Right, but that should be evidence enough that you shouldn’t be using Windows.
Performance expectations that you have are derived from the recommended setup in both hardware and software, deviation from that will yield different results.
oh Im not disputing that windows is the culprit at all.
Just wanted to check if someone had any other settings I could check before needing to go the route of installing Ubuntu and then figuring how to move my existing Plex metadata from windows over to Ubuntu, since that is a much bigger time requirement and also because I’ve never used Linux before.
Hey this could be the push I needed to learn Linux and start moving away from Windows, so could be a win win at the end of this project.
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Any thoughts on using proxmox to split things out? My existing offsite server is an r610 with dual x5670s, and is on proxmox. I like that I can so easily split out machines, have one on vpn, etc.
With this machine, I’d probably be moving usb storage over from my pro desk i5-4670 which has been a glorified NAS, and eventually be getting a usb 4 bay enclosure for an offsite backup of my media (and local plex for isp data cap saving).
Eventually maybe other services?
I just worry about overhead with a weak cpu, passthrough of intel quicksync, etc.
one of those drive caddy’s made for laptops would probably work as well. They may even make one that would fit the HP 290
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XIUQYA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Got my 290/Optane/I340-4T set up and running with OPNsense over the weekend. For the time being I created a bridge for the 4 NIC ports, not ideal I know, as I didn’t want the internet to be down for the family for long while I sorted out a better solution. The HP290 is running cool (about 39-40C), miniscule CPU usage even with the bridged NICs, and 12% of the 16gb Optane used. Really pleased with this device.
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Careful, switching inside of pfSense takes a lot of CPU usage and will impact performance. I’d look at getting a dumb 8 port switch ASAP.
Something like this.
Yep, that is the plan. Also looking at the Netgear “Smart” 8-port switch, linked in the Discord chat about tech deals. Not sure that one is worth waiting for, shipping date is a couple of weeks out. But it would have VLAN and some other light managed capabilities if ever needed. Same price as buying an unmanaged switch.
Where do you find valid coupon codes, like JUMBOSAVE?
No coupon code needed right now, 15% off in checkout via ebay.
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Damn my impatience. I bought for 110 off amazon instead.
Buy a second one and average it out?
Just ordered mine this morning, can’t wait to setup Plex on it. Will be a huge upgrade from my 10 year old server running on a spinning disk. Great opportunity for me to learn Ubuntu.
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Alright, after spending probably a good 10-12 hours trying to figure out the best way to migrate my old windows plex metadata to ubuntu, I finally succeeded and got it all up and running and retained my watch history and metadata. The only thing I could not transfer over were my settings so my users need to repin the libraries to their home tab.
I’ve never used linux so I had to learn how to use it while trying to get everything up and running.
I was able to get 10 1080p transcodes at 8 Mbps on various devices in my house before I started to have some of them buffer. But I also started all of them within a minute or two of each other so probably no time to build up a buffer. I am still using the 4 GB ram so maybe that also had something to do with it. Just bought an 8 GB stick and will stick that in as well.
A couple questions.
Any issues combing the original 4GB stick and an 8GB stick of ram for a total of 12GB?
Anything else I should do get this running in the best configuration?
What are peoples temps? Mine is at 30 Celsius not at load. .
Thanks for the guide and this build.
Good price for 256 GB Samsung NVMe M.2 2280 drive , seller is accepting offer for $37.99 and claims it is new
There are tons of better NVMe deals than the one you posted.
Here’s one for $30:
Here’s one on amazon for the same price:
https://amzn.to/38PLjHK
Been a lurker for a while finally decided to build my own plex server. Is there any reason I cannot/shouldn’t run unRAID with just 2x6tb drives on this system using an external case for the drive? My plan is to experiment with this build, get to know the components and unRAID and then most likely add new drives in the future. My storage requirements wont be huge for the initial plex setup but as a photographer my storage is slowly getting fragmented over external drives/cloud storage/SD cards and what not.
The reason I want to build my NAS with the HP 290 is for the quicksync support as most of my library requires transcoding while I feel I can add a 9201-8e for expansion.
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Once this is up and running I would simply use the network attached drive to transfer all of the data I have(unless I find a better way to do it). I plan to run nextcloud in the future to do backups from my mobile devices as well.
How’d you move the data from Windows to Linux? what directories exactly? Thanks!
Honestly, a separate device for drives is easiest. 2x6 will limit you pretty quickly. You could just use external I guess, with slightly less control.
I was looking at one of those external 4 bay usb/esata enclosures as a stopgap.
The best would be a rack with tons of bays, and a cpu with this qs support.
My current setup (all photography/drone videograpgy) is 4x external usb drives attached to a separate pc I used for a variety of things.
The 290 will take over for that, and I may buy one of those 4 bay enclosures for a plex backup setup (plex server at a relative’s house with gigabit).
Not the fastest, but I can build over time, relatively clean.
I went for this for 35. https://www.ebay.com/itm/283366224968
UNRAID can be run on few as one drive without parity/redundancy
9201-8e should work fine to a external disk enclosure.
You will probably need to add additional drives in the future for:
Parity - one or two drives
Cache - fast SSD work best as a place to cache data transfers and a place to hold metadata and runlibaries for VM/containers.
The only consideration is that if you run UNRAID and then you run PLEX in a container (“Docker”) from within UNRAID, then PLEX wont have access to the intel QuickSync GPU without you taking the additional step of passing through the GPU to the PLEX container.