I’m wanting to build a media server something I have no experience in this area hence why I am here. Finding informative videos seem to be hard or several yrs old. I figure worst case there could be 4 or 6 transcodes going on i doubt that’s the case but figure for the worst just in case. I have a large collection of films and TV shows that I would digitize any where from SD to 4k hdr. I would like to have a 10g nic a couple of cache drives to help the hdd’s out. How much is core count and speed effect streams. Like is it better to go with a server grade like an epic or is consumer grade good. I know zfs can use mem for cache writes also consumer seems to be almost to limited on pcie lanes for graphics,nvme,sata,possibly hba since I was considering sas drives for the 12gbs potential not that I think it would ever saturate something like that. Trying to learn but also get ppls real life experiences on what’s good what’s not
I’d suggest starting small & cheap to test the waters. Get a recent-ish used workstation from ebay et all, then add an Intel Arc 300 series GPU for transcoding. Use a 2TB SSD for storage and a separate 512GB SSD for the OS itself. Install Hex-OS, Proxmox or UnRAID and create some virtual machines to do the heavy lifting for you. One of those would run Plex, the actual media server. You should be able to spend under 500 USD for this option.
As you’re starting cheap & small, set expectations accordingly.
I currently run Jellyfin on a VM. Host system has a 5700X, 32 GB RAM, 512GB boot drive, and a 1080ti for transcoding. The files are all accessed from an SMB share. What @Dutch_Master said is largely true. A cheap used PC will usually do fine as long as it’s from the last ~10 years and you can pop a decent low end GPU in it. You can even get away with raspberry pi if electricity costs are a concern and you don’t plan on doing more then 1-2 1080p streams at once from it.
edit: if you use a Pi would definitely transcode the files using handbrake.
I can recommend Jellyfin over Plex. I’ve found that it just runs better than plex. On plex I had regular issues with buffering while streaming 4K UHD content but when I switched to Jellyfin buffering was almost completely eliminated. I’m 99% sure the root cause for the buffering was the Plex application on the local devices as I was unable to find any networking issues or problems locally with the host system.
Edit: If you want a good guide for getting started I believe this is a really good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ8ijmy3qPo
Hey, I would also go with this as well. Although for me, I would advice firstly testing this stuff out on something? Like an old office pc or something like that running a couple of HDD’s and some implementation to stream that media.
Unless you are going to have multiple people running streams. Based on a quick google search, running gigabit, you should be able to to run about 66 4k streams. Check what is the real speed, but gigabit ethernet (1000MBps) should be enough in my opinnion.
From what I have understood, you are basically building a storage device that will provide streaming services? For that, you should not really need anything major. I am running a R5 3600 and 32GB of RAM on my truenas box and I have not had trouble with that cpu.
Also as Wendell has said on his videos, old server/enterprise hardware consumes a shitton of power, and this box is going to be running 24x7~365 and on that point the power consumption will matter.
The specs that you would need does depend on what is the goal for you? How many clients are you expecting to stream at the same time @klay? Also how much capacity and data security (aka redundancy to account for HDD’s failing). I would probablly go with something like ZFSRaidZ1, so 1 single drive can fail per a vdev (ZFS array of drives that make up a pool’s storage).
I am pretty sure that you will not need SAS12GB. In my opinnion, I am pretty sure that SATA3 drives should be more than enough. From what I know, I am pretty sure your workload would not saturate that SATA3 bandwith without having hundreds of users. And if costs are a factor, SATA-drives are usually bit cheaper than SAS. Also, you cannot easily run SAS on consumer tier equipment without an HBA/RAID-card (Yes, HW raid is dead but I am still running raid-cards as HBA’s.)
Yeah, Jeff has good videos on this stuff, look around also in youtube. There are plent of people making simular content.
@Dutch_Master I have an old r710 that a buddy gave me that I can play with to see how things work wouldn’t be full scale but something to play with. I do have a 5900x and hero board that I could use was just worried that it wasn’t gonna have enough cores I would need a gpu solution as I have an old 1080 that doesn’t seem to work real well without some work arounds maybe a 3080 if I upgrade this yr.
@FinOxy 10g nic is for a couple reasons one I have the internal 10g backbone with room to grow and I figured that keeps the network from ever being an issue. As far as users I don’t think there would be more then 8 at any one time, drives i was figuring a raid z1 with 8 10tb drives maybe in two vdevs not sure yet I have about 500 disc’s to move over and the 4k ones I would rather not compress to the point of losing quality compress yes just not at the expense of the quality. As far as sas i wasn’t really sure if it was a just better and honestly I’ve had good luck finding sas enterprise drives for about what sata drives cost although I don’t remember if they were remans right now
@xyz I thought about jelly haven’t looked at it to much as I figured plex would be the easiest for someone like my mother to use if she did and it would be widely accessible on any TV or other device. When you had problems with plex was it while transcoding or direct streaming most of my tvs are 4k hdr
Not sure what devices you have and that is a very valid consideration. Jellyfin is pretty available, though, not as much as plex. I would check here https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/comments/wx3b1a/list_of_jellyfin_clients/ (note this list isn’t 100% up to date)
UI is about the same as Plex. I would obviously test the two out and make sure it will meet your needs, but most of my family have had minimal issues picking up Jellyfin.
Edit: I will say prefer the feel of Jellyfin when compared to plex. The UI on it has been very snappy on all the devices I use it on.
It occurred during both. Like I said 99% sure it was the local Plex clients causing the buffering issues as it even occurred when I could use Ethernet. This issue might be fixed now, but I encountered it on my Xbox One, Roku, and a Samsung TV. LG TV and web client seemed to work fine for whatever reason.
@xyz I have a 5900x and 1080 sitting around now since I went to a 9800x3d with a hero board and possibly a 3080 if I decide to up grade to a 5080 or if cheap enough a 4090 although I don’t see those coming down ever lol. I know quicksync seems to do well for transcodes and even with work arounds it seems gaming cards are still limited to 3 transcodes at a time I would probably go with a older workstation card unless the Intel gpus do better with transcodes
@xyz I think you ment tvs and such that would use the streams I have all samsungs at home with rokus on most of the tvs. Not sure what mom has but it would be a lowend and if I let my buddy use it they have a smasung. Iphones and samsungs for mobile
Intel GPU’s are good for transcoding from what I’ve heard/read. Here is an older
example for A380: https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/comments/107459s/how_does_the_intel_arc_a380_perform_with_jellyfin/
Roku is fully supported. Samsung is supported but not fully. It requires you load the app via deveopler mode. For your mom and friend I would have them get something like a Roku/Firestick.
Good question for the above 2. Do they exist on your current home network or would these be remote streams? If so I would make sure you have the upload bandwidth to handle this.
Edit: iOS and Android is fully supported by Jellyfin.
@xyz I have a 1gb symmetrical it tests regularly to around 960 with some packet snooping and other securities in place. I doubt they would use it very often but if they needed to I have no problems with it mainly for home access as I don’t have a 4k player everywhere and it would be nice to remote in if I’m some where. Internally I have a 10gig back bone
For serving video, I would use a cheap workstation or mini pc, like others have suggested. With something like an 12500, you should have plenty of quicksync horsepower for 4-6 transcodes (ironically you get more from the onboard gpu than an NVidia card, for licensing/driver reasons)
If your library will fit in the storage on that system, great. Call it done.
If you need a big box of disks to store a large library, make that a second system. Sure, you can combine things, but it is a hassle and costly, where two machines lets you simplify and prioritize cost/performance for each role. Buying server/workstation gear is overkill here, but you might talk yourself into extra $$$ in order to fit everything in the same box.
I like Unraid for a media NAS. The only reason you’d need lots of CPU or Memory would be to handle RAID/ZFS things, where Unraid gives you disk-speed read access without that overhead (writes are slower, but you only have to write a movie once).
I’m using Jellyfin, which I prefer to the problems with Plex as they try to find new monetization and don’t fix media playback bugs. The only problem is that Jellyfin only transcodes on certain clients (works great in browsers!), so your offsite viewers might (or might not) have bandwidth issues. I definitely prefer having 1080 -and- 4k copies on disk separately to always need to transcode down over large 4k streams. (Separate files means more disk space, but if you have appropriate file sizes available, you may never need the transcoder)
You might be better off designing for SSD storage rather than SAS if you really are concerned about speed…but for a streaming server, you shouldn’t be concerned. My whole household can be watching 12 HD streams simultaneously off my 1G internet…the only place I’d bother with faster then GbE in the setup would be between the NAS and the Plex/Jellyfin host.
Feel free to get bigger gear, but only because it makes you feel cool. You can do this job with pretty low end hardware. (Search for “NAS Killer Builds” for details on how and why you can go cheap…it will at least put things in perspective)