Which way should I attempt to go - retail NAS or DIY?
- Thread starter Melontes
- Start date
sfx2000
Part of the Furniture
Off the shelf NAS unit - QNAP and Synology have excellent devices here...
ColinTaylor
Part of the Furniture
True, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I find HW controllers much more reliable than the software provided on consumer products (i.e. Buffalo
).
Yes, I've got one - from HP
That's a valid opinion, but one I don't share.
True.
That's a very Linux view of the world.
I have looked at so many retail NAS boxes my head spins. I am guided by PLEX's compatibility guide for a NAS box in regard to transcoding issues. It seems the ones which get the passing grade are very expensive - which is the initial problem.
YES OR NO - Does the performance of the CPU on the NAS really matter if the Plex Media Player is on my laptop as previously discussed?
YES OR NO - Does the performance of the CPU on the NAS really matter if the Plex Media Player is on my laptop as previously discussed?
ColinTaylor
Part of the Furniture
A NAS doesn't need much CPU if it's just being a NAS! i.e. just serving up files across the network. The problem comes with these consumer devices when they start adding extra "features" beyond what a normal NAS would do, i.e. Transcoding video (Plex Media Server), downloading torrents, etc.
So, whatever device you are doing the transcoding on is the device that needs the CPU power.
EDIT: We said earlier that you can avoid having to transcode anything at all provided that the player can process the video natively. The plex people have to assume that some people will be using devices where the video must be transcoded. They base their recommendations on this worst case scenario.
Last edited:
I give up...you guys win.
My crappy Asustor AS-202TE with its pathetic Intel® ATOM™ 1.2GHz Dual-Core Processor has Plex Media Server installed on it. And as I have said many times, my laptop, which has Plex Media Player installed on it, can play 1080P videos from the HDDs in the NAS, no problem.
So, tell me again why I need some super processor in the NAS? I just need a processor to handle RAID, right?
If this question can't be answered definitively without a 100 forks in multiple directions, then I am DONE. I am going nowhere but in circles all leading up to the original question!
My crappy Asustor AS-202TE with its pathetic Intel® ATOM™ 1.2GHz Dual-Core Processor has Plex Media Server installed on it. And as I have said many times, my laptop, which has Plex Media Player installed on it, can play 1080P videos from the HDDs in the NAS, no problem.
So, tell me again why I need some super processor in the NAS? I just need a processor to handle RAID, right?
If this question can't be answered definitively without a 100 forks in multiple directions, then I am DONE. I am going nowhere but in circles all leading up to the original question!
sfx2000
Part of the Furniture
And it'll be fine...
Plex works best when it is _not_ having to transcode anything...
sfx2000
Part of the Furniture
That's a very Linux view of the world.
And that is a big world
Cloudy the future is... even to the edge...
ColinTaylor
Part of the Furniture
That's fine then. All you have to do (as you asked originally) is add extra storage to it. As far as I can tell from reading the manual the only way to do that is to plug in a USB storage device. Correct me if I'm wrong. Or can the Plex server on the Asustor access files stored elsewhere on the LAN?
If the NAS is only being used as a file server (and not running apps like Plex) then you don't need a super processor.
Interesting review of the Plex server's ability here at about 9 minutes 10 seconds.
I watched the YouTube video. He didn't mention if he had the Plex Media Player installed on his laptop. And if not, he is using the Plex Media Server from the Asustor 202TE to do all the work - which we all know it can't.
But I appreciate the time you took to look up my NAS in the first place.
I think I just found out that my Yamaha RX-V671 A/V receiver might have a lot to do with making playback of various codecs possible, since everything has to pass thru the receiver via HDMI on the way to the TV (also HDMI)
Is this correct? And if so, making playback of the original movie codecs can/is accomplished at various devices (NAS, laptop, receiver) along the path - place where movie/audio is stored TO the final output device (likely TV).
Would any of the Plex Media software (server, player) have anything to do with making codecs playable?
Now, I am getting technical
Is this correct? And if so, making playback of the original movie codecs can/is accomplished at various devices (NAS, laptop, receiver) along the path - place where movie/audio is stored TO the final output device (likely TV).
Would any of the Plex Media software (server, player) have anything to do with making codecs playable?
Now, I am getting technical
Just a couple of notes to chime in here:
1. To clarify some confusion that seems to exist, if you have a Roku you don't need to rely only on DLNA . Rokus (all of them to my knowledge) run a Plex app designed specifically for the Roku. So if you have Plex Media Server running somewhere on your network, Roku can access and play all of the media that you've indexed into Plex Media Server. Roku's interface is a little leaner than the Windows Plex player, but it works great. There's a Plex Player app also available for Amazon Fire, and I happen to like the interface better on the Fire Stick/TV app.
2. You asked why you need a more powerful CPU and/or more memory than say a 2GB Atom processor to do transcoding with Plex, and the reason for that is that transcoding on the fly is CUP intensive. Frankly, you're better off just putting all of your movies into a format like .m4v or .mp4 at the highest resolution for the source (use Handbrake to do the conversion), and avoid transcoding on the fly altogether if you can avoid it. But if you really do want to do on-the-fly transcoding, and your NAS box has a puny CPU or not much memory, you're better off just using your NAS to store the media, and run Plex on something a bit more substantial. That's what I'm doing. I have two FreeNAS boxes and one Window 10 box that I am using solely for data storage on which all of my media is stored. I run my network Plex server on a desktop with 16GB and an i-7 processor.
3. Plex Media Server can access media in formats that it can read anywhere it is stored on your network (so long as where it is stored is a shared resource). Note that Plex will not read ISO movies. You need to convert them to a format that Plex can read and deal with. Again, use Handbrake to do conversions if you're trying to stream movies that you've ripped in ISO format. You need to include the media in the Plex media database, so if you add movies, music, tv shows, etc., and don't see it available, either it is in a format Plex can't deal with natively (in which case you need to convert it), or you haven't updated your database. You can do an update at any time, just click on the circle/arrow icon.
4. You've asked a lot of other questions about Plex that are all answered directly in the very clearly written and straight-forward Plex documentation. I would suggest you read the Plex documentation and get a handle on what it does, how it works and how to use it and what devices the media players work with. For example, the Plex documentation explains which formats are directly streamed to devices, which require transcoding, and which ones can't be read at all by Plex (and thus require conversion to another format with something like Handbrake). A lot of the questions you have asked suggest that you need to examine the Plex documentation more closely. Really, it will answer all your questions.
5. As both Colin and SFX have said, if all you want to do is store files and "serve" them up to other devices across your network (or even outside your network, as in view or share your media remotely or with friends), you don't need a NAS to be really high-powered. Really it all depends on what sort of file system it's running. Personally, I like building my own systems. If you build a NAS box, there are so many options available, most of them involving OS's you can get for free, that you can pretty much design almost any configuration and use almost any hardware you have or can afford. NAS4Free and FreeNAS are two of the most popular and they are both incredibly easy to set up and use. They both use ZFS filing systems, and while FreeNAS recommends more highly powered hardware (including ECC ram) you don't need that to make it work well.
6. With any fast dual channel wifi 802.11 n/ac router, and provided you have solid connections to your client devices, wireless streaming experience should be close to or no different than what you would experience with a wired connection. At least that's my experience and most of the streaming done in my home to many different devices is done wirelessly without any issues at all.
7. Lastly, with regard to your question about codecs and your Yamaha, I think the Plex forum provided you with a fairly complete answer to that same question when you asked it there: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/2...iver-come-into-play-in-regard-to-video-codecs
1. To clarify some confusion that seems to exist, if you have a Roku you don't need to rely only on DLNA . Rokus (all of them to my knowledge) run a Plex app designed specifically for the Roku. So if you have Plex Media Server running somewhere on your network, Roku can access and play all of the media that you've indexed into Plex Media Server. Roku's interface is a little leaner than the Windows Plex player, but it works great. There's a Plex Player app also available for Amazon Fire, and I happen to like the interface better on the Fire Stick/TV app.
2. You asked why you need a more powerful CPU and/or more memory than say a 2GB Atom processor to do transcoding with Plex, and the reason for that is that transcoding on the fly is CUP intensive. Frankly, you're better off just putting all of your movies into a format like .m4v or .mp4 at the highest resolution for the source (use Handbrake to do the conversion), and avoid transcoding on the fly altogether if you can avoid it. But if you really do want to do on-the-fly transcoding, and your NAS box has a puny CPU or not much memory, you're better off just using your NAS to store the media, and run Plex on something a bit more substantial. That's what I'm doing. I have two FreeNAS boxes and one Window 10 box that I am using solely for data storage on which all of my media is stored. I run my network Plex server on a desktop with 16GB and an i-7 processor.
3. Plex Media Server can access media in formats that it can read anywhere it is stored on your network (so long as where it is stored is a shared resource). Note that Plex will not read ISO movies. You need to convert them to a format that Plex can read and deal with. Again, use Handbrake to do conversions if you're trying to stream movies that you've ripped in ISO format. You need to include the media in the Plex media database, so if you add movies, music, tv shows, etc., and don't see it available, either it is in a format Plex can't deal with natively (in which case you need to convert it), or you haven't updated your database. You can do an update at any time, just click on the circle/arrow icon.
4. You've asked a lot of other questions about Plex that are all answered directly in the very clearly written and straight-forward Plex documentation. I would suggest you read the Plex documentation and get a handle on what it does, how it works and how to use it and what devices the media players work with. For example, the Plex documentation explains which formats are directly streamed to devices, which require transcoding, and which ones can't be read at all by Plex (and thus require conversion to another format with something like Handbrake). A lot of the questions you have asked suggest that you need to examine the Plex documentation more closely. Really, it will answer all your questions.
5. As both Colin and SFX have said, if all you want to do is store files and "serve" them up to other devices across your network (or even outside your network, as in view or share your media remotely or with friends), you don't need a NAS to be really high-powered. Really it all depends on what sort of file system it's running. Personally, I like building my own systems. If you build a NAS box, there are so many options available, most of them involving OS's you can get for free, that you can pretty much design almost any configuration and use almost any hardware you have or can afford. NAS4Free and FreeNAS are two of the most popular and they are both incredibly easy to set up and use. They both use ZFS filing systems, and while FreeNAS recommends more highly powered hardware (including ECC ram) you don't need that to make it work well.
6. With any fast dual channel wifi 802.11 n/ac router, and provided you have solid connections to your client devices, wireless streaming experience should be close to or no different than what you would experience with a wired connection. At least that's my experience and most of the streaming done in my home to many different devices is done wirelessly without any issues at all.
7. Lastly, with regard to your question about codecs and your Yamaha, I think the Plex forum provided you with a fairly complete answer to that same question when you asked it there: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/2...iver-come-into-play-in-regard-to-video-codecs
System Error Message
Part of the Furniture
For what you are trying to do i suggest DIY, for a plex transcoding capable NAS its cheaper to build your own NAS though it would be a pain setting up the OS and such but it gives you the most flexibility and performance.
A dedicated NAS like qnap, synology cost more but they are easier to use straight away and are limited but their hardware and firmware.
Here are some factors you should consider between choosing DIY or off the shelf NAS.
1) skill (are you skilled enough to install a linux server and configure it and your network), (skilled enough to get hardware working on yoru own)?
2) number of drives. DIY is cheaper for a medium number of drives (6+ to below 20). For many many more drives you are looking at dedicated servers made for storage that have SAS or better and slots already in the chassis for hotswap and for a huge number of drives and these vary from being able to stuff so many drives into 2U to a 4U that can hold 100 drives and have petabytes of storage (such as stuffing many seagate 10TB drives in them with 2x 18-20 core xeons) and generally cost more/performance and storage compared to a low cost DIY
3) features. Dedicated/off the shelf NAS have really good features for storage such as syncs and some network based file apps but are limited by the OS in what apps are available. If you need functionality you may be better off with DIY.
4) CPU. Generally DIY will always be cheaper when it comes to the performance of the hardware. It does however require research not only on CPU and board but on getting cards for SAS and such if you plan to have many drives and choosing a pcie card that wont burden the CPU.
5) file system. Generally a DIY allows many types of arrays or file systems such as ZFS and the new BTRFS. They all come with their restrictions and advantages however many of these options are available with off the shelf NAS and may be easier to set up. When picking RAID/storage cards this matters too.
6)cost and usage. For a total of 6 drives or less off the shelf NAS can be a cheaper option if all you want is simple and easy to use low end storage. Anymore and a DIY may be a cheaper option if you are capable.
7) flexibility, DIY is always going to be flexible as you can upgrade and have much to choose from. RAM compatibility is less important but ECC is handy to have and is useful if you do overclock.
In general your choice boils down to your requirements and capabilities. If you are capable than you may find DIY to be a better option if you are willing to spend the time and effort and need to house a medium number of drives starting from more than 6 drives. Storage is fairly CPU efficient even if you use a complicated raid or file system. Even an old CPU will have no issue handling a bunch of drives for complicated storage and NAS. What really matters CPU wise is what you plan to run on it. Newer x86 CPUs however have acceleration for SSL which is useful if you use SFTP or other encrypted file based transfers over gigabit or multi gigabit connections.
On my file server which is DIY it runs a quad core AMD phenom ii at 3.2Ghz and transfering over gigabit using SFTP (FTP over SSH) with software raid 5 using btrfs uses up only 3 of the 4 cores. For plex it can encode 3 high quality 1080p streams with a bit of CPU left to spare. I use opensuse as the OS. I am planning to move it over to an overclocked intel 6 core iseries based xeon but i first need to fix the motherboard and find my large stock of good thermal paste as well. The main reason for moving it to another system is because the motherboard has 10 sata ports on it and the 2U case i have has 6 drive slots and 2 5 inch bays which i have a 3 hot swap drive bay for giving me a total of 9 drives to fit in.
If you wish to test plex i have a very taxing 2 minute slightly bigger than 4K video which is a time lapse of tower bridge i took with a friend that even many laptops cant play. my file server can handle it set to 20Mb/s. Source quality is a very good test of your network for streaming.
A dedicated NAS like qnap, synology cost more but they are easier to use straight away and are limited but their hardware and firmware.
Here are some factors you should consider between choosing DIY or off the shelf NAS.
1) skill (are you skilled enough to install a linux server and configure it and your network), (skilled enough to get hardware working on yoru own)?
2) number of drives. DIY is cheaper for a medium number of drives (6+ to below 20). For many many more drives you are looking at dedicated servers made for storage that have SAS or better and slots already in the chassis for hotswap and for a huge number of drives and these vary from being able to stuff so many drives into 2U to a 4U that can hold 100 drives and have petabytes of storage (such as stuffing many seagate 10TB drives in them with 2x 18-20 core xeons) and generally cost more/performance and storage compared to a low cost DIY
3) features. Dedicated/off the shelf NAS have really good features for storage such as syncs and some network based file apps but are limited by the OS in what apps are available. If you need functionality you may be better off with DIY.
4) CPU. Generally DIY will always be cheaper when it comes to the performance of the hardware. It does however require research not only on CPU and board but on getting cards for SAS and such if you plan to have many drives and choosing a pcie card that wont burden the CPU.
5) file system. Generally a DIY allows many types of arrays or file systems such as ZFS and the new BTRFS. They all come with their restrictions and advantages however many of these options are available with off the shelf NAS and may be easier to set up. When picking RAID/storage cards this matters too.
6)cost and usage. For a total of 6 drives or less off the shelf NAS can be a cheaper option if all you want is simple and easy to use low end storage. Anymore and a DIY may be a cheaper option if you are capable.
7) flexibility, DIY is always going to be flexible as you can upgrade and have much to choose from. RAM compatibility is less important but ECC is handy to have and is useful if you do overclock.
In general your choice boils down to your requirements and capabilities. If you are capable than you may find DIY to be a better option if you are willing to spend the time and effort and need to house a medium number of drives starting from more than 6 drives. Storage is fairly CPU efficient even if you use a complicated raid or file system. Even an old CPU will have no issue handling a bunch of drives for complicated storage and NAS. What really matters CPU wise is what you plan to run on it. Newer x86 CPUs however have acceleration for SSL which is useful if you use SFTP or other encrypted file based transfers over gigabit or multi gigabit connections.
On my file server which is DIY it runs a quad core AMD phenom ii at 3.2Ghz and transfering over gigabit using SFTP (FTP over SSH) with software raid 5 using btrfs uses up only 3 of the 4 cores. For plex it can encode 3 high quality 1080p streams with a bit of CPU left to spare. I use opensuse as the OS. I am planning to move it over to an overclocked intel 6 core iseries based xeon but i first need to fix the motherboard and find my large stock of good thermal paste as well. The main reason for moving it to another system is because the motherboard has 10 sata ports on it and the 2U case i have has 6 drive slots and 2 5 inch bays which i have a 3 hot swap drive bay for giving me a total of 9 drives to fit in.
If you wish to test plex i have a very taxing 2 minute slightly bigger than 4K video which is a time lapse of tower bridge i took with a friend that even many laptops cant play. my file server can handle it set to 20Mb/s. Source quality is a very good test of your network for streaming.
netware5
Very Senior Member
Just to share my experience with both options.
1. Retail NAS.
I've bought Seagate Blackarmor NAS 220 with 2x1 TB HDDs in 2009. Configured it as Raid-1 (mirror) using the NAS hardware raid controller. This NAS served 24/7 more than 7 years without any problems till December 2016 when "a seek noise of death" started to appear, but still both HDDs SMART status was indicated as "healthy" . I stopped it from operation and tried to read one of the disks on my PC. No way! This is because of the proprietary RAID controller of the NAS. That was the reason to reject the option of replacing disks with new (and larger) ones. I don't want to be in the situation when I cannot read my disks, because of RAID controller failure taking into account that these controllers are not in production anymore and will be difficult to find a replacement.
The experience gained during last 7 years:
PROS: Easy installation, easy and trouble free operation, rock solid reliability
CONS: The NAS OS (Debian based Linux) was mixture of open source and closed source software. A lot of features were removed by the vendor, weak CPU, small RAM, bad performance, the vendor "locked" the full access to OS (even there was no possibility to SSH to the box). I was forced to "hack" the OS in order to obtain some basic control over the box. Bad support.
2. DIY
Based on my experience I decided a replacement with home made NAS. After some research the following specifications were established:
Intel x86 CPU (the CPU power is much more higher than any ARM or similar CPUs), open source OS, software RAID (see above the compatibility issues with hardware RAID).
Following the above specs my final choice was ZFS based software RAID as this is a native feature of the ZFS file system. This decision reflected in some additional HW requirements - ECC RAM and UPS. I already had an UPS, so the only additional requirement was ECC RAM and ECC capable CPU. The most popular ZFS solutions are currently FreeBSD based FreeNAS and Nas4Free. Both have an excellent reputation as NAS OS and are easy to install and configure even with limited previous experience with FreeBSD. Both are used mostly as "embedded install", so the OS is installed on USB stick or SD card. In the case of NAS box failure you can just remove the disks, put them in almost ANY PC, boot the OS from USB and have access to your disks. Finally my choice was Nas4Free as it has a better UI and less RAM requirements.
My initial idea was to buy a second-hand workstation (HP or Dell), but luckily in January 2017 there was a nice promotion of HP Microserver Gen8 in Bulgaria. So I became a happy owner of brand new nice server cubic box with 8GB ECC RAM and Intel Celeron G1610T 2.3GHz 2-core CPU. This is a real small server with all "server extras" like HP iLO, 2 LAN ports (gigabit), four SATA 3 bays, etc. And all these nice things for just 280 EUR (without HDDs)
So this box is already in operation since end of January. I am very satisfied. It is rock solid, easy to configure, very, very fast as a file server. The Celeron CPU has sufficient power to run the NAS OS and one virtual machine using VirtualBox. For future I am planning upgrade with Xeon E3 CPU to unleash the real virtualization power of the box.
So finally my advice is to stay with DIY and ZFS enabled OS and if possible look to buy cheap a real nice server like HP Microserver Gen8. I really fell in love with this small nice box But buying a reputable second-hand workstation is also an option.
1. Retail NAS.
I've bought Seagate Blackarmor NAS 220 with 2x1 TB HDDs in 2009. Configured it as Raid-1 (mirror) using the NAS hardware raid controller. This NAS served 24/7 more than 7 years without any problems till December 2016 when "a seek noise of death" started to appear, but still both HDDs SMART status was indicated as "healthy" . I stopped it from operation and tried to read one of the disks on my PC. No way! This is because of the proprietary RAID controller of the NAS. That was the reason to reject the option of replacing disks with new (and larger) ones. I don't want to be in the situation when I cannot read my disks, because of RAID controller failure taking into account that these controllers are not in production anymore and will be difficult to find a replacement.
The experience gained during last 7 years:
PROS: Easy installation, easy and trouble free operation, rock solid reliability
CONS: The NAS OS (Debian based Linux) was mixture of open source and closed source software. A lot of features were removed by the vendor, weak CPU, small RAM, bad performance, the vendor "locked" the full access to OS (even there was no possibility to SSH to the box). I was forced to "hack" the OS in order to obtain some basic control over the box. Bad support.
2. DIY
Based on my experience I decided a replacement with home made NAS. After some research the following specifications were established:
Intel x86 CPU (the CPU power is much more higher than any ARM or similar CPUs), open source OS, software RAID (see above the compatibility issues with hardware RAID).
Following the above specs my final choice was ZFS based software RAID as this is a native feature of the ZFS file system. This decision reflected in some additional HW requirements - ECC RAM and UPS. I already had an UPS, so the only additional requirement was ECC RAM and ECC capable CPU. The most popular ZFS solutions are currently FreeBSD based FreeNAS and Nas4Free. Both have an excellent reputation as NAS OS and are easy to install and configure even with limited previous experience with FreeBSD. Both are used mostly as "embedded install", so the OS is installed on USB stick or SD card. In the case of NAS box failure you can just remove the disks, put them in almost ANY PC, boot the OS from USB and have access to your disks. Finally my choice was Nas4Free as it has a better UI and less RAM requirements.
My initial idea was to buy a second-hand workstation (HP or Dell), but luckily in January 2017 there was a nice promotion of HP Microserver Gen8 in Bulgaria. So I became a happy owner of brand new nice server cubic box with 8GB ECC RAM and Intel Celeron G1610T 2.3GHz 2-core CPU. This is a real small server with all "server extras" like HP iLO, 2 LAN ports (gigabit), four SATA 3 bays, etc. And all these nice things for just 280 EUR (without HDDs)
So this box is already in operation since end of January. I am very satisfied. It is rock solid, easy to configure, very, very fast as a file server. The Celeron CPU has sufficient power to run the NAS OS and one virtual machine using VirtualBox. For future I am planning upgrade with Xeon E3 CPU to unleash the real virtualization power of the box.
So finally my advice is to stay with DIY and ZFS enabled OS and if possible look to buy cheap a real nice server like HP Microserver Gen8. I really fell in love with this small nice box
But buying a reputable second-hand workstation is also an option.Similar threads
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