Best affordable NAS for Plex (or alternatives)

[Mick]

Do you use it for more than just syncing movies to your phone to view offline?

No mate, I just have a simple Dell i5 computer I bought from eBay for £150 but it only supports one HD (thats the bloody pain in the bum).

I am using USB drive to store the movies... I do need to do something soon as I want to raid the hard drives.

Mick

 

[wassap]

Im currently using a HP Gen8 microserver, which replaced an Asustor S204TE, and the difference is night and day. I installed Xpenology on the HP and imo its as good as a dedicated NAS without the expense

 

[Mick]

I have been looking at the HP Microserver Gen10 today.
HPE ProLiant Gen10 X3421 1P 8GB RAM MicroServer - Ebuyer

There is a nice quad core at the moment with 8GB and I think this will be perfect.

I do like the idea of the QNAP 4 lan ports (you need the right network switch to use it though), not sure how many ports you can use with the HP Microserver though or if it will support aggregate?

 

[fus10n]

I have been looking at the HP Microserver Gen10 today.
HPE ProLiant Gen10 X3421 1P 8GB RAM MicroServer - Ebuyer

There is a nice quad core at the moment with 8GB and I think this will be perfect.

I do like the idea of the QNAP 4 lan ports (you need the right network switch to use it though), not sure how many ports you can use with the HP Microserver though or if it will support aggregate?

Looks really, really nice. Think its over kill for what I need but will put it on the wishlist. The geek in me is so jelous! I'd really suggest that Pimped go for that or one of the other Mini servers talked about in this thread.

 

[Mick]

Honestly, I don't really know if that will be overkill?

Hopefully a plex expert will help out, there is a really nice GEN10 Dual Core for £200+
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 AMD Opteron X3216 Dual-Core 3.4 GHz 8GB 4 x Non Hotplug on Servers Direct

Lol too many choices

 

[Spectre]

I have been looking at the HP Microserver Gen10 today.
HPE ProLiant Gen10 X3421 1P 8GB RAM MicroServer - Ebuyer

There is a nice quad core at the moment with 8GB and I think this will be perfect.

I do like the idea of the QNAP 4 lan ports (you need the right network switch to use it though), not sure how many ports you can use with the HP Microserver though or if it will support aggregate?

I think there is some software (if you can find it, the HP site is terrible to search) for teaming connections on those.

My N54L MicroServers are a few years old now and probably underpowered for this stuff but they were only £100 each . Does for my Kodi etc.

 

[fus10n]

Honestly, I don't really know if that will be overkill?

Hopefully a plex expert will help out, there is a really nice GEN10 Dual Core for £200+
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 AMD Opteron X3216 Dual-Core 3.4 GHz 8GB 4 x Non Hotplug on Servers Direct

Lol too many choices

The first one said overkill when it mentioned

Are you a small office, home office, or small business that needs a compact affordable entry level server?

but considering what you use it for them maybe for reliability purposes and the ability not to worry about having to upgrade anytime soon it would be a 'setup and forget' system.....

 

[fus10n]

Honestly, I don't really know if that will be overkill?

Hopefully a plex expert will help out, there is a really nice GEN10 Dual Core for £200+
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 AMD Opteron X3216 Dual-Core 3.4 GHz 8GB 4 x Non Hotplug on Servers Direct

Lol too many choices

i think this one would be perfect for the OP as it would be within his budget?

 

[Mick]

I think there is some software (if you can find it, the HP site is terrible to search) for teaming connections on those.

My N54L MicroServers are a few years old now and probably underpowered for this stuff but they were only £100 each . Does for my Kodi etc.

I have a Microserver in our office with Windows Server, its been running constantly for around 2-3 years and never misses a beat
Cant remember what model though lol. they are also very light weight in terms of power consumption too.

Mick

 

[fus10n]

I have a Microserver in our office with Windows Server, its been running constantly for around 2-3 years and never misses a beat
Cant remember what model though lol. they are also very light weight in terms of power consumption too.

Mick

lol, maybe hint they need a new one and you could 'recycle' the old one lol

 

[Spectre]

I have a Microserver in our office with Windows Server, its been running constantly for around 2-3 years and never misses a beat
Cant remember what model though lol. they are also very light weight in terms of power consumption too.

Mick

Mine are very stable using Server 2008, ECC RAM and WD Red drives. Going to take an unused HDD out of one and put it into the other as a spare drive for the RAID1.

I'm not sure why N54Ls were so cheap at the time, maybe they were getting rid of them to make way for the later generation ones.

 

[Captin]

I paid for plex lol (lifetime).
But I use it allot for family... and most importantly I use it at the gym, this keeps me from going insane when on the cross trainer.
@Captin, I love those QNAPS - but 2K+ is a serious amount of cash for a plex server, I will try and get one second hand possibly.
Do you use the 4 Lan ports, does your switch allow you to aggregate (I think that is what its called).
Mick

Most of the cost was for the WD Red Pro drives, I use the NAS to store stuff for my business, the Plex was an experiment, but is handy to use with Alexa now that Amazon have stopped the ability to upload your own songs.

More than just a hobbyist I see! Your comment about kodi has peaked my interest. Would I just install the Kodi app on the NAS and then kodi on any devices on my network? I ran plex from my windows 7 lappy last night and played off a playstation, the quality on screen was poor. Could that be down to my lappy hardware and could I expect sharp, crisp graphics when using a NAS?

You only need Kodi on your player not on the NAS. You just make Kodi play the files directly from your NAS, they will always be the full quality of the files because, unlike Plex, Kodi does not transcode the files into any other format.

Plex is good if you have a limited network bandwidth or want to play stuff over the internet.

I can play 4k Blu-Ray ISO images stored on a NAS (Netgear ReadyNAS 104) over a wired network without any loss of video or 7.1 surround sound audio using Kodi on a tiny PC. No need for Plex or any special apps on the NAS.

 

[fus10n]

the Plex was an experiment, but is handy to use with Alexa now that Amazon have stopped the ability to upload your own songs.
.

Would be nice to know how you did this?

 

[Captin]

Would be nice to know how you did this?

I installed the Plex server app on my NAS and then the Plex skill on my Amazon dot. Both are on the same local network.

You need a Plex account (so Alexa can bind the skill to your Plex account) but you can use the FREE one, you do not have to pay.

You can then say things like "Alexa tell plex to play the Macc Lads album Bitter Fit Crack" and off she goes. You can use all the usual commands like "Next Track" but to start you need to use "Alexa tell Plex to play..."

I've never used Plex for anything other than this, so I don't know what works with video files etc...

 

[fus10n]

I installed the Plex server app on my NAS and then the Plex skill on my Amazon dot. Both are on the same local network.

You need a Plex account (so Alexa can bind the skill to your Plex account) but you can use the FREE one, you do not have to pay.

You can then say things like "Alexa tell plex to play the Macc Lads album Bitter Fit Crack" and off she goes. You can use all the usual commands like "Next Track" but to start you need to use "Alexa tell Plex to play..."

I've never used Plex for anything other than this, so I don't know what works with video files etc...

Thanks, when i tried this a while ago it was a bit more complex and gave up. This time it was so damned easy! Who needs amazon music!

 

[Grimeire]

if you are going to be building a server with FreenNAS as the host OS for Plex it is strongly recommended on the FreeNAS site that you use an Intel CPU.

http://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/

 

[Bally12345]

Don't bother with a ready made nas solution it's not the best affordable solution.

I use unraid with a Intel i7 4790. Plex recommends a 1080p transcoding requires a 2000 passmark score. So as long as you got a cpu with a passmark greater than 4000 you will definitely get your 2x 1080p etc

The 2000 passmark score is just a good rule thumb the go by and details are published on plex faq page I think.

I got a cheapo desktop pc and just upgraded the cpu and added some extra ram.

With my i7 4790 I have had 5 users outside of my network all watch a different movie at the same time with no complaints. Internally on my LAN most stuff is direct play depending on client I'm using.

With unraid you can use any disks you like mix and match if you want . You have a parity drive which has to be your largest drive. Then if anyone drive fails you can swap it out and unraid will rebuild it. I also have a ssd cache drive just to make sure I am getting the best write speeds.

I pretty much get a constant 110MB/s when transferring files from a desktop to unraid over my gigabit network.

There's actually a lot more to it but don't want to over complicate it.

But in a nutshell unraid also runs docker and containers. Which are basically apps.

I have couch potato, SABnzbd, sonarr, etc all running of my unraid server. You can even run VMs etc so defo worth looking into.



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[DodgyTech]

All of the responses here have pushed me towards a MicroServer. Based on the responses here, I plan on getting something like the HP MicroServer or the Lenovo ThinkServer, with an Intel CPU (in case I want to use Plex). I was going to go for 2 x 12TB drives which would have cost too much, but realised that I can go for a RAID 5 or 6 with drives (probably WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf) around 6 TB each to give me up to 24TB. Then all I would need to do is get a suitable backup drive which would be kept separate from the NAS. I assume that I can use unRaid to mix drive sizes? I like the sound of having an SSD cache drive, will look into it further.

At the other end, I'll look into a range of devices like Pi, Firestick, chromecast, smart tv's, etc. Are there any recommendations? Need something that has an easy to use interface, can handle the quality of 1080p and above, and can display subtitles from SRT files.

To keep costs down, I'll look at getting used items. As with any used item, I do run a risk, especially with the drives; so are there any reliable tools to check the drives? Any pointers on which models or server I should go for and which I should avoid?

 

[Bally12345]

All of the responses here have pushed me towards a MicroServer. Based on the responses here, I plan on getting something like the HP MicroServer or the Lenovo ThinkServer, with an Intel CPU (in case I want to use Plex). I was going to go for 2 x 12TB drives which would have cost too much, but realised that I can go for a RAID 5 or 6 with drives (probably WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf) around 6 TB each to give me up to 24TB. Then all I would need to do is get a suitable backup drive which would be kept separate from the NAS. I assume that I can use unRaid to mix drive sizes? I like the sound of having an SSD cache drive, will look into it further.

At the other end, I'll look into a range of devices like Pi, Firestick, chromecast, smart tv's, etc. Are there any recommendations? Need something that has an easy to use interface, can handle the quality of 1080p and above, and can display subtitles from SRT files.

To keep costs down, I'll look at getting used items. As with any used item, I do run a risk, especially with the drives; so are there any reliable tools to check the drives? Any pointers on which models or server I should go for and which I should avoid?

Forgot the 2 large drives and raid 5 etc.

Just got for a unraid build. You can start with
1x 8TB WD Red (Parity) this is your back up and will rebuild any failed disks.
4x 6TB WD Red (24TB)
1x 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD for cache

That means you will need 6 bays.

Your parity drive needs to be equal to or larger than your largest drive in your array.

So later if you want to upgrade a drive you can swap a 6TB to 8TB.

Theres no reason you couldn't go with 4TB WD reds they are around £110 at moment and that would give you 16TB array.

Then in terms of clients use what you have so that includes rPi, firestick, Roku etc.

The most important thing is to have cpu that can handle your streams if your having plex.

Let me know if you need any other details.



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[DodgyTech]

I'm thinking that HP MicroServer looks to be better than the Lenovo ThinkServer. I'm unsure if I should go with the Gen 8 (2013) or with the Gen 10 (2017). From this article (HPE intros new ProLiant Microserver Gen10, steps backwards | Techazine) it looks like that I cannot upgrade the CPU directly myself, which means that the Gen 10 would be quite expensive. Should I

• get a basic Gen 8 and upgrade;
• buy a used one that has already been upgraded;
• or stay away from HP and go for the Lenovo TS?

Honestly, I don't really know if that will be overkill?

Hopefully a plex expert will help out, there is a really nice GEN10 Dual Core for £200+
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 AMD Opteron X3216 Dual-Core 3.4 GHz 8GB 4 x Non Hotplug on Servers Direct

Lol too many choices

Now that I've looked around on flebay and on ebuyer, this is a bargain for a new HP Microserver!!!