Can someone recommend me a good entry level NAS server to purely run PLEX. Ideally want it to be as fast as it can be for streaming and RAID so my movies are backed up. Thank you!
Entry Level NAS Server for PLEX
mreddie on 13/02/2019 - 10:30
Last edited 13/02/2019 - 10:41
Last edited 13/02/2019 - 10:41
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I picked up a used Synology DS212+ on eBay for $100 recently. Takes two drives, up to 3tb each. That sort of device should be fine for what you want.
If you want new, any of the current two or four drive Synology models will do.
The benefit of them, aside from having plex support, is low power usage. Much less than anything not specific to the task, such as an old desktop machine.
wow cheap. it has usb 3.0 already.
can that play H265 files? if yes, you got a bargain there, as long you are happy with 6TB max capacity.This is what i run! Been going strong 7 years, although the 1TB-Raid1 i put in there at the time which seemed huge is no longer huge.
I also use it's download manager to do my torrenting so i dont have to run a client on my desktop - v useful.
For DLNA works v well and have never had encoding issues.Only negative is that its a bit slow, so if you're doing anything intensive on it like file copies it impacts streaming and the stream stutters.
RAID is not a backup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you want redundancy you want raid 6 which requires a 4 bay at least. Backup should be some external hard drive or elsewhere.
Synology/QNAP are the usual ones people go for. Find one which has CPU decode which can be useful if you have plex pass.
My understanding is that with Raid 1, the same data is written to two drives, and that if one drive fails, you won't lose your data. Is that incorrect?
For that scenario yes but if you delete something from drive 1 then it's gone from drive 2 too which makes it a terrible backup.
Technically it is still on the other drive. The problem is that if the other drive is the same model/age as the one that failed, then it is likely to fail around the same time. This becomes more apparent when you add a new drive to replaced the failed one. This means that all the data needs to be copied from the original drive, which puts a large strain on it and makes it likely to fail.
This means that all the data needs to be copied from the original drive, which puts a large strain on it and makes it likely to fail.
Not to argue, but that seems like a stretch. A sequential read (assuming that's the rebuild approach for a mirror) is about as easy as IO operations go. How could it put a large strain on the drive?
Last time I replaced some 40000+hr drives in my NAS, I replaced one at a time, leaving it to rebuild. It was problem free.
A sequential read (assuming that's the rebuild approach for a mirror) is about as easy as IO operations go
Imaging an entire hard drive is not a quick operation. If it's a media storage drive then it's not likely to be some small 1TB drive. If you want to rely on a drive that's brother just failed to run a multi-hour operation then that's up to you, but as a backup then it's pretty risky.
Last time I replaced some 40000+hr drives in my NAS, I replaced one at a time, leaving it to rebuild. It was problem free.
Anecdotal evidence…
RAID is not a backup, it is to minimise downtime. If a drive fails then the computer can keep running without having to wait for an external backup for replacement. RAID is probably only one step up from having no backup at all. If that's all you want then that's fine for you (still better than 90% of users who have nothing at all).
RAID is not a backup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I see people say this often. Isn't it kind of a redundant backup though, in the example of a drive failure? If the unit fails and takes all the drives, you're stuffed regardless. I just want to understand the vehemence.
Ideally you want BOTH a redundancy and a backup. Having a real backup means if the unit fails and takes all the drives you still have all your stuff. Having a redundancy is nice if one drive borks you just rebuild without having to whip out the backup.
Yes, that makes sense. Horses for courses.
People are sometimes confused high-availability / redundancy with backups. Having a RAID1 means if one drive dies, the RAID would continue operate with minimum downtime. However if I accidentally delete a file (or some malicious 3rd party), I still need backup to bring that file back.
Think of a lightning strike, flood, theft, fire etc. If you like your data you need an off site backup.
See Townsville for why.
chance of both drives failing at once is pretty low. what you really need to watch out for is data corruption/partition corruption. no level of redundancy will save you from that and your files will be gone. this is where off-device backup is v useful.
You're assuming that OP will be storing the only copy of their data on a NAS.
Have a look at the QNAPs. Benefit is they have HDMI out which means you can also plug directly into a monitor or TV?
yes i heard that qnap can become/act like a pc, where you plug in monitor and access the NAS contents.
with synology, i cannot. i need another pc/laptop to accessany qnap users can confirm?
I have seen this argument quite a few times but what household/office having a server like this running would not have a laptop/desktop available? Personally, I was completely at ease just accessing my Synology NAS which was placed in a hard to access/see spot over a web browser on my laptop from the comfort of my couch. I think even a tablet device would suffice.
Heck no! I got a 4 bay Synology 918+ and a WD 6TB hard drive for a total of about $850
If you've got an old computer floating around, add a few disks to it and check out UnRaid https://unraid.net/
$59 license fee + higher power usage + larger/bulkier. Doesn't sound as practical as a real NAS
They are getting on a bit now, but the HP Microserver series make great home NAS / Plex servers when setup with FreeNAS or Xigmanas and has been very popular with OzBargainers. I've used one for years and it just keeps on keeping on.
The Microserver has most of the technology from it's full sized cousins squeezed into a tiny low noise, low power, versatile case.
Here's a used one on eBay, no drives $249
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HP-ProLiant-N40L-MicroServer-NAS…
I'm currently running a Mac Mini (2012) just connected to an external 4TB USB drive…..but I have no redundancy if the drive fails (yes of course other than making a copy every now and then).
I have Synology DS218+ which pumped up to 6gb ram and run 2x4tb drives in RAID.
It runs Plex fine and I even run a virtual machine for some download tasks etc.
You could also attach a USB drive to act as a backup as Synology has some automated backup tools as well.
As said Plex works really well but this is hardly entry level, the trick is find Synology unit cheap enough to run Plex.
I just DIY. Ryzen with integrated graphics, SSD and a larger HDD for "backups"
This. I have just upgraded my i5 2500 Plex server with a DIY Ryzen build. All up $380. Admittedly, I already had the drives, so I only needed a new motherboard, 4gb ram, CPU and PSU. Chuck your favourite Linux distro on and you're good-to-go.
Someone else said, size is an issue - I agree but mine lives in my garage so not really a problem.
I consider a NAS/Nuc kind of thing but I wanted upgradability for future file formats and no need to replace it for the next 5 to, hopefully, 10 years.
Unless you have a lot of people accessing your media server I don't think you really need RAID read speeds even with high bitrate/resolution files (~30GB, 2 hour films). When I was looking at building a NAS with RAID storage the costs started to really blow out after about 30tb (from memory) and as I'm only streaming to a handful of devices I don't need the increased read speeds and I can handle being down for a day while I restore from backups so I can definitely afford to skip RAID.
Currently I have my media on 26TB of assorted hard drives. My current plan is to build a low power windows PC, slap some 8tb drives in it, and use StableBit Drivepool to pool them all into the one volume without striping the data across the drives. I will then back up every month or so to the drives I'm currently using. Doing this will be low cost, easily expandable, and induce far less headaches it seems.
I'm happy to be proven wrong on my logic though.
Strangely enough, I was actually in exactly the same position as you recently, even down to the Mac Mini 2012 model with a 4TB external drive. So here's all the legwork I did and some details on most stuff you'll want to know. TLDR is that you should sell your Mac Mini (they hold value well, mine went for $350) and buy a Synology DS418play or higher.
How you'll be using Plex
This is actually possibly the single most important factor when considering whether a NAS is what you'll need or not. The CPU in pretty much every NAS is a low-end CPU (often ARM, not even Intel-based architecture). This means that transcoding is often not possible at all, or can only be done on lower resolution files. Plex have provided a detailed spreadsheet of the capabilities of the major NAS' out there. Note that almost none of the NAS support 4K HDR transcoding. But fear not, because transcoding isn't necessarily required depending on how you're going to be watching these files. The streaming method with the lowest overhead is Direct Play/Direct Stream, which means that Plex is literally just sending the file in its original format to the device and letting the device decode it. So depending on the device you're streaming to, you may be able to play the file directly without Plex needing to do anything but serve the file. You will find the highest compatibility with AppleTV 4K and nVidia Shield TV here, with decent compatibility on PS4/Xbox One. It's a very different story if you're intending on streaming to mobile devices or Chrome Cast devices, where you'll generally need to transcode or create optimized versions of the file for these clients.
Go with a standalone NAS
Lots of suggestions here of DIY/Unraid, which is definitely cheaper in the short term but there's a few issues with it. Unless you're very technically proficient in Linux and debugging issues yourself, you're better off going with Synology/QNAP as their software is very solid and easy to configure. The DIY solutions also generally take up more space/use more power, so you're not necessarily "saving" in the long term.
Extra software
This is true across pretty much all solutions, but there's a few things that NAS can do which will make other applications or services redundant. For example, the default DownloadStation app on Synology devices is a fork of the Transmission BT client with some added functionality (like RSS feed updates). So I have a single app to handle all my downloads, including automatic downloads. There's even a fantastic Chrome plugin to send magnet links directly to your Synology, track the download progress, and send a notification when it completes. On top of that, I'm also running my network controller on my NAS (Ubiquit Unifi system). Being built on Linux means that there's quite a lot you can do with the NAS - you just need to be careful not to overload the NAS. I'd also recommend giving Plex the highest priority, or your transcoding/streaming will suffer.
Don't bother with 2-bay
There's really not much point to "entry level" NAS as you're completely blocking yourself from any future expansion without needing to start again from scratch. You're much better off to get a 4-6 bay NAS and just start with 2 HDDs in it. That way you can always add more to increase capacity. This is exactly what I'm doing. I have a 4-bay NAS with 2 drives in it that I'll upgrade over time. While it is much more expensive to start, I believe it'll definitely be worth it in the long run.
RAID types
You have a lot of different options when it comes to storing and securing your data on RAID, but the most common ones are RAID 1 and RAID 5. If you go with the Synology platform, you have a third type called Synology Hybrid RAID, which is the most flexible of all of them.
RAID 1 is 100% redundancy. It requires disks be added in multiples of 2 and every disk needs to be the exact same size (preferably same brand). Example: 4x4tb = 8TB storage, 8TB backup. This is generally used in more corporate situations where redundancy and speed of replacement is imperative.
RAID 5 still offers 100% redundancy, but with a catch. It requires a minimum of 3 disks of the same size. 1/3rd of the space on these disks will be taken up by the redundancy information. If a drive fails, you can replace that drive without losing any data. Example: 3x4TB = 8TB storage, 4TB backup. The catch comes from speed and reliability. Rebuilding a RAID 5 system after a drive failure is incredibly slow and if you have another drive fail before the redundancy is restored, you lose your entire RAID array.
Synology Hybrid RAID is a hybrid of RAID 1 and RAID 5 with less restrictions. When you have 2 drives, it operates as RAID 1. When you expand to 3 drives, it changes to RAID 5. The trick comes in that the drives don't actually have to be the same size! This offers a lot of flexibility in upgrade paths. They have a useful web tool which illustrates the differences between RAID types and the benefits of SHR very well. Downsides are basically the same as RAID 5.
Conclusion
The flexibility and expandability of the Synology 418play NAS and their custom RAID format is what sold me in the end. Yes, the initial outlay is significantly higher, but you will pull your hair out less and will hopefully find that it lasts you much longer than most other solutions. I waited for a 20% off sale on eBay and picked the NAS up for $580 then just got some cheap 4TB HDDs to start. Thanks to SHR, I'll be able to get some 8TB drives when I want to expand in the future without wasting space.
Let me know if you have any further questions :)
What I would also add to this is Plex library updates/processing. If you have a large library with low powered CPUs it can take a really long time (certainly the first time anyway). The other thing I have noticed with devices using ARM is that navigating Plex on the device (Chromecast, VodaTv etc) is nowhere near as snappy.
I also have our phones syncing our photos/videos to our home server. On previous iterations of our server I would often get the message "This server is not powerful enough…." when trying to play back the videos/photos in Plex. Similarly, making sure all my files were in a format that fit 'Direct Play' requirements was frustrating.
These, and more, are the reasons I decided to go with a custom built computer. I have 8.5TB of storage which can be expanded relatively easily and two of the drives are mirrors. Important documents get offloaded to B2 via rclone.
Yeah, for sure. My initial library creation took a good 6 hours! Pretty sure that Plex wouldn't have been happy with the amount of API calls from me :P
And yes, the responsiveness is low when using an ARM processor, which is why I suggested the 418play or higher, as it is using a dual core Intel processor.
Thank you so much for this list, it's very helpful and good food for thought. What raid config have you gone with, I plan to start with 2 drives only. Also can you recommend a reliable brand of HD, and is Ebay the best place for bargains as you say?
@mreddie: No problems at all friend. I've gone with the SHR RAID configuration for the flexibility. As I mentioned, I've started off with 2x4TB HDDs (effectively RAID 1 for now, which only gives 4TB storage space and 4TB backup). Will eventually get 2x8TB to add in there which will give me 16TB storage and 8TB backup. Then in the future, I can replace the 2x4TB (one at a time mind you) with another 2x8TB for 24TB storage and 8TB backup.
I can't actually comment on reliable brands of HDD, but both the big players (WD and Seagate) have "NAS" branded drives, which are supposedly meant to be more durable as running drives in a RAID configuration means more writing and reading than normal usage.
You're actually already on the best place to find a bargain. Just set up an alert for both Synology (or QNAP if you prefer that flavour) and eBay and you'll eventually find a good deal. The NAS I recommended sits around $650 most of the time, so definitely worth waiting for a bargain. Synology tend to release a new model every 2 years, so I wouldn't expect a new model this year either.
@trankillity: Sorry one last one from me, I've seen some videos on Youtube pushing the DS Video app over Plex once the NAS is setup…any advantage to doing this ..? I personally like the look and functionality of PLEX better..
@trankillity: How does this drive look, https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Western-Digital-WD-Red-4TB-3-5-S…
@mreddie: If you have yet to pull the trigger on this, the next step up from the one I recommended just popped up here on OzBargain for $50 more than I paid for my model. Very good deal.
I saw some similar articles/videos pushing the DS Video app. I believe that the reason for that used to be that Plex didn't support hardware transcoding, but it does now so there should be no reason to use it. I think the DS Video app even does some trickery to get more stuff working in Direct Stream or Direct Play, but if the files you have are nice and clean, there should be no problem (I certainly haven't had one).
And yes, that HDD seems decent, but the deal isn't great. Umart have it for $169 as a standard price, not even on special. I went with the Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives. They were $159 at the time I got them.
Should be entry level not enter level