How to build a quiet 117TB Plex media server (Part 2)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ต.ค. 2024
- My 117TB Unraid Storage server a brief overview of Unraid and Freenas vs Stablebits Drivepool.
Sas to Sata Breakout cable: (PAID LINK) amzn.to/2Js4hch
LSI SAS2008 card:(PAID LINK) amzn.to/2LHhFfe
My new build Tower 900 case(PAID LINK): amzn.to/2Yyy21m
Quadro P2000(PAID LINK): amzn.to/2XVQXX6
GTX 1070(PAID LINK): amzn.to/2LEuwiC
8TB Western Digital Easystore HDD (PAID LINK): amzn.to/2xuXMQo
10TB EasyStore HDD(PAID LINK): amzn.to/2LEASOK
All about Stablebits Drivepool 1:30
Freenas and Unraid: 2:15
My 117TB Server 4:35
Hard drive configuration and location: 5:40
Modification to fit SSI-EEB Motherboard: 6:00
My Unraid setup: 7:40
Plex Performance: 8:07
Grafana Dashboard and Monitoring: 8:30
Grafana Plex Dashboard: 9:40
Info about SSI-EEB eatx motherboards in E-ATX cases: forums.tomshar...
Flash Sas2008/LSI 9211-8i to IT Mode for JBOD support: nguvu.org/free...
Grafana Dashboard tutorial: / howto_monitor_unraid_w...
#cordcutter #plex #quietnas #quietserver #Freenas #unraid #Stablebitsdrivepool
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Your videos have helped me out immensely. I started out using Plex, but my new Samsung TV had issues running Plex. Even though my TV was hard wired to my 300/300 internet service, every time I turned the TV on and clicked on the Plex App- I would get an error message that I wasn't connected to the internet. The only way I could fix this was to reinstall Plex. I downloaded the Emby Server and the Emby Client App on the TV and it works great. I am sure there are reasons I should switch back to Plex, but I am happy everything is working now. My system started as a way for me to watch my movies in my house on any of my TV's. I took an old gaming tower which had a i9-930 with 24 GB's of RAM and was experiencing some problems and put a new MB, i3-6320 (I chose this because it was power efficient at the time), and 8 GB RAM. After getting everything up and running, my wife decides to add all of the kids- 6, and a dozen friends as users. So, now I have the potential of up to 18 users wanting to watch movies at the same time. I was going to upgrade the MB, processor, RAM and install a high end GPU to make sure I wouldn't have any problems. I posted something on the Emby Forum about what I should do for hardware and someone said I just needed to get a Quadro P4000. I did some research and stumbled upon a video you did a while ago explaining that the consumer gaming GPU's wouldn't solve my problem and that a Quadro P2000 would increase my transcoding streams. The bottom line is I bought the P2000 and everything is working fantastic. I think I could add another dozen users and still be okay. My server is running Windows 10 Pro with all updates and I have (5) WD Red 10 TB's HD's for a total of 50 TB's of storage (thank you Best Buy and Easy Store!). I just want your viewers to know that everything you have shown will work on Emby as well. Thank you so much and keep the videos coming. As for some future videos, I would like to see some benchmarks on what hardware will convert videos the fastest with Handbrake. Keep up the awesome work!
thank you so much for writing such a thoughtful and thorough review of my channel/videos. :) This kind of comment really makes me excited to produce more content for ya'll.
oh also! handbrake comment noted :)
Sorry I'm late to the party, but I have to ask -- the GTX card is in an awkward position in the tower. Do you have it hooked up by a PCIe riser of somekind? I'm trying to figure out how it got hooked up to your board!
Thanks for the video!
My build:
MB: Asus P10S-M WS
Proc: xeon E-1245 v5
RAM: 16 G non ecc
Storage: 6x WD 4tb red z2/raid5
2x WD green 3tb striped for media
OS: freenas 11.2
Right Now I plan to run OMV or Unraid but trying out Amahi too.
Good show! Yeah part 2 was much more informative. Nice build and video. I was currently running a Ryzen 1600 on Freenas in a fractal design case with a 6 drive ZFS RaidZ1 setup on a LSI card with 1 hot spare. I pre transcode all my videos on a Ryzen 2700 workstation to avoid the quality loss sometimes experienced with Plex transcodes. Not wanting to constantly run two machines, I swapped CPU and motherboards and installed Proxmox to virtualize Windows 10 for my pre transcoding and a Freenas vm for plex, passing the LSI card through. I like this setup much better.
oh damn that is a pretty legit build! The ryzen 2700 has some awesome performance and its even better when you consider the price:performance ratio. how do you like Proxmox? I've been wanting to play around with it a bit it seems pretty solid from what I've read.
Proxmox is pretty nice. It's good in situations where you have a powerful system that's often idle. Those CPU cycles can be used for other things via virtualization. I determined how much power I actually needed for Plex since I rarely need to transcode and I allocated the rest to my Windows vm which can use the extra cores for pre-transcoding. I never encounter issues. 32 gigs of ram in the system. I currently signed 16 to Freenas and 4 to Windows. Both VMs are on NVME drives. You can't tell it's being virtualized.
if you didn't already know, you can use/have gpu passthrough with the plex docker. less overhead instead of having a VM, also having the docker sandbox. EDIT: this is using [Plugin] Linuxserver.io - Unraid Nvidia
yup...docker works awesomely.
Performance is better in ubuntu VM than unraid.... Unless you are lacking RAM, VM is by far a better way to do a Plex Server.
Ngl I have been waiting for this video for days :) loving the content and you make it very interesting for me
Thank you so much for the encouragement let me know what you want to see in the future or interests you have:)
Really cool. However, I may have missed that energy point. What how much energy does your tower draw? I'm in a similar situation like your where (currently struggling with silencing a DL180 G6 server) and use a UPS. However, my equipment (include the HP server, 2 Synology NAS (for backup), 2 NUC and a bit network equipment draws around 350W. (I only use my HP server for storage and virtualization). UPS wise already this setup demands a better (clumpsy) UPS... What are your numbers?
This is like pornography to me. 🤣😂🤣😂
hahahahha me too i love this stuff.
Me too but not the regular one this content is premium plus plus! Respect and Appreciation for @slothtechtv i loved it!
So glad I found this channel. My plex is a Game Boy by comparison. Time to really step up my game. I love that case but Im going to re-purpose my Cooler Master Cosmos II for my new server. Thanks for this. You touched on a lot things I never considered for a Plex server.
Holy cow that Cosmos II has a LOT of room for disks! How many drives will you be installing in your new server? And what CPU will you be going with? also -- Thank you for the positive feedback/encouragement :)
Mine is actually quite similar 😂 PESH4, instead of PESH2, and dual 2670 v1, with custom built case and drive bays from different parts I got on eBay. All in all similar build, same OS and experience. Kudos! 🙌
What do you use for power?
I'm still on commodity hardware. I recycled an old intel CPU and put ubuntu with ZFS on it. The thing I end up doing is just daisy chaining a bunch of sata power connectors. This seems OK because disk power should be low amps and probably wont overload the rail. Just wondering if there is a more elegant solution or if you end up spending a lot of money on a power supply.
Going from the 4U server to current server....well that escalated quickly xD
This was a pretty good breakdown of what you've got going. My question is, what hard drive chassis did you use and where did you get them? I have the same PC case (snow edition) but can only install 4 x 3.5 HD's. I have 6 more drives to install and can't find anywhere to buy these cages. Thanks!!!
My setup is several steps behind yours. I'm still on the Dyson config - an 8 x 3Tb Raid6 NAS running PMS. 2Gb RAM (max), no GPU, no hardware transcoding, no VMs,, streaming over a 1Gb LAN.Yours is the vision of my future, and by the time I can afford it, it'll probably be as crusty as mine is now.
awesome build and great explanation!! It's always cool to see other Plex builds
I use unraid as well. Ryzen 1700 CPU, 32 gb of ram. 51 TB of usable storage in the array. Server is used as a nextcloud server/NAS and plex server. I'm currently using a Rosewill 4U 15 bay rack mountable chassis. All but one of the hard drive slots are occupied. When its time to upgrade, I'll buy a supermicro 15 bay case and connect those hard drives via DAS as you've shown in the video. After that, if I need to expand then I'll have to make a secondary server as unraid only supports up to 30 attached hard drives lol!
That's a solid upgrade path/plan it sounds like youve been doing this awhile 👍👍
was there any specific gpu mount you used or was that slightly modified as well?
Beautiful machine! Nice job!
I'm running a single 2678v3 with 32GB RAM, now thinking of upgrading to dual CPU and 64GBs.
I have a Ryzen3700 with a P2000 and I'm thinking about to buy a bigger case with a 8-bay slot and 8x10TB HDDs. Can you recommend Unraid is it stable? or should I just get a 8-bay synology and connect it to my Ryzen for transcoding?
Thanks!
I'm building a server in this case after being inspired by this video, but I have a question. What did you use as your GPU vertical mount, and specifically how long of a PCI-E riser cable did you need to be able to reach the PCI slots on the motherboard?
Hi,
how would this configuration compare with 1x Ryzen 9 3900x and 1x Quadro P2000 for live transcoding of input channels in 1080p from let's say UDP H.265 HEVC input?
Tho, in my situation I wouldn't be using Plex, but rather several instances of FFMpeg.
Any thoughts on which hardware would you recommend for transcoding in realtime let's say 8 1080p HEVC h.265 live channels to 6 different profiles:
1. H.264 720p 3Mbps
2. H.264 720p 2.5Mbps
3. H.264 480p 1.5Mbps
4. H.264 480p 1.0Mbps
5. H.264 360 800Kbps
6. H.264 360 400Kbps
Also, would you recommend multiple Quadro P2000's, or something else?
Thanks!
Do you use any IP KVM software to power on/off your server? I find having a DRAC or IPMI on rack mounted servers invaluable.
AGREED! The gigabyte GA-7PESH2 motherboard had ipkvm built into it along with 2 10gbe interfaces.
I used to have a Dell XPS8500 motherboard inside of a rosewill4500 case with 8 HDs running off a perc 6e card. I was going to upgrade the guts of that to a server mobo/cpu and 12 hot swap drive bays but a 2U R720xd fell in my lap (I work in the data protection business and we have hardware we run POCs on for our customers. When that hardware got old I was extremely lucky to catch it instead of it going in the dumpster) I had 12 x 1TB HD’s but recently coworkers gave me his old set of 12 x 4TB HD’s. The r720 has 12 bays
Your plex server is beautiful I would love to be able to take my r720 hardware and put it in a case like yours but dells custom configurations make it so it will never really leave its 2U chassis. Yes it sounds like a jet engine but updating the iDRAC software quieted things down. It’s running in the closet of my guest room with an exhaust I built to shoot the hot air into the attic. I don’t know the CPU’s off the top of my head but they are 2 x 6core. I haven’t had CPU encode issues yet but I would love to get a graphics card for encoding. It all runs on VMware. I have a couple other lab VMs and web servers running tautulli and organizr and use a monitoring software called Foglight.
Awesome vids man!
After watching the original video, which brought me to your channel, I became very interested in this case. I had planned on moving from my current HP Z420 (E5-1650 3.2GHz 6 Cores HT with 16GB Ram and various storage solutions totalling around 34TB) to a server rack scenario, I wasn't looking forward to the noise. I love this case your using here, question does the case come with several drive cages and if not where did you source them? Love the channel looking forward to seeing more. Today's video really made my day.
The case comes with 2 drive cages each able to hold 2 3.5 inch drives. There is also a drive cage in the front so stock configuration you can get 3 3.5" drive bays out of it. I ordered more drive cages through thermaltake request form:
thermaltakeusa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
They were pretty reasonably priced but i dont remember what i paid for each.
Also ty for the support! This comment actually made MY day :)
That's a beautiful machine! Mine is nowhere near as good looking or powerful, but it does the job. It's a Ryzen 3 2200G machine. About 24TB of storage.
Corsair 1000D: AMD 2950x Threadripper 32GB Ram, 6x10TB shucked drives (10TB Parity/50TB Usable), 2xGTX1080ti's SLI. GTX1050. This is my main gaming PC, video edit PC, Plex server, and NAS all in one. It's water-cooled with 4 x 480mm rads, 2 x D5 pumps. I have Windows 10 VM locked to the same cores as Game Mode (4-11 Cores), then have Plex Docker, Handbrake Auto Convert Dockers, OBS Docker, and Unraid on Cores 0-3 and 12-15. I game in Windows with the 8 Cores with similar results to 2700x, I stream with NDI from windows VM and OBS docker running on the remaining 8 cores, Then I have 2 versions of Handbrake running, 1 is set up to use all 16 Cores, 1 is set up to use 8 cores opposite of Win10 VM set up to auto-convert files to X265. I edit in Davinci Resolve and output in lossless output, which handbrake watches the folder and takes that file and converts it to x265 for me. Usually, I only use 8 cores for that, but occasionally ill stop the 8 core handbrake and open the 16 core to double my output. I store everything in x265. When the time comes I need to increase my storage capacity I plan to run a DAC off the remaining 2 PCIe x16 slots I have to run 16 x HHDS in a case somewhere near this PC, running it all off the main PC.
mother of god
Great video as always.
My server: i7 8700k, 16GB DDR4, Quadro P2000, Win10 OS/Plex cache on 1TB Samsung 860. (case: Phanteks Shift, H80i v2 AIO, and SF600 Gold)
Storage: Synology DS1815+ (8bay with ram upgrade) 7x8tb WD Red NAS.
GBe network.
Running great and quiet. what benefits would I enjoy from switching (and learning) Freenas and /or Unraid? Ignorance is pretty much bliss for me with my server running with out issue coming up on 90 days.
the most trans-codes I've hit in 90 days is 6
My previous server was that Dell r720 dual E5-2650 48GB ECC ram (8disc) paired with an MD1200(12disc) switching to the consumer grade equipment I saw a huge jump in performance, reliability and noise reduction.
My setup:
Hardware:
* Dual Xeon E5-2670 on an Intel S2600CP motherboard
* 256 GB DDR3 ECC memory
* 3x Dell Perc H310 HBA cards flashed with LSI IT firmware for 24 drives support
* Supermicro 4U case
* Replaced all of the fans to be quiet enough to put in a cooled closet
OS and Software:
* VMWare ESXi 6.7 (free version) as my hypervisor that allows pass-through for PCIe cards
* FreeNAS running as a VM as my storage server
* Plex running as a separate VM under Linux
* Various other VMs running Windows and Linux as well as containers
Advantage of FreeNAS is that it's free and relatively easy to setup and administer. Using an OS that supports ZFS is a big win to guarantee data integrity as well as having support for losing one or two drives (raidz2) and be able to recover the data. It's not as big of a deal for a media server where you can generally just download the content again. But, for all my picture and videos (going back almost 20 years at this point), having a filesystem that checksums everything to ensure no bits get flipped is a huge deal.
So, if you value the integrity of your data for important personal files, use something like ZFS and have off-site backups. For a generic media server, just about anything will work.
Thank you for such an intelligent well-written writeup of your build! That s2600 intel motherboard is great I had one in a 1U case it worked great for me -- so many DIMMS.
Out of curiosity and kind of off topic -- how did you cool your closet exactly? Did you install hvac/duct and vents in the closet?
@@SlothTechTV The closet is on the second floor of my house with an attic directly above it. I was going to just install a vent fan to exhaust the hot air and let the normal house AC take care of the cooling, but my AC contractor installed it while I was away and installed an actual AC vent into the closet. So I just stayed with that as the cooling solution :) It's not as efficient as just venting the hot air into the attic, but it works.
I have 256 GB of memory in my box and don't really come close to using half of it currently, so plenty of room for more VMs.
And there I was thinking I knew a lot about Plex servers...
lolol the rabbit hole is deep the more i learn the less i feel like i know.. im sure you are somewhere on the right of that dunning-kruger bell curve
@Sloth Tech TV - Do you know where you can buy additional HDD bays for the back of the case? They only seem to come with one, but I see you clearly have six? Are these on Amazon as well? I'm probably not looking in the right area... Thanks!
What did u find out??
Are you using a patched driver to get around the 2 NVDEC (encode) stream limit on consumer grade nvidia cards? By default you won't have ability to run more than two trans codes using Nvidia hardware iirc. Which is why a lot of people go with the Quadro P2000... Otherwise AMD doesn't limit you, but you have to use windows to use one. Sadly I use Ubuntu, so I'm forced to use Nvidia. I had to patch my Driver to get more than two transcodes working from the GPU.
@Sloth Tech TV - I recently purchased a Tower 900 after reviewing several videos and forumns (including yours). However I was just notified by Thermaltake that the stackable HDD bays in the back are not sold seperately and need an RMA for a replacement.... How did you get additional bays? I don't want to start putting in 3rd-party bays in here...
What did u find out or did u find a 3rd party one ??
Great channel mate, I run mine on a QNAP 882, 32gb ram, 12 TB Raid 5, I share with quite a lot of friends with no big issues, to be honest upload bandwidth will hit the limit first I believe
Sounds like you've sized your server perfectly than ☺️ ty for the encouragement
Nice video. What power supply did you use for this build? Thanks
Great video. Thanks for sharing. I was wondering what are the benefits in using a motherboard and running 2 Intel CPU's?
I run my Plex Server on a dedicated PC via Ubuntu with an Intel 11700k with Quicksync for HW transcoding, synology NAS for storage, and a separate PC that handles all of the getting content automation. Its not ideal to have all of this separately, but I just kept expanding to serve more family and friends.
Interested to know your thoughts. Thanks.
When you have to replace drives did you prelabel them as they were added one by one or all at the same time? As in how do you know the specific drive that is spinning up if all others are shut down
Love this video, love the content, love the way it's explained. I have about a dozen follow up questions. What's the best way to submit them?
1. The migration from Windows 10 Plex host to Ubuntu Plex host - How do you migrate the library, played/unplayed, all that metadata? I'm in a situation very very similar to your starting point and I'm curious if you were able to maintain this data or it was lost in the migration.
2. Is software RAID all day the best way to implement a Plex server? Currently I have 2x devices with hardware RAID implemented, migrating to a software RAID solution would not be easy. Can you explain the benefits? For more context, for those of us coming into second hand gear, those H710p or HP equivalent cards usually can't be flashed to IT mode. Making purchasing additional hardware a barrier to making the migration. Also while I realize the cache on those boards is only 1/2GB it still hurts throwing it away.
3. I'd love to see FreeNAS ZFS vs Unraid comparison to be covered in a future video. Coming from someone with some technical knowledge but without an in depth understanding of ZFS I love what little you covered and would like to hear you cover more on the topic.
4. Caching in Unraid/General Unraid implementation question - I've been stuck at a crossroads with feeling like I need two different hosts, one for higher performance VM Applications(Game servers, SQL/Web servers) and one much simpler with bulk storage and GPU for Plex. Do you have anything "High Performance", lots of I/O, high clocks required in your Unraid environment? Would you say it's possible to have everything running on one host?]
4b. Are there limitations on m.2 storage in Unraid and can you dedicate specific high performance arrays where different VMs/Data pools sit? Ideally I'd like to throw say 5x 1.0TB or 2.0TB NVMe drives into an array.
5. Nvidia Pass-through - Does Unraid assist in the Code 43 error/virutlization block for your GTX 1070? How does the 1070 perform? You throw out some numbers like "46 Transcodes", I'm not familiar with how that's measured? I have consulted the NVENC guide(developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix) and as I understand it the 1070 can do 2x 4k 8:8:8 streams. Is the hardware encoding via Plex different? Are you not transcoding in real time but transcoding the whole library as new items are added? I just want whatever implementation I choose to be able to handle 4ish simultaneous 4k streams to clients.
6. I didn't hear anything about networking connectivity, what are you using for an uplink? Do you have any 10Gb cards?
@@Nameback 1.
I had this same struggle at first and it kept me from migrating to unraid for awhile.. Eventually I just did it.. It's literally a copy and paste of the entire plex directory. The only caveat is the config/settings part of plex which is located in the Registry of windows and its a .conf file in Linux. I ended up just re-doing the settings which only took a few minutes as everything else was in the database files that are inside of the plex directory itself here's a great thread that helped me a lot:
forums.plex.tv/t/how-to-transfer-plex-library-from-windows-to-linux/90633
2.
I don't necessarily think it's the best way to implement a plex server, but I did not have any hardware raid cards when I started this journey so a migration to unraid made a lot of sense for me. The benefits for me are being able to be hardware agnostic, being able to use cheap LSI SAS2008 pcie cards to expand/scale. Off the top of my head a benefit for a hardware raid is better BBU/cache sync write performance I’m sure there are quite a few others like reliability, but i didnt really have to consider this as i didnt have hardware raid capabilities. So with that -- migrating to a software raid may or may not work or be practical for you if you're already running hardware raid. I think I'll do some comparisons with hardware raid cards in a future video -- Thank you for this difficult question to answer I hope I helped a little bit -- I think I might have just muddied the waters even more though :( lol
3.
Thank you so much for this comment -- I'm actually working on that right now -- great minds clearly think alike! :D
4.
I think it's possible to have everything running on one host, I think virtualizing game servers is common practice in most companies nowadays so I have to imagine the high clocks and I/o wouldn't be a problem. That said the main pool is really not great for high I/o and unassigned disks or straight cache would probably be best for this type of workload as I usually see about 40-50% performance loss for writes to the main pool without a cache disk/memory cache. I think unraid may or may not be a great solution for sql but it works great for the webservers I'm running on it so I guess it depends on the workload and how you architect it.
4b.
I tried this -- It worked, there was a definite loss of performance. I'm going to make a video about it so stay tuned! :)
5.
Yes there is a limitation. I highly recommend you check out the P2000 as its the fully supported and legitimate way to do what you are describing. There is a tutorial that bytemybits did where he goes into how you can "unlock" the driver limitation on the gtx series cards and get more than 2 transcodes. I won't speak to it much more beyond that as I don't know the "legality" of this.. :P
6.
Well since everything is run from one server its not as relevant; however, that said the gigabyte ga-7pesh2 motherboard does have 2 10gbe cards BUILT IN. Which is awesome and makes it a great value. I think the mobo itself is only like $150.. Or it was when I bought it at least.
I see this case is still available for purchase on Amazon. However I am a bit confuse and would love if you can clear this up
1. so what is the maximum number of 3.5 drives one can install on this case? It is not clear from the amazon description
2. Does it come with all the drive cage / tray / caddle need to mount the drives? or additional purchase would be required?
thank you again in advance for any feedback
I think it only comes with two drive bays for a total of 4 in the back and two up front (I think) I ordered more through support
@@SlothTechTV ok, so if I understand you correctly, you can order more cage/caddy/tray from Thermatake? if so, what is the maximum number of drive on each side of the case in the back section? Is it a caddy / cage where is a block of metal for say 3 drives, or individual tray for each drive? DO you remember the cost?. thank you so much for the info
I wish for a future video of a full how to build server with parts list and show how you connect everything down to installing and configuring software :) fingers crossed? Hehe
I'll put this together very soon.
I dont think this is happening. :(
Interesting that you used a VM for the plex server. Im curious, does it overall have better performance compared to using a docker? I run unRAID as well but my PLEX server is run though a docker container. With using the nVidia unRAID modified OS, even with plex in a docker, I still have the hardware transcode with my gtx1050 ti.
Hmm TH-cam did not give me notifications, I was waiting and missed this video which I've waited a long time for
Humidity as you stated is not a concern for HDDs, it's more about the temperature. The housings of the disks are highly sealed, specifically for the Helium filled ones, but also for the ones before the Helium-age, leaving only the little controller board exposed to humidity, and that is as vulnerable to it as any other electronic component: Not too much, as long as it stays within reasonable boundaries.
Other than that, nice setup. I understand why you went towards that eye-catcher-build, I still prefer to have a server look like a server and being housed within a rack =)
Nice case, not sure I'd go with all the RGB. Have you thought of running a small led TV unit inside the case displaying your control/monitoring .
Do you need lots of memory for Unraid was curious why you choose the dual cpu with ecc memory over newer generation stuff?
Hello, youtube recommended this vid which came out great! I am looking for the best solution to expand my storage, run win10 pro, plex, tatuli, NUT. Do you have a vid on how to setup using Unraid, as I would like to mimic your setup. Super cool. Off topic question, how do you access windows 10 pro gui? I am running Ryzen 2200g with a cooler master 240 aio, 128 gb m.2 OS, 500 gb samsung ssd (game drive), 10 tb dedicated plex storage with 8 gb ram inside a corsair 250D. Low power consumption was the goal - 60 watt power draw for those interested. Curious why are you using a GTX 1070 instead of the P2000? Future plans include ryzen 5/7, 16 gb ram, parity software solution, P2000. IF there is any negatives for using ryzen as a server please call me out on it.
I'm curious as to why you're running Plex in a VM rather than using the docker version? I had problems with the docker mainly because my data files are on another server, but yours are on the same server. What's the advantage I'm missing? I'm getting really excited about this concept since I can end replication and reduce the drives instead of adding more JBOD boxes.
I run this in a VM mostly due to migrating from one environment to another and originally building it in a VM... There are advantages and disadvantages to each option. I think the advantages of docker containerization specifically around assigning dedicated resources like memory to vms and having more dynamic resources with a container is one obvious advantage of container vs VM.
Incredibly beautiful build. Great video.
Such an honor for this to come from a fellow sloth. Welcome home, friend.
How did you archieve the blank docker "spacers" at 7:55? Really like your build tho.
how much did it cost you in total ? also do you sell those all pre assembled ? . ZFS can be used with this ?
I've just been using a Drobo NAS (not exactly my best purchasing decision), and my iMac as my Plex server. Though the Drobo is reasonably quiet and allows you to have a pool of different capacity drives, adding whatever size gives the best storage/$ as extra storage is required, there is not much more that can be said for it. Well, not without invoking the seven names of god and a good libel defence team. I've been waiting for inspiration to build a dedicated NAS/Plex server, ideally with the capacity to run Fusion360 in a Windows 10 VM as well, all in a package sufficiently quiet to run in my study rather than out in my pantry. Your setup looks a lot like what I am after.
lol! Well it sounds like its probably gotten you by for awhile at least? ty for the positive feedback and for watching the video! :)
You linked external hard drives in the video description - Do you use them for the server? Is it cheeper to remove the drives from the case or what is the thing about it?
Much cheaper too remove the drive from inside I made a video on it too. They usually contain the equivalent of Western digital red drives
@@SlothTechTV OMG! Thats new to me! Thats very helpful! You made a video on it? Could not find it in your video overview ... Can you please link it?
If you run plex in a docker in unraid I am guessing you cant use hardware transcoding? Is that why you have a separate VM dedicated to the plex server? Thanks
I just picked up 3 Dell R710s and 1 HP DL180G6 fairly cheap. It's older hardware, but $20 for the HP was still a steal imo. I've loaded all 3 Dells with Proxmox, but I may go down to 2 because I don't need that much redundancy. The HP is going to be loaded with FreeNAS and I'm planning on running Plex inside of that. Other projects I'd like to do with this stack is install NextCloud, learn Docker, and run Ravada which is an open source VDI broker so I can have a couple thin clients for my kids to use.
gnatsum64 how do this project work out? Looking for some guidance here as I have a R720 and a 24 Bay Supermicro that I am upgrading a few parts before going live
I'm wondering what you would do different if you had to build one today. I want to move my plex server out of my gaming pc and into a dedicated system because I too need more drives...just not sure what route to take.
Question: where did you got the extra hdd cages for the thermaltake 900 case? I am about to buy one and I want to use most of the back as storage server. The dealbreaker would be the extra hard drive cages.
@jawamookey did u find anything that worked ?
I'm loving this. I have a question since I cant seem to find the info online. Does the case come with all the hard drive cages for this or did you have to get extras? If you had to get extra where did you get them? You say you put 15 total drives but the schematic that you show in the video it's possible to put a total of 22.
Yeah I had to order them through thermaltakes USA support. I think it only came with 2 cages plus the front 2 which makes for 6 drives total.
Thanks for the info, I've been looking into setting up rack mount servers. I hadn't even considered a show case plex server / NAS. I'm seriously considering this.
Right now I'm running Plex on an i7-8700 server with data files separate on a dual e5-2630L Supermicro board in a 24 drive server case. My software on the server is Windows 2012 R2 Essentials and I'm over 100Tb of data due to running JBOD with Stablebit and 2x replication. I can transcode many streams because the Plex Server has a Quad P200 video card for HW transcode. Your idea of switching to UNRAID has me intrigued. I was in the process of setting up a remote UNRAID server for remote backup anyway. I like your idea. Have to see how it goes.
Great video! Question tho, you said you use an Ubuntu VM because of the GPU pass through, why not just use the docker container? You can now add an Nvidia GPU through the apps tab in UnRaid. Looking forward to the answer for this, thanks!
@Sloth Tech TV +Sloth Tech TV
I started looking into the Plex Media Server because of this video, so thank you for that.
When you say that you're able to process 27 transcodes at the same time, what settings are you using for the transcodes? (which they call "optimize")
Great setup. Congratulations. Would you mind sharing your Grafana dashboard?
I would love that af well, maybe a video og how to set it up and getting values from unraid and plex into grafana.
I'll work on publishing this along with the scripts.
I missed something here, are you using a Quadro P2000 and GTX 1070 in the rig or just the 1070?
Just the 1070
@@SlothTechTVI run GTX 1050ti I bought used and it supports more streams than I can use... like 25+ streams.
Hi, very nice build. Where did you get the extra hdd cages? I can't seem to find them.
I have the same question.
@@gamecollectorbr Thermaltake USA support (on their main website there is a form you can fill out)
Thanks for the detailed setup video. I’ve been building my dedicated Plex server over the past couple months (yes, slowly..) and was trying to decide on which OS to use. In addition, it’s just an old mid-tower case from an old gaming rig I had. Unfortunately, it’s going to take up at least 6U of height in my 18U rack, so its not ideal longterm.
My Build:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Mb: I dont know
Ram: 16gb 3000mhz
SSD: 250GB
HDD: 4TB IronWolf
Sys: Unraid
Do you have a link to the motherboard you used? I want to build this exact setup as i currently have 50tb and want to expand up to 100
woah it looks like they sold out online :( I got it off ebay, but there are other options for dual socket LGA2011 mobos. Here is a replacement that is close to the same: www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-X9DRi-F-Dual-Xeon-LGA2011-EATX-Motherboard-3x-PCI-E-16x-2xGBe-IPMI/192954690383?hash=item2cecfeeb4f:g:VusAAOSwTs5dJQb2
What happened to your P2000? Also Why not use a docker for Plex since LinuxServer.io has a custom unraid build for the NVIDIA Drivers?
Pardon my ignorance but I bought a 16tb external hard drive to plot and farm chia. My dilemma is I do not know what device will support it. Very new at this. Please help. Thank you.
Nice server build mate
My current server is a old HP Pavilion 500-374na
core i3-4150
12gb ddr3 1600mhz
8x10TB HDDS
120G SSD
SAS9211-8I 8PORT Int 6GB Sata+sas Pcie 2.0
Win 10 Pro
using quick sync for hardware transcoding
Antec P101 Silent Computer Case
Impressive! I really liked your build. Right now I am using a machine for Plex, with TB2 and USB storage and I have at least 12 HD’s not used (between 2, 3 and 4 TB). I may build something similar in the next months, but on a Rysen machine. Not sure if I will buy a new video card, for my needs I think my nvidia 970 is enough.
Doesn't the PESH2 board have an LSI HBA built into it? Can't tell if you are using those breakouts as well as the LSI PCIE cards. Also why not use an expander instead of a second card? Not sure how many drives you are running.
yes it does -- and i am using both ports. As for the expander -- I had the second card lying around as well as an open PCIe slot so it was "free" but that is a good idea.
@@SlothTechTV Makes sense! If I had an extra laying around I would use it too. Maybe one day I'll actually need 24 drives. At least if you ever need to get the PCIE slot back you have plenty of options. I'm trying to figure out how to best use a super fast IODrive II 785GB PCIE SSD in my Plex server. Just using it as my transcode drive for now. Keep up the good work, very entertaining.
@@ThePlev Oh hot damn those iodrives are pretty cool I was looking at them on ebay -- pretty good prices too. What operating system are you running?
@@SlothTechTV I am kind of in the same boat as your Plex VM. Started on Windows 10 pro with storage spaces, it works and now I'm at 32TB usable. Going to have to collect some drives so I can migrate off of it.
This is utterly awesome!!
I am checking this out for the second time. I need to do a similar solution (without all this disks, but with space to grow). I'm just curious if you needed to do any modifications to fit all those HDs there.
no modifications, i just needed a bunch of drive cages. I'm going to put out a video soon with a cheaper solution (not as pretty but cheaper and even quieter)
i got the drive cages from thermaltake USA support
@@SlothTechTV I will wait for this new video before investing in a new case. I have now a new Ryzen mounted on a mid-tower of old, and it is really needing to breathe... And I will tell you if in the end, I buy this case I will be tempted to spend more on hardware and upgrade mobo and processor - what definitively I do not need right now! :-)
@Sloth Tech TV Thats a really cool build and you just sold me the Case for my next Upgrade. My Question is where do you get the Drive Cages from ? In the Manual is nothing written if they are inside the Package, on the Thermaltake Page is no HDD Tray Page. At the moment i got a Lian Li D8000 bought it last year ~September it's a great Case but in the Summer time i need to take off the Front to cool down the HDD's otherwise they go up to 50°C in the Winter time they are at ~38 which are normal.
i used the thermaltake USA support form on thermaltakes website, they just asked how many i want and sent me a paypal invoice. it was pretty awesome lol
@@SlothTechTV good for you! I am started looking for some aftermarket solution as Thermaltake support keep saying they are out of stock
@@Freender90 what did u find that works
@@mintkhan007 I am still pinging Thermaltake support:(
do you have a PCPartList for the server hardware? id be interested in seeing the breakdown
I'll put one together! ty for the comment
Love your build. And you set up. As I would also like to know your hardware pick list as at the moment i am in the progress of building a new plex server, and it would be interesting to know your MB and CPU, to see if i am on the right track
www.serverbuilds.net/anniversary
Unfortunately, the Gigabyte GA-7PESH2 is practically impossible to find :(
@@SlothTechTV I was wondering if you were able to complete the pars list for the build? I want to get something like this setup as well. Also how many HDD were you able to mount within the case?
This motherboard is virtually impossible to findcan can somebody please suggest a comfortable replacement forboth the CPU and the board for less than 400 I would love to do this build
I don't understand what hardware transcoding is, as opposed to another kind of transcoding? What am I missing here?
I went with ubuntu and ZFS and with plex running in docker. My system is working great, and I have the flexibility of ubuntu. Running on a dell r710 with a seperate disk shelf filled with random drives.
What a future build for me would be low power consumption server, in fact an extremely low idle power consumption would be useful. I have limited need for transcoding but I would like to have more headroom or atleast compute capabilities for newer format and transcodes.
How much power does your server consume through a day and a year. What does it cost to run where you live (USA)?
Been interested in this case since I came across your video...I am hesitant cause can't seem to get the extra hard-drive cages to expand for more storage and wondering when will the video be aired of an alternative cost effective method is going to be available??
I also have an all in 1 data/transcode server. I haven't tried hardware transcoding yet so i'm running Dual Xeon E5-2640 CPUs with 80GB of DDR3 RAM in Freenas. I have Plex and a few other things running in the Freenas jails.
I just started playing around with freenas. out of curiosity what made you pick it specifically vs ovm or unraid?
@@SlothTechTV Well I was used to using disks that were the same size from previous RAID builds, so i didn't need the ability to mix and match drives. I didn't look much into ovm, but the fact that Freenas is well free was a big point over unraid. I also watched a lot of vids from Lawerance Systems. The one big drawback to Freenas that I don't like is you can't expand a drive pool by adding more drives down the line. You have to do it like you showed in the video by adding vdevs.
@@ProphetBeal ty for taking the time to share all of that i'm sure im not the only one who will read it and benefit from your experience with freenas :)
It sounds like its working great for you, i love Lawrence systems btw .. i watch all of their videos.
I am just running a Synology DS1019+ these days myself, 5x8TB WD Reds so 32TB usable. The hardware transcoding in it has been great, all of my 4K content is direct play (I dont share the 4K stuff). I will say though, the few files i have found that couldnt be hardware transcoded for whatever reason the Synology really falls flat on its face (which is expected given it's cpu). I also have several dockers running on it (Tautulli, Ombi, qbitorrent/openvpn combo and my Unifi Controller for my networking gear). Edit: it is basically silent and is on a shelf on my computer desk right next to my bed
very awesome build, the practicality of running those synologies along with the amazing efficiency (power wise) makes them great plex servers! they are powerhouses with hw transcoding on! at least as far as i've seen from some of the reviews on them.
@@SlothTechTV Yeah I had an Intel 7820X/Quadro P2000 build before this and considering what i came from, I am very impressed with this little box. Some of the dockers were a bit more of a pain to setup then the old spin up a vm and throw an o/s in it but it forced me to be a lot more efficient with my resources. It only uses about 35w or so haha
Very nice Setup.
I'am using an Win10 AMD FX 6350,1050ti and 32TB.
Vu+ Settop Box as an TV Headend.
Local its Passthrough only, for external Streams their are 10 lines @ 1080 8mbit
I'm super-impressed....that you ran Windows on an Isilon!
I love this build. I've been trying to find something with massive storage that I could potentially run in my living room not far from my TV. Would you say this build is quiet enough to be within earshot of a home theater setup? I live in a one bedroom apartment so this is a limitation I have. Right now I'm running a server out of a mid ATX tower with just 6 drives and I want to scale up.
Thanks for the videos! Subscribed now.
It's pretty quiet with the right fans. I can set it to it's quietest setting and it's barely audible sitting right next to it. If I set the fans on max speed (never actually necessary if ambient temps in my house are below 85F) it is about as loud as my gaming PC with noctua fans.
@@SlothTechTV Thanks for the reply. My current build that's near my entertainment center is a plex/gaming fractal r5 with Noctuas so that's a perfect reference point for me.
That's maxed out at about 40tb usable so I'm a sort of similar boat you where in. I want to build a higher capacity unraid, migrate my media over, and probably just use the other machine for gaming.
Thanks again.
@@SlothTechTV That's awesome. I have this case on my wishlist for quite some time. Did not buy it because I wasn't able to find a reseller for those drive cages in Europe or Germany... Where did you get yours from? Currently I'm running 12 HDD Drives + 4 Cache SSD's in a Fractal Node 804 + external 4 Drives cage connected via LSI SAS controller. Want to put everything together with more headroom for future Mainboard/cpu and drive upgrades. This bad boy could be able to fit all my needs... If I find extra drive cages to buy. Would be awesome if you have a suggestion. Thx dude for sharing your insides
@@SlothTechTV can you please answer my question? Where do you get all the drive Cages? Thx dude :)
does each SAS breakout give 8 drives, meaning if you use 2 LSI raid cards, you can host 32 drives? how do you upgrade in future as this grows, a fellow data maniac.
Each SAS breakout gives you 4 drives.
@@jaredward6558 how would one go for setting up a higher amount of hard drives, since PCie slots are limited for more raid cards
@@Praveen-hr8qw you can get cards with more ports on it. The LSI 9305-24i gives you 6 SAS HD connections each breaking out to 4 sata connections so 24 drives on a single card. just pricey at 605 on amazon currently plus cables. Also be aware of your OS and if it supports certain raid cards.
@@Praveen-hr8qw what backplane does you case have? some cases have 24 bays and only use 3 sas cables to connect to the sas controller. supermicro has some. you can also get sas controller cards with 4 sas connectors giving you the ability to directly connect 16 drives. if you wanted more, get a second card. really all depends on your case.
@@jaredward6558 I'm building the machine still, e5-2690 processor, os will be unraid and a ubuntu vm as host for everything
I am assuming you unlocked your 1070, hence running the plex in a Linux VM?
Why not run the plexmediaserver docker container? thats what i do. saves you having to spin up a vm just for plex.
due to hardware transcoding.
This. Check out the amazing LinuxServer Unraid Nvidia build, which lets you install bare metal nvidia drivers in Unraid. You can then run Plex as a docker and give it access to the GPU. Now whatever CPU cores, RAM and the GPU aren't locked into a dedicated Plex VM.
@@johnkurelek9187 yes but this isn't 100% working, Ive been using this and there have been issues. IMHO im looking at building VM and monitor the Nvidia Unraid build. Also we don't know how long this version will be around if people keep board-casting it to the world for Nvidia to pick up on it!
@@BigFourHead Too bad you've been having issues, mine has been rock solid since Unraid Nvidia was released. As for Nvidia, they support enabling their GPUs in containers (devblogs.nvidia.com/gpu-containers-runtime/ ), otherwise the devs at LinuxServer would never have been able to make it happen. What Nvidia would take exception with is people who bypass the transcode limit on the GTX models, which can be done regardless of running in a VM or docker. Sloth Tech TV is either doing this since he claims he had 30 something simultaneous transcodes, or in reality only 2 of his transcodes are hardware accelerated and the rest are being handled by the CPUs.
@@johnkurelek9187 I mostly run in a VM due to being too lazy to migrate -- I built the vm quite a long time ago.. A docker container is Indeed more efficient. -- that said there are advantages and disadvantages to each VM vs Docker containers.
Why didnt you run Plex on docker and pass through the GPU to the container?
I also really looking forward to the part list of the whole build. I'm thinking about to also build that server - or something simular to it. Hmm ... Do you or some one in here have recommendations for a good and mordern build that can be a storage server and at the same time a good cloud solution (iPhone Sync of my pics) and plex server? I will use it only with max 3 Persons at the same time but I'm also Hardware Enthusiast and want to make sure that this will be the ONE Build for everything. Power consumption on the other hand is a big deal for me so it whould be great if all parts are super low in power consumtion and quiet at the same time. I hope that's possible ...
Why run plex in a vm? I run it as a docker so it only use the memory it needs (I transcode into memory), and with the unraid nvidia-smi version, you can do hardware accelerated encoding in the plex docker too.
thought the same
I built mine Plex Server in the Silverstone CS01HS with the 6 hot-swappable bays. Running an ITX Gigabyte board with an i3 8100, 8gbs of ram, a Marvell SATA card, 6 5TB HDDs on SHR and 2 SSDs on Raid 1 for cache: Also running XPenology. I tossed in a Noctua CPU cooler and a Noctua quite case fan and it is pretty silent. In fact, my darn Xfinity router is louder than my Plex server lol I am only using the NAS for Plex and running the hardware transcoding so it is super solid and fast. I need to figure out a monitoring dashboard solution as well. Looking into it now.
Any reason you are not running plex in a docker? Really no need for the dedicated vm. You can still do the hardware transcoding in docker.
I am in a similar boat right now, debating to spend 300 on a 4 u rack mount or buy this case for my 16 drives
With the AMD Ryzen 3000 launch today, I would be curious to see what kind of performance the new processors get with Plex compared to Intel with QuickSync.
as would I.. it sucks that they are sold out everywhere I wanted to do a video on them but i couldnt get my hands on one in time.. ill likely be doing this exact thing soon! :)
You asked about others servers...
I'm running an HP ML310e Gen8 V2.
It's basically a mATX box similar to your Precision 1700 recommendation.
It's my home server and Plex is only 1 of a handful of things running on
it.
E3-1220v3 w/32GB of RAM.
Current one: 7 x 2TB drives RAID 6
On deck: 6 x 8TB drives RAID 6 (Shucked EasyStores)
Very cool! Thats probably incredibly energy efficient. Do you know what kind of watts you pull at idle vs load?
I love this
How do you back up 117TB of data without it costing a kings ransom?
How many users do you have for your plex server and what is the average amount of them using at one time?
In sum, what did you spend on this rig? $$ and time. Wanting to get something together.
You should try Varken for Grafana. It’s a real clean dashboard designed for plex.
i've looked at it -- it is a pretty sexy dashboard. I was looking for a few things varken didnt have (yet) which was why i have that seperate ubuntu graph. I'll probably build varken out now that you've reminded me about it :)