making a NAS/Plex server, need opinions

[gorcorps]

Couldn't decide if I should put this in Storage, HTPCs or here... so move if necessary

I finally bit and ordered a Lenovo TS140 to use as a Plex server, but the more I read the more I'm not sure which road I should go down... so I'm just looking for opinions.

This is just for home use for pretty much just one or two clients at a time (Roku box). I want to use it for media storage and a Plex server that's always on. The plan is to continue to rip blurays via my desktop but store them on this media server automatically once they're done ripping.

So, I'd like opinions on:

- Operating system: OpenBSD seems like a good option for free use, but I'm totally new to it. I've heard other opinions that it might be easier to just go with Windows if I have the option as it may be easier to set up and troubleshoot since that's what I'm used to.

- RAID : I've heard people talk about software raid vs. hardware raid and I honestly get lost in what I'd need for my use. I also am not positive what would be the best option for me as far as drive configuration goes. RAID 5 seems like a good option for both fault tolerance and decent performance. Since it'll mostly be reading, with the only writing happening after I rip a new movie, it sounds like the best option. I need suggestions though

- Drive recs: I know there are some drives that are better suited for long term server use and use less power, but I'm not sure which are worth looking at for the price.

- File system: ZFS? I see people referencing ZFS but I don't really know what's so special about it. It seems to be connected to software RAID options but I'm not sure what all I need to know.

 

[gus6464]

Since you are ripping blu-rays I would also throw in a gpu in the lenovo that can do hdmi audio bitstream to your AVR if you happen to have one.

 

[poofyhairguy]

My suggestion is one not on your list (and I will be honest I don't know how well it will work with the hardware so you will have to try it out): Unraid.

Unraid is the perfect media server OS. It gives you JUST enough parity protection to make it all worth doing, while giving you the ability to easily grow your array in a way ZFS/RAID5 never can.

I have two Unraid servers running 24/7 since 2010 and they are the backbone for my media setup. One of them I have upgraded EVERY disk in to a larger size than I started with, one at a time months apart, without having to copy over data or mess with anything. Just fire and forget even for disks of different sizes. None of the enterprise solutions (real RAID, zfs, etc.) let you do that. Also I manage it all easily via a webpage, and it doesn't take up a sata port for a OS drive (all runs off of a USB stick).

The best money I have ever spent on software were those two licences. The free version could let you know if your hardware is supported.

 

[Binky]

If you have a spare windows license, and you like familiarity, consider the simple solution of windows + drivepool. It isn't as efficient as other solutions but it is brain-dead simple, and as redunant as you want (two copies for this folder, three copies for that folder, etc.) . Drive space is cheap!

Otherwise, maybe check out unraid per poofy's suggestion. I've tinkered with every OS out there, but I still haven't made the leap to having my precious data on anything other than Windows (WHS2011).

 

[gorcorps]

My suggestion is one not on your list (and I will be honest I don't know how well it will work with the hardware so you will have to try it out): Unraid.

Unraid is the perfect media server OS. It gives you JUST enough parity protection to make it all worth doing, while giving you the ability to easily grow your array in a way ZFS/RAID5 never can.

I have two Unraid servers running 24/7 since 2010 and they are the backbone for my media setup. One of them I have upgraded EVERY disk in to a larger size than I started with, one at a time months apart, without having to copy over data or mess with anything. Just fire and forget even for disks of different sizes. None of the enterprise solutions (real RAID, zfs, etc.) let you do that. Also I manage it all easily via a webpage, and it doesn't take up a sata port for a OS drive (all runs off of a USB stick).

The best money I have ever spent on software were those two licences. The free version could let you know if your hardware is supported.

That sounds pretty slick. Running something like that off of a USB stick sounds risky... but maybe I've just never bought a USB drive that I trusted enough to run 24/7. What drive are you using?

 

[gorcorps]

Since you are ripping blu-rays I would also throw in a gpu in the lenovo that can do hdmi audio bitstream to your AVR if you happen to have one.

That would only needed if I'm outputting the machine directly via HDMI right? My use it just going to have it plugged into the network, with the files being streamed through a Roku box

 

[poofyhairguy]

That sounds pretty slick. Running something like that off of a USB stick sounds risky... but maybe I've just never bought a USB drive that I trusted enough to run 24/7. What drive are you using?

Just some legitimate San Disk drives. The OS loads completely into the RAM, so it doesn't really hammer the drive. Also makes it very easy to backup as a copy and paste of all drive contents not only gives me a snapshot of the OS but the configuration too. I always do that before I drop in new drives just in case and its quick to roll back that way. It is pretty easy to get going with it, anyone on this forum should be able to do it. No real Linux knowledge needed.

 

[gus6464]

That would only needed if I'm outputting the machine directly via HDMI right? My use it just going to have it plugged into the network, with the files being streamed through a Roku box

Correct. The advantage though of running straight out of the computer is that if you have a home theater receiver you can do the lossless audio like TrueHD, DTS-HD/MA and Atmos from the ripped blu-rays if your receiver supports it.

 

[ControlD]

I'll second the unRAID suggestion. It is seriously some of the best money I have spent on software in the past few years. I use my unRAID box as a Plex server as well as a general backup system. I moved to unRAID after I got tired of dealing with Windows Home Server and I have never felt a need to try anything else since.

As far as running off of a USB stick, you can simply copy all of the files on the stick to another stick, hard drive, etc. as a backup. If your stick dies it is a simple matter to transfer your license to a new one. I have never actually had my unRAID stick malfunction, but I have moved to a different one and had my license transfer almost instantly.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Correct. The advantage though of running straight out of the computer is that if you have a home theater receiver you can do the lossless audio like TrueHD, DTS-HD/MA and Atmos from the ripped blu-rays if your receiver supports it.

Yeah but you can do that without forcing a NAS into the role. Optimally your NAS is a poor HTPC because it is too loud from fan noise needed to keep HDs cool to be stuck in a living room.

Part of the whole fun of a real NAS is then you can have smaller client systems anywhere you have a TV. OP wants to use Plex and Rokus, but I personally have three Chromeboxes (all capable of bitstreaming HD audio) hiding behind TVs in my kitchen, living room and bedroom.

 

[smitbret]

3rd vote for unRAID. If all you need is a place to store media and to stream it across the network then there is no better value than a DIY unRAID. You're already comfortable with Plex so it should be pretty smooth if you went that route.

No one really addressed your RAID questions, though.

Hardware RAID is overkill for what you need. In a true hardware RAID, all of the parity calculations are done on the card and data is striped across the drives. It is very fast since data can be read as chunks across multiple drives at the same time, but it is much faster than you will ever use for media serving. A single, platter HDD can serve up 3-4+ streams on its own without batting an eye. Hardware RAID is best for high I/O situations where the array is called on to make huge numbers of data reads and writes per second.

Software RAID comes in several different flavors. If you set it up from connectors on your motherboard and set up an array, that is actually a software RAID that looks like a hardware RAID. It sucks because the only real advantage you'll get is some parity protection.

ZFS is a file system like Fat32, NTFS, ext4, UDF, btrfs, etc. It is open source and since it is just a file system you can use ZFS with hardware RAID but it is actually better to just use its own software RAID features. When used with ECC memory there is no better file system for data protection with scrubbing, data integrity checks, protection from bit flips, data corruption, etc. You can also use consumer drives with ZFS. ZFS RAID runs similar to hardware RAID but the parity calculations are handled by the CPU. It is very, very fast and very, very robust but can still be fairly expensive because you need a ton of ECC memory to really take advantage of ZFS's features and you can't expand arrays without breaking down the entire array (which destroys any data stored on it) and then rebuilding it. You can always add new arrays and then pool them which does come with some benefits but that is even further down the road.

You probably best off using unRAID, FlexRAID, or SnapRAID. Poofy hit on one of the biggest advantages of those; because data is not striped you can expand unRAID, FlexRAID and SnapRAID at any time without breaking down your entire array. You can also mix different size drives and take advantage of all available free space. Finally, if you ever have a catastrophic failure of multiple drives, you only lose the data on the drives that failed.

RAID 5/6 is different for these software RAIDs than it is in Hardware or ZFS. Where data is redundantly striped across all of the disks in hardware/ZFS these software RAIDs have dedicated drives that are only used for parity. unRAID can mimic a RAID 5 (I think RAID 6 is in beta or coming soon but someone may correct me) with 1 dedicated parity drive. RAID 6, just adds a second parity drive so you could lose 2 drives and not lose data. SnapRAID supports up to 6 parity drives so you could lose up to six drives at the same time and still not lose any data. FlexRAID has no limit. The general feeling I have gotten around the internet is that you should have 1 parity drive for every 5-6 data drives. You may want to start with a RAID 5 and then when/if you add a 7th data drive just add another parity drive, too. unRAID will undoubtedly be supporting 2 parity drives very soon if not already.

 

[gorcorps]

Sounds like unraid is the way to go, I'll do that. My question now is if it's possible to stick a drive in that already has data and everything function correctly?

I have a 2 bay NAS right now that is set up for mirrored drives. Would it be possible to put one of those drives in service in my unRAID box, then erase the other one and add that too? Or should I just get a new drive, copy over what's on my current NAS then erase and add those?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Sounds like unraid is the way to go, I'll do that. My question now is if it's possible to stick a drive in that already has data and everything function correctly?

No, it uses a particular Linux specific file system. It need two blank drives to start (one storage and one parity). You can mix and match hard drive types and sizes as long as your biggest drive is the parity drive.

 

[gorcorps]

No, it uses a particular Linux specific file system. It need two blank drives to start (one storage and one parity). You can mix and match hard drive types and sizes as long as your biggest drive is the parity drive.

Alright, that's what I figured but wanted to make sure. I think I should be able to get by without buying a drive right now anyway. I'll be able to take one drive from my old NAS and put it with the drive the new system comes with to start unRAID... then I'll just copy the remaining drive over and then stick that in the new system when it's done.

 

[gorcorps]

Well... this isn't going as smoothly as I hoped. Took a long time to even get the server running before I found out my brand new sandisk USB drive was the problem. Currently using an HP drive I had lying around and that seems to work fine.

Now that it's up and running, I can't figure out how to actually access the drives on any computer. I saw some talk about workgroups and I've made sure those are all the same, but I don't see the system in my network places like people are claiming I should. I have to mess with it later.

Also, through trying to find that problem I found somebody complaining that you see each drive in the unRAID box individually. Is that true? I was under the impression that windows could see one large drive, not the individual smaller ones. If that's the case then there's no reason for me to go further and I'll have to look for something else.

 

[ControlD]

Well... this isn't going as smoothly as I hoped. Took a long time to even get the server running before I found out my brand new sandisk USB drive was the problem. Currently using an HP drive I had lying around and that seems to work fine.

Now that it's up and running, I can't figure out how to actually access the drives on any computer. I saw some talk about workgroups and I've made sure those are all the same, but I don't see the system in my network places like people are claiming I should. I have to mess with it later.

Also, through trying to find that problem I found somebody complaining that you see each drive in the unRAID box individually. Is that true? I was under the impression that windows could see one large drive, not the individual smaller ones. If that's the case then there's no reason for me to go further and I'll have to look for something else.

You don't see each drive individually, you only see the shares. So, for example, if your "Movies" share spans across three disks, you still only see one share (with whatever name you gave it) when browsing the network with a client.

I'm not sure why your shares aren't showing up to your clients. Starting with the simple stuff ... you do have the array started correct? If the array is stopped the shares will not be visible on your network. You have made at least one share and given it a name? Your clients won't see a "drive" with unRAID, just whatever shares you have created.

I never had to do any workgroups setup to get my shares working. When I get home I can take a look at my share settings and see if there is something simple that might have been overlooked.

Are you able to map a share as a network drive? That should at least tell you whether or not the shares are at least available.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Mine is running on freeNAS. To be honest though I don't know much about the server/NAS landscape. FreeNAS was my first attempt at an OS and it ended up working so well that I stopped looking at other options. Plex media server is included as a plugin that runs in a jail on freenas. It was very easy to get working and my ~$400 (not counting HDDs of course) purpose-built box can easily support 2 simultaneous HD streams. It's pretty hard to beat that for the money.

I believe current iterations of freeNAS only support ZFS and it is recommended that you use software RAID, so that's what I did. It's built on openBSD, but you don't have to know much about linux to make it work. What little I know about linux I did learn from messing around with it though.

You can increase the size of your array with freeNAS, though it doesn't seem as painless as some other suggestions in this thread. I just replaced all the drives in one of mine with larger ones, and when the last drive began resilvering the extra space was accessible. I'm running raid 5 (raidz in zfs terms) on mine so I at least have some protection against drive failure and so that I can swap drives for larger ones one at a time for more space when I need it. Right now I've got my box filled to capacity with drives, so that's my only real expansion option besides building another box.

I'm pretty happy with my setup, but starting from scratch I might give unraid a look. It requires a bit more linux knowledge I think, but it should also offer a great deal more flexibility than a dedicated NAS OS. I think I would be prepared to try several things before I dumped all my data into the server/NAS though.

 

[gorcorps]

You don't see each drive individually, you only see the shares. So, for example, if your "Movies" share spans across three disks, you still only see one share (with whatever name you gave it) when browsing the network with a client.

I'm not sure why your shares aren't showing up to your clients. Starting with the simple stuff ... you do have the array started correct? If the array is stopped the shares will not be visible on your network. You have made at least one share and given it a name? Your clients won't see a "drive" with unRAID, just whatever shares you have created.

I never had to do any workgroups setup to get my shares working. When I get home I can take a look at my share settings and see if there is something simple that might have been overlooked.

Are you able to map a share as a network drive? That should at least tell you whether or not the shares are at least available.

Okay, that's good to know. The array is started and the parity drive was setup overnight and everything seems to be working, I just couldn't see it on the network the same way I see my other NAS devices. I haven't tried mapping it through a manual address yet, I was just trying to map it through network places based on the guides I read but I'll try it again manually. Assuming I keep the default machine name of "tower", would the mapping be as simple as "//tower/share/"?

 

[ControlD]

Okay, that's good to know. The array is started and the parity drive was setup overnight and everything seems to be working, I just couldn't see it on the network the same way I see my other NAS devices. I haven't tried mapping it through a manual address yet, I was just trying to map it through network places based on the guides I read but I'll try it again manually. Assuming I keep the default machine name of "tower", would the mapping be as simple as "//tower/share/"?

That's pretty much how I have done it in the past. I usually map it as "\\IP Address\share". Now that you typed that, I do seem to remember something funny happening back on my Windows 7 install in regards to referencing my unRAID server by it's name rather than the IP address. I wish I could remember what that was, but as I recall just browsing to the server using its' IP address did some sort of refresh that made my shares start working. That was back in the unRAID 5.x days though and as I recall I had to get SAMBA configured correctly on the unRAID side before the shares worked 100% of the time. With unRAID 6 I haven't had any such problems.

 

[gorcorps]

That's pretty much how I have done it in the past. I usually map it as "\\IP Address\share". Now that you typed that, I do seem to remember something funny happening back on my Windows 7 install in regards to referencing my unRAID server by it's name rather than the IP address. I wish I could remember what that was, but as I recall just browsing to the server using its' IP address did some sort of refresh that made my shares start working. That was back in the unRAID 5.x days though and as I recall I had to get SAMBA configured correctly on the unRAID side before the shares worked 100% of the time. With unRAID 6 I haven't had any such problems.

I think I know what you're talking about. There was a (relatively) common issue that came up in my searches regarding not being able to access the box via name even though it worked through IP address. I didn't dig too deeply because that wasn't the issue I was having, but it looked like people had figured it out eventually.

It'd probably be easiest to just set it up w/ a static IP so there's no question about it... just in case.

 

[sactoking]

I've got an unRAID media server at home running 24/7 and serving two Rokus (a 1 and a 3). It's got separate shares for Movies, Kids Movies, Holiday Movies, TV Shows, Exercise Programs, Home Movies, Photos and Data. Some things I've learned over the years and lots of successes and failures with various iterations of unRAID :

1. Make sure you use an approved USB. I've got an approved Sandisk Cruzr and I've been using it for 5 years with no issues.

2. I like WD Green hard drives. In my experience the 2TB drives are a great price point and the low power consumption is nice.

3. Technically you can set up to access Shares OR Drives. If you have, say, 3 data drives in your array you can access a "Media" share that spans all three drives or you can access each specific drive individually.

4. The share management options are nice. Being able to set drive-spanning shares to "high water", "most available", etc. in determining which drive a folder gets written to really helps you avoid over-taxing a drive.

5. Same with the folder split options. Everyone has their own personal preferences with how their media is stored and labeled and setting where a folder splits can really prevent drive overuse.

6. If you're not using it yet, make sure you're on unRAID v6. It's leaps and bounds better than v5. The control panel is great for monitoring drive temp, server CPU/RAM usage, etc.

7. Be sure to set up a share directly to your flash drive, that way you don't have to telnet in or shut the whole thing down and transfer the drive to another computer if you have to tinker with the flash drive contents.

8. If you can (and your unRAID license permits it) be sure to use a cache drive and a cache parity. It really helps performance to not be writing directly to the array while also streaming off of it. You can automate the cache to write to the array at like 4am every day, when presumably you're not using it.

9. There may occasionally be issues with mapping network drives in Win7. When I first set up my unRAID in 2010 I couldn't map it as \\tower\Movies I had to map it as \\root\Movies. When I upgraded to v6 a couple of months back the mapping properly defaulted to \\tower\.

10. Mapping drives is actually convenient for some purposes instead of having the whole device show up in the network map. I get to pick and choose which devices get access to which shares. For example, my desktop PC has access to a "Data" share that no other PC can access. I use it to store old resumes, tax information, games dl'ed from GOG (just in case they ever go belly up), etc. My wife's laptop has a "Business" share for her to unload large media files if she needs to put them where noone else can access them.

11. Docker in v6 is great and frustrating. It's great because it means that you can integrate Plex into unRAID. I had pretty sketchy Plex stability with a "traditional" install on top of unRAID v5 but since switching to a Docker install in unRAID v6 my Plex stability has been superb. The downside is that the Plex webUI is soooooo slow through Docker. With a traditional install you "dial" into the webUI directly and it was fairly snappy but with Docker it's slowed by unRAID and Docker. Still, I'd trade the stability for the UI responsiveness any day.

12. If you're comfortable with it, set up you unRAID server for a static IP. Then you can enter the Plex webUI and set up Internet sharing of your Plex media. If you have the Plex app on a phone/tablet/whatever and the proper login credentials you can access your home media remotely. That's been great for me when I travel with the kids. If they need a break from activities I can get to my Kids Movies share remotely and put on something I know they like and I've screened for appropriateness.

 

[Aikouka]

Switching to unRAID sounds interesting. I'm currently just running Windows 7, and it works fine, but I wouldn't mind something designed more for server use. I contemplated going fancier with something like ZFS in the past, but I'd really only care about that when it comes to more important things like documents and such. In that case, I almost think I'd be better off with two separate servers.

Although, the one thing that has me holding off is my eventual switch to SiliconDust's DVR service. It technically isn't slated for unRAID, but it's designed to work on Linux-x86. So, it should work on unRAID. It's one of those things that I'd like to wait and see, but it looks like unRAID also supports VMs. So, I could just install Windows 7 in a VM for the DVR service?

 

[sactoking]

Although, the one thing that has me holding off is my eventual switch to SiliconDust's DVR service. It technically isn't slated for unRAID, but it's designed to work on Linux-x86. So, it should work on unRAID. It's one of those things that I'd like to wait and see, but it looks like unRAID also supports VMs. So, I could just install Windows 7 in a VM for the DVR service?

You could run an unRAID Win7 VM. Lots of people do that and there should be lots of info online on getting it set up. Since the service you're interested in has a Linux option I bet someone will develop a Docker container for it, in which case you should be able to load it to unRAID v6. You can always go to the unRAID forums and ask an enthusiast to work on it.

 

[rchunter]

I'm planning on building another unraid server next year. When I first bought my copy of unraid Pro they were offering buy one get one free copies. So I have an extra usb stick just sitting here that's registered already. I'd like a backup server so i'm probably going to build one soon.

 

[gorcorps]

I've got an unRAID media server at home running 24/7 and serving two Rokus (a 1 and a 3). It's got separate shares for Movies, Kids Movies, Holiday Movies, TV Shows, Exercise Programs, Home Movies, Photos and Data. Some things I've learned over the years and lots of successes and failures with various iterations of unRAID :

1. Make sure you use an approved USB. I've got an approved Sandisk Cruzr and I've been using it for 5 years with no issues.

2. I like WD Green hard drives. In my experience the 2TB drives are a great price point and the low power consumption is nice.

3. Technically you can set up to access Shares OR Drives. If you have, say, 3 data drives in your array you can access a "Media" share that spans all three drives or you can access each specific drive individually.

4. The share management options are nice. Being able to set drive-spanning shares to "high water", "most available", etc. in determining which drive a folder gets written to really helps you avoid over-taxing a drive.

5. Same with the folder split options. Everyone has their own personal preferences with how their media is stored and labeled and setting where a folder splits can really prevent drive overuse.

6. If you're not using it yet, make sure you're on unRAID v6. It's leaps and bounds better than v5. The control panel is great for monitoring drive temp, server CPU/RAM usage, etc.

7. Be sure to set up a share directly to your flash drive, that way you don't have to telnet in or shut the whole thing down and transfer the drive to another computer if you have to tinker with the flash drive contents.

8. If you can (and your unRAID license permits it) be sure to use a cache drive and a cache parity. It really helps performance to not be writing directly to the array while also streaming off of it. You can automate the cache to write to the array at like 4am every day, when presumably you're not using it.

9. There may occasionally be issues with mapping network drives in Win7. When I first set up my unRAID in 2010 I couldn't map it as \\tower\Movies I had to map it as \\root\Movies. When I upgraded to v6 a couple of months back the mapping properly defaulted to \\tower\.

10. Mapping drives is actually convenient for some purposes instead of having the whole device show up in the network map. I get to pick and choose which devices get access to which shares. For example, my desktop PC has access to a "Data" share that no other PC can access. I use it to store old resumes, tax information, games dl'ed from GOG (just in case they ever go belly up), etc. My wife's laptop has a "Business" share for her to unload large media files if she needs to put them where noone else can access them.

11. Docker in v6 is great and frustrating. It's great because it means that you can integrate Plex into unRAID. I had pretty sketchy Plex stability with a "traditional" install on top of unRAID v5 but since switching to a Docker install in unRAID v6 my Plex stability has been superb. The downside is that the Plex webUI is soooooo slow through Docker. With a traditional install you "dial" into the webUI directly and it was fairly snappy but with Docker it's slowed by unRAID and Docker. Still, I'd trade the stability for the UI responsiveness any day.

12. If you're comfortable with it, set up you unRAID server for a static IP. Then you can enter the Plex webUI and set up Internet sharing of your Plex media. If you have the Plex app on a phone/tablet/whatever and the proper login credentials you can access your home media remotely. That's been great for me when I travel with the kids. If they need a break from activities I can get to my Kids Movies share remotely and put on something I know they like and I've screened for appropriateness.

Thanks for the info. I haven't quite got Plex set up yet (didn't have a lot of time yesterday to mess with it) so that's helpful... I'll go the docker route. Since I'll really only need to use the Plex UI for the initial setup, the slow UI shouldn't be a problem.