I am very unfamiliar with NAS and how to set up a plex server but I am getting a little more knowledgeable about it as I research it more.  Would this be a good buy to set up a Plex server?

QNAP 2 Bay

according to the list on plex that device doesn't seem like its able to handle plex. would only be good for movie storage. imo i would look into something that is able to transcode on the fly as some devices may not be able to handle some codecs as others and it would just be easier.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac4oOLPRtCkgUxU0jdj3tmMPc/edit#gid=314388488


for something quick and dirty depending how much space you want this would be fine to use. slap some extra hard drives in and only run it with only the power and ethernet plugged in. its a little lower in specs compared to what mine is but should be ok.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883280055

if you can spend more i can help you further just message me if i don't respond to the thread right away.

thanks for the response! sorry i didnt respond sooner been really busy!

so a stand alone server would be better?  i just want it to put all my dvds and blu rays (tv shows movies etc) on and be able to play off of plex.

ill have to check those out...obviously it would be on all the time?

yeah a stand alone server would be better if you know can build one. I plan on replacing my NAS with a mini-ITX server in some small ass case so i can run plex, file backup and torrents.

 

Go with a synology. They are much easier to use and get rave reviews. They make them with larger drive bay amounts and have apps for the phone and can sync and backup pc files. Easy to configure. QNAP is much more of a small business solution and if you aren't tech savvy will be difficult to use. If you have the $$ though they will probably deliver better performance.

 

okay thanks alot guys! ive been hearing alot about those and will be getting one for sure when i move into the new house!

many thanks!

Just do it right the first time.  These go on sale as a Newegg Shell Shocker daily deal every couple of weeks.

HP Proliant Microserver

These little servers run Plex very well.  They also do just about anything you're going to need for a home server.  They also have 4 HD bays that are easily accessible as your Plex library grows.  I have one with 4 drives.  It's dead silent and has been running with no issues for a couple of years.  They usually ship with Windows Server, but mine runs Win7 very well.  It doesn't get much easier than this.

thanks for the help toast!!!

now the next question is what do you guys use to convert your DVDs and blu rays to files on your computer? I know i will need to buy a blu ray disc drive for my current desktop...

I use MakeMKV to rip.  Then Handbrake if I need to compress (although I leave most everything in its original format, large file size and all, mostly because I'm too lazy to convert so many movies and episodes, and because storage is cheap).

I've been using Plex for a couple of years.  Here are my observations.

Plex will say that if the client machine is capable of transcoding (CPU-horsepower-permitting), it will.  I have a G550T-based Plex server, and when viewing a movie (DVD, not bluray) via the Plex internal website, I see 80-100% CPU use on the server, with the client being an i3 or Phenom II X4.  In other words, the local machine should be doing the transcoding, but Plex is still doing enough work to stress the CPU.  No one on the Plex forum seems to be able to explain this sufficiently to satisfy my curiosity.

On my wife's iPad, which can't do local transcoding, Plex goes to 100% CPU use and stays pegged when she watches something.

Right now we can do 2 streams at the same time from the Plex server without stuttering on the clients, one on an iPad and one on an i3 laptop.  If I use my Phenom II X4 desktop, all clients experience stuttering and the sysload on the Plex server climbs high.

I am going to add an HTPC and an LCD TV to the living room eventually, and when I do, I am going to upgrade the Plex server to a Xeon.

There is a Plex local app that you can install; I have played with it a little but have not yet looked at server-side CPU use while a client is playing something.

In short, buy more CPU than you think you need, especially if you have low-CPU-power tablets in the house.  Eventually you will end up using them as clients, and the server needs to be able to handle the transcoding.

I tried running Plex on my unraid server; Athlon X2 250, fail.  Tried it on Atom (was just curious), fail.  Tried it on Core2Duo, fail.  The Celeron 550T is handling things for now, but will need to be upgraded eventually.

I also periodically experience the need to reboot the server, or restart Plex server process, as clients that were watching something fail to completely terminate the connection, and the server ends up with a sysload above 9(!!!) even with everyone in the house asleep.  I am running it under Ubuntu 14, but will probably switch to Mint when I upgrade.

They usually don't ship with an OS at all (like anything server related, the OS is extra). I've got the Proliant N54L with 8GB of memory, a Asus blu-ray drive, two 2.5 TB drives in a Raid 5 config, DB9 Serial port running on Ubuntu 12.04 Server edition (headless).

They run about twice as fast under Linux than they do on Windows. Plex runs just fine (don't think I ever updated mine to the current Plexserver edition), MakeMKV to rip from disk to drive, Handbrake to convert and downsize from a 35 GB .mkv file to a 5-7 GB .m4v file. Still can back up all of my Linux machines, at one point I had a working TimeMachine backup for my Mac, keep multiple RPi images (custom minimal Raspbian, current Raspbian, arch, raspbx) as well as various copies of Windows from 98SE to 7 Pro…not to mention the 15 or 16 different Linux distros.

Great little machine for the price. I became real fond of the Proliant series servers back when I was working IT. We were seeing a 7 year service life out of them and only about 1 year out of Dell's servers.

Skip the HP micro server (unless you're really limited on space--like it's going in a media cabinet) and go for something like this: i3 Lenovo server

In my own experience, you want plenty of processor for transcoding.  Although you may not need to transcode over the local network, you will probably need to transcode for remote streaming and for syncing stuff to other devices.  

A couple other thoughts:  plex is awesome--hands down.  The server is one of the few things I've bought recently that my wife won't give me grief about the cost as it's been totally worth it.  I also love the remote streaming (watch a movie on my phone while walking the dog or waiting to pick up kids--yes please).  I have old tv shows that sync to my wife's android tablet so she has stuff to watch on the treadmill at the gym (watch one, and it automatically syncs the next unmatched episode). Also, when my kids are being rotten, I threaten to turn off plex.  

My plex server is a Dell T20 poweredge tower with an E3-1276v3 Xeon processor (upgraded from the original haswell pentium chip).  Clearly overkills, but gets transcoding tasks done very fast.  Ssd for the OS and a couple of big hard drives for storage.  Running windows server 2012.

great, you know can build one. I plan on replacing my NAS with a mini-ITX server in some small ass case so i can run plex, file backup and torrents. thankshttp://goo.gl/q9DXMP