NAS for Plex, Roon, family data

[swoti]

Good morning,

I´m using a 453mini from Qnap now for some years. My data volume is about 10TB including important family documents and images. I backup every week on an older QNAP NAS and I have some data also stored in a onedrive cloud account.
The NAS always had it´s problems when it came to Plex transcoding, and now I also want to use it for Roon too.

My plan is now to completely set the system up new. That´s why I´m now looking for a new NAS that is capable of performing all theses tasks.
What would you recommend?
For Roon I probably need to install an SSD drive. It´s recommended in the Roon guideline. I think at least 8GB of RAM is also needed.

For the Data sharing and backup I don´t have a strategy yet. Maybe A single 10TB drive would be sufficient in the NAS in first place. The backup would then be done on a seperate NAS (maybe the older 453mini).
My wife is a teacher and I woud love to have access for her with her IPad from the school network.

Lot´s of planing to do, so I would love to hear your advices.
Thanks a lot.
BEst
Stefan

 

[ddaenen1]

I have a couple of pointers to think about:

- pictures and important family documents i would never store on a system that is not redundant. IF your single 10Tb goes south, all is lost. Having a backup is of course good but easier is to replace the defect drive and mirror again without any interruption or loss of data. I have experienced a HDD crash with all my pictures once and was able to recover almost all pictures but i this experience taught me to always use a redundant array, RAID 1 is the most secure. I still back this up on an external HDD which i remove from the house when going on vacation and stuff.

- What also i learned is that speed is not very important when wanting access pictures or documents so you could think about an older system that takes 2 HDD's or your mini, providing you configure it in RAID 1 or 5. I am running a Synology RS214 with 2 x 4Tb for pics and docs. Works like a charm with the advantage that Synology has good apps likephoto station that take care of your picture album needs. I also use this one to back up my Mac using time machine. The Synology is easy to connect to from outside using the Synology protocoll.

- use a separate system for media that has speed. I used to have a ReadyNAS NR212 which does 1080p Plex transcoding but recently, i gave that up because i wanted something that fitted my 19" rack and there are not a lot of options at a decent price point that can do transcoding properly. In the end, i bought a 2nd hand supermicro server with an Intel Xeon X3430 CPU and 16Gb ECC RAM and 2 x 2TB WD Red in mirror on which i was running FreeNAS from an USB stick which has been running flawless for a month now. Not comfortable with running an OS from a thumbdrive, i got another 2nd Hand Supermicro with a Xeon L3426 CPU and 16 Gb ECC RAM only a week ago on which i have installed FreeNAS on 2 x 240GB Kingfast SSD's in mirror and connected to a Dell MD1000 15 bay enclosure via a HBA SAS controller which soon will house 15 x 2TB SAS HDD's on which i move my entire media collection. The good part is, it is more than fast enough for transcoding and i can still upgrade to an X3470 CPU and increase to 32Gb ECC or in the worst case, install another, more modern Supermicro mini-ATX motherboard with better CPU and RAM. On top of that, i can still expand the pool by replacing the 2Tb drives by a larger size so my system is at least "near future proof". I idon'thave any experience with Roon but will look into it.

Hope this gives you something to think about.

Dominique

 

[ddaenen1]

Good morning,

For Roon I probably need to install an SSD drive. It´s recommended in the Roon guideline. I think at least 8GB of RAM is also needed.

I just looked into Roon and i am wondering why you would want to pay that much money for something hat maybe does only a tid bit more than Plex does? I stream my music via Plex on all devices, when outside, connected a Bose Soundlink mini or inside via the Samsung surround from my TV via bluetooth.

 

[swoti]

Thanks for the feedback. I´m currently already have that backup system you described. What I was looking now is a more snappy,faster system. But maybe you are right and it would be better to have roon running on a nuc. Maybe it´s also possible to let plex run on that device and use the 453 mini only as storage.

 

[System Error Message]

premium plex has GPU acceleration, something that will let you reuse old GPUs and not have to use a powerful CPU. at 3.2 Ghz the quad core phenom ii can handle a single 4k stream on the CPU.

Both qnap and synology cost loads for the hardware you get, what makes them good is their software, just too bad you cant use those on your own hardware.

 

[dosborne]

Both qnap and synology cost loads for the hardware you get, what makes them good is their software, just too bad you cant use those on your own hardware

Having bought a number of different brands over the last 10 years, I would disagree with this, at least as far as QNAP goes. I'm not impressed with the software. I'd prefer a more open Linux environment that can be properly customized to remove the bloat. I also don't find the units themselves all that pricey. I paid about $200 for a 2 bay and about $700 for the 5 bay. I don't find it unreasonable. A lot more than a home built system, yes, but a nice form factor.

A true NAS shouldn't really need a lot of horsepower. It runs into problems when there is a lot of bloatware in the OS, or worse, when people try and run 1000 apps on it (like they do with routers lol).

 

[ddaenen1]

A true NAS should really need a lot of horsepower. It runs into problems when there is a lot of bloatware in the OS, or worse, when people try and run 1000 apps on it (like they do with routers lol).

Fully agree with that statement. I switched over from a Netgear Readynas and a Synology to FreeNAS running on small previous generation Xeon-servers and i would never want to go back. OK, in the beginning it is a bit more tinkering to get it all right but afterwards, it runs rock stable and has so much more flexibility and then the consumer brands. I do still have the Synology in use while i am working to get safe external access to Nextcloud but once that is done, off it goes.

 

[MichaelCG]

OK, in the beginning it is a bit more tinkering to get it all right but afterwards, it runs rock stable and has so much more flexibility and then the consumer brands.

This right here is key. If you don't want to tinker and just want it to work, buy it. If you don't mind tinkering and have some more specific requirements to be met and/or want to save some $$, build it. This is the same discussion in general for COTS software vs opensource. Doesn't matter if you are talking about commercial or consumer use. You buy it when you have less resources to tinker, need someone else to blame/help, or you build it when you want more flexibility. I thought about building a FreeNAS box as well...but my free time to tinker isn't there these days so I bought a Synology box to deal with my storage, Plex, and VM needs to replace my previous home built solution from 10 years ago.

 

[Mark070]

If you are planning on Synology, for "standard family/home" use, and your planning to load up Plex for transcoding; my recommendation is the DS718+, DS918+ and the 1019+. Yes, they are expensive. If you just want to purchase and forget about it ... this is a pretty good option.

 

[MichaelCG]

If it helps, I purchased a DS918+ since I wanted a minimum of 4 bays, wanted to run Plex, wanted to be able to run at least 2 VMs. If you don't need to run VMs, you can save a bit and go to the DS418play. I wanted more memory and CPU cores, so landed on the 918+.