcoding. NVidia also has a 3 stream transcode limit, but that's
driver based and easily defeated. It's an attempt to get you to buy a more expensive card.
 
Watcher0363 said:
What method are you using to pull the content from your NAS?
Click to expand...
Right now just SMB. I tried ISCSI for awhile first and that worked OK but it has some use issues in this case. The CIFS share works much better in that it's less of a headache and is more flexible. Performance between the 2 is the same on this end. In my plex config for libraires I do not use a mapped drive though I refer to the share on the nas directly. So a library path looks like "\\nas\share\movies" and not "r:\share\movies".

Where it sits now it works well. And that includes UHD filles I have not transcoded down. That put's a hurting on a Roku a little bit but the server and the nas are not an issue.
 
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