@PhlipElder said in NVMe and RAID?:

@marcinozga said in NVMe and RAID?:

@PhlipElder said in NVMe and RAID?:

@biggen said in NVMe and RAID?:

I appreciate all the help guys. Yeah I'm compiling a price list but it ain't cheap. Server alone would be about $7k and that's on the low end with smaller NVMe drives (1.6TB). Then still have to purchase the switch and then have to purchase the 10Gbe NICs for the workstations themselves.

Its a large investment that I bet never sees the light of day. It will turn into "I have $2k, what can you build with that?"

FleaBay is your best friend.

10GbE pNIC: Intel x540: $100 to $125 each.

For 10GbE switch go for NETGEAR XS712T XS716T or XS728T depending on port density needed. The 12-port is $1K.

As far as the server goes, is this a proof of concept driven project?

• ASRock Rack Board
  ** Dual 10GbE On Board (designated by -2T)
• Intel Xeon Scalable or AMD EPYC Rome
• Crucial/Samsung ECC Memory
• Power Supply

The board should have at least one SlimSAS x8 or preferably two. Each of those ports gives you two NVMe drives. An SFF-8654 Y cable to connect to a two drive enclosure would be needed. I suggest ICYDOCK.

The build will cost a fraction of a Tier 1 box.

Once the PoC has been run and the kinks worked out, then go for the Tier 1 box tailored to your needs.

I love Asrock Rack products, their support is great, if they can actually fix the damn issues, if not, you're sol. My next server refresh will have this board: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=ROMED8-2T#Specifications

We just received two ROMED6U-2L2T boards:
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=ROMED6U-2L2T#Specifications

They are a perfect board for our cluster storage nodes with two built-in 10GbE ports. An AMD EPYC Rome 7262 processor, 96GB or 192GB of ECC Memory, four NVMe via SlimSAS x8 on board, and up to twelve SATA SSDs or HDDs for capacity and we have a winner.

FYI: We only use EPYC Rome processors with a TDP of 155 watts or higher. Cost wise, there's very little increase while the performance benefits are there.

EDIT: Missed the Slimline x8 beside the MiniSAS HD ports. That's six NVMe drives if we go that route.

You're probably overpaying with that CPU, here's a deal not many know about, Epyc 7302P for $713
https://www.provantage.com/hpe-p16667-b21~7CMPTCR7.htm

@PhlipElder said in NVMe and RAID?:

@biggen said in NVMe and RAID?:

I appreciate all the help guys. Yeah I'm compiling a price list but it ain't cheap. Server alone would be about $7k and that's on the low end with smaller NVMe drives (1.6TB). Then still have to purchase the switch and then have to purchase the 10Gbe NICs for the workstations themselves.

Its a large investment that I bet never sees the light of day. It will turn into "I have $2k, what can you build with that?"

FleaBay is your best friend.

10GbE pNIC: Intel x540: $100 to $125 each.

For 10GbE switch go for NETGEAR XS712T XS716T or XS728T depending on port density needed. The 12-port is $1K.

As far as the server goes, is this a proof of concept driven project?

• ASRock Rack Board
  ** Dual 10GbE On Board (designated by -2T)
• Intel Xeon Scalable or AMD EPYC Rome
• Crucial/Samsung ECC Memory
• Power Supply

The board should have at least one SlimSAS x8 or preferably two. Each of those ports gives you two NVMe drives. An SFF-8654 Y cable to connect to a two drive enclosure would be needed. I suggest ICYDOCK.

The build will cost a fraction of a Tier 1 box.

Once the PoC has been run and the kinks worked out, then go for the Tier 1 box tailored to your needs.

I love Asrock Rack products, their support is great, if they can actually fix the damn issues, if not, you're sol. My next server refresh will have this board: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=ROMED8-2T#Specifications

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@marcinozga said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@marcinozga said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

One thing I found about portable apps is occasionally a smarter user will install these. Yeah, it gets around our permissions in Ad because they do not modify the registry. so I do not like them for that reason. I can't have users installing whatever they want.

Something else you can do to make chocolatey easier to install in multiple places is use an xml file with the apps you want for yourself or for departments. I made one for myself but I really don't use it, however I have one for a few different departments here because they some specific things and its hard to remember the install names on each. So I just carry them around on a flash drive.

I'm curious on how you set this up,.. I know I have just been using a simple batch file once the core is installed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <packages>
      <package id="googlechrome" />
	  <package id="firefoxesr" />
	  <package id="flashplayerplugin" />
	  <package id="adobereader" />
	  <package id="jre8" />
	  <package id="7zip.install" />
	  <package id="vlc" />
	  <package id="powershell" />
	  <package id="silverlight" />
	  <package id="quicktime" />
	  <package id="irfanview" />
	  <package id="treesizefree" />
	  <package id="windirstat" />
	  <package id="crystaldiskinfo" />
	  </packages>
</xml>

this file is called staff.config
Then i just use:

choco install d:\packages.config –y

I'll have to give that a try on my next build. neat way to address the install.

Why not utilize proper configuration management tool for that? Ansible for example works very well with Chocolatey. The above approach might sound cool, but to me it's more of a stone age way.

Ansible - I've heard of it,.. likely read a little about it,.. but in my State Gov environment - not likely permitted. PS - yes.

that said, this thread is more of a personal nature, could I learn Ansible... maybe. It becomes a point of how many hours in the day are there to do yet one more thing. I just don't have the time - not to mention - I've never gotten into some of the more serious scripting - especially PS.

Ansible for example allows you to skip scripting step, its syntax is just yaml. I believe Salt is the same. Chef and Puppet are much harder to learn.

Things I know about;

• yaml - no
• Chef - no
• Puppet - no
• simple batch - yes
• powershell - simple things - yes

Again - here it boils down to - these are things I just don't have the time to invest into

Let me show you simple playbook

---
- hosts: intel
  tasks:
  - name: Install software
    win_chocolatey:
      name: "{{ item }}"
      state: latest
      ignore_checksums: yes
      force: yes
    with_items:
      - intel-dsa
      - intel-network-drivers-win10
      - intel-rst-driver
      - intel-proset-drivers
      - intel-me-drivers
      - intel-graphics-driver
    failed_when: no
    tags: intel

- hosts: dell
  tasks:
  - name: Install software
    win_chocolatey:
      name: dell-update
      state: latest
    failed_when: no
    tags: dell

- hosts: nvidia
  tasks:
  - name: Install software
    win_chocolatey:
      name: "{{ item }}"
      state: latest
    with_items:
      - gforce-game-ready-driver
      - disable-nvidia-telemetry
      - geforce-experience
    failed_when: no
    tags: nvidia

That's yaml, simple key: value pairs. And there's so much more you can do that way, not just installing software.

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@marcinozga said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

One thing I found about portable apps is occasionally a smarter user will install these. Yeah, it gets around our permissions in Ad because they do not modify the registry. so I do not like them for that reason. I can't have users installing whatever they want.

Something else you can do to make chocolatey easier to install in multiple places is use an xml file with the apps you want for yourself or for departments. I made one for myself but I really don't use it, however I have one for a few different departments here because they some specific things and its hard to remember the install names on each. So I just carry them around on a flash drive.

I'm curious on how you set this up,.. I know I have just been using a simple batch file once the core is installed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <packages>
      <package id="googlechrome" />
	  <package id="firefoxesr" />
	  <package id="flashplayerplugin" />
	  <package id="adobereader" />
	  <package id="jre8" />
	  <package id="7zip.install" />
	  <package id="vlc" />
	  <package id="powershell" />
	  <package id="silverlight" />
	  <package id="quicktime" />
	  <package id="irfanview" />
	  <package id="treesizefree" />
	  <package id="windirstat" />
	  <package id="crystaldiskinfo" />
	  </packages>
</xml>

this file is called staff.config
Then i just use:

choco install d:\packages.config –y

I'll have to give that a try on my next build. neat way to address the install.

Why not utilize proper configuration management tool for that? Ansible for example works very well with Chocolatey. The above approach might sound cool, but to me it's more of a stone age way.

Ansible - I've heard of it,.. likely read a little about it,.. but in my State Gov environment - not likely permitted. PS - yes.

that said, this thread is more of a personal nature, could I learn Ansible... maybe. It becomes a point of how many hours in the day are there to do yet one more thing. I just don't have the time - not to mention - I've never gotten into some of the more serious scripting - especially PS.

Oh - and there is the - I'm only dealing with my computers,.. so is Ansible really worth it? Do I know what's involved in getting Ansible running - no - but I can read. And I likely will do some. But if it needs a server - then no. it's is definitely not worth it for me personally.

Yes, it is worth learning even just to manage single computer. Say you pc dies, once you reload OS, you'll most likely spend hours installing software and configuring it to your liking. Ansible will allow you to fire up one command, and when it's done, your pc will be where you want it to be.

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@marcinozga said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

One thing I found about portable apps is occasionally a smarter user will install these. Yeah, it gets around our permissions in Ad because they do not modify the registry. so I do not like them for that reason. I can't have users installing whatever they want.

Something else you can do to make chocolatey easier to install in multiple places is use an xml file with the apps you want for yourself or for departments. I made one for myself but I really don't use it, however I have one for a few different departments here because they some specific things and its hard to remember the install names on each. So I just carry them around on a flash drive.

I'm curious on how you set this up,.. I know I have just been using a simple batch file once the core is installed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <packages>
      <package id="googlechrome" />
	  <package id="firefoxesr" />
	  <package id="flashplayerplugin" />
	  <package id="adobereader" />
	  <package id="jre8" />
	  <package id="7zip.install" />
	  <package id="vlc" />
	  <package id="powershell" />
	  <package id="silverlight" />
	  <package id="quicktime" />
	  <package id="irfanview" />
	  <package id="treesizefree" />
	  <package id="windirstat" />
	  <package id="crystaldiskinfo" />
	  </packages>
</xml>

this file is called staff.config
Then i just use:

choco install d:\packages.config –y

I'll have to give that a try on my next build. neat way to address the install.

Why not utilize proper configuration management tool for that? Ansible for example works very well with Chocolatey. The above approach might sound cool, but to me it's more of a stone age way.

Ansible - I've heard of it,.. likely read a little about it,.. but in my State Gov environment - not likely permitted. PS - yes.

that said, this thread is more of a personal nature, could I learn Ansible... maybe. It becomes a point of how many hours in the day are there to do yet one more thing. I just don't have the time - not to mention - I've never gotten into some of the more serious scripting - especially PS.

Ansible for example allows you to skip scripting step, its syntax is just yaml. I believe Salt is the same. Chef and Puppet are much harder to learn.

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@marcinozga said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

One thing I found about portable apps is occasionally a smarter user will install these. Yeah, it gets around our permissions in Ad because they do not modify the registry. so I do not like them for that reason. I can't have users installing whatever they want.

Something else you can do to make chocolatey easier to install in multiple places is use an xml file with the apps you want for yourself or for departments. I made one for myself but I really don't use it, however I have one for a few different departments here because they some specific things and its hard to remember the install names on each. So I just carry them around on a flash drive.

I'm curious on how you set this up,.. I know I have just been using a simple batch file once the core is installed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <packages>
      <package id="googlechrome" />
	  <package id="firefoxesr" />
	  <package id="flashplayerplugin" />
	  <package id="adobereader" />
	  <package id="jre8" />
	  <package id="7zip.install" />
	  <package id="vlc" />
	  <package id="powershell" />
	  <package id="silverlight" />
	  <package id="quicktime" />
	  <package id="irfanview" />
	  <package id="treesizefree" />
	  <package id="windirstat" />
	  <package id="crystaldiskinfo" />
	  </packages>
</xml>

this file is called staff.config
Then i just use:

choco install d:\packages.config –y

I'll have to give that a try on my next build. neat way to address the install.

Why not utilize proper configuration management tool for that? Ansible for example works very well with Chocolatey. The above approach might sound cool, but to me it's more of a stone age way.

Not approved here. However i can use powershell all I want.

What? You have java, flash, silverlight, quicktime and adobe reader approved but configuration management tools are not? Wtf?

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@gjacobse said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

@jmoore said in Applications; Portable vs. Installed:

One thing I found about portable apps is occasionally a smarter user will install these. Yeah, it gets around our permissions in Ad because they do not modify the registry. so I do not like them for that reason. I can't have users installing whatever they want.

Something else you can do to make chocolatey easier to install in multiple places is use an xml file with the apps you want for yourself or for departments. I made one for myself but I really don't use it, however I have one for a few different departments here because they some specific things and its hard to remember the install names on each. So I just carry them around on a flash drive.

I'm curious on how you set this up,.. I know I have just been using a simple batch file once the core is installed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <packages>
      <package id="googlechrome" />
	  <package id="firefoxesr" />
	  <package id="flashplayerplugin" />
	  <package id="adobereader" />
	  <package id="jre8" />
	  <package id="7zip.install" />
	  <package id="vlc" />
	  <package id="powershell" />
	  <package id="silverlight" />
	  <package id="quicktime" />
	  <package id="irfanview" />
	  <package id="treesizefree" />
	  <package id="windirstat" />
	  <package id="crystaldiskinfo" />
	  </packages>
</xml>

this file is called staff.config
Then i just use:

choco install d:\packages.config –y

I'll have to give that a try on my next build. neat way to address the install.

Why not utilize proper configuration management tool for that? Ansible for example works very well with Chocolatey. The above approach might sound cool, but to me it's more of a stone age way.

https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/security-controls/terminating-ssl-http/

You're missing ssl in first server block.

server {
     listen 443 ssl;

I don't know if it's strictly required, I'd add it.

@wirestyle22 said in Tomcat with an NGINX Reverse Proxy and Self-signed SSL Certificate:

@scottalanmiller said in Tomcat with an NGINX Reverse Proxy and Self-signed SSL Certificate:

Start with netstat. Is nginx listening?

netstat -tulpn

Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State       PID/Program name
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      26420/nginx: master
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      913/sshd
tcp6       0      0 :::8443                 :::*                    LISTEN      25783/java
tcp6       0      0 127.0.0.1:8005          :::*                    LISTEN      25783/java
tcp6       0      0 :::8009                 :::*                    LISTEN      25783/java
tcp6       0      0 :::80                   :::*                    LISTEN      26420/nginx: master
tcp6       0      0 :::8080                 :::*                    LISTEN      25783/java
tcp6       0      0 :::22                   :::*                    LISTEN      913/sshd
udp        0      0 127.0.0.1:323           0.0.0.0:*                           866/chronyd
udp6       0      0 ::1:323                 :::*                                866/chronyd

Looks like Nginx is not listening on port 443. Did you restart the service after config change?

Few obvious things to check for

• open ports
• selinux
• run nginx -t to verify config
• post nginx logs

Pi-hole won't block youtube ads, at least not the in-video ads. You need youtube premium to get rid of them, no way to block those I'm afraid.

@brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

My idea is:

Option 1:
Set up a new raid10 volume on my host with my spare drive bays.
Install a new VM (Fedora 32 server) with 16 Tb of storage and Plex on that same VM.
This way, the data never leaves the host and has maximum efficiency.
OR

Option 2:
Set up a new raid10 volume on my host with my spare drive bays.
Install a new VM (Fedora 32 server) as a "NAS" with NFS shares for content.
Point existing Plex Vm at the new NAS.
Data would traverse network between 2 hosts unless Plex was migrated to other host.

Option 1. Less complexity, less things to fail. Although I prefer containers rather than VM.

@stacksofplates said in pi-hole: Group Management:

@stacksofplates said in pi-hole: Group Management:

@marcinozga said in pi-hole: Group Management:

@stacksofplates said in pi-hole: Group Management:

I just use CloudFlare for families. If I need to, I can change DNS on whatever to view something.

That only blocks malware and porn if you choose to. What about ads, marketing crap, tracking, etc.?

I leverage what's in the browser for that stuff.

That might not be 100% the best way to handle it, but I don' thave to manage and pay for a server to do it.

No Raspberry Pi lying around?

@stacksofplates said in pi-hole: Group Management:

I just use CloudFlare for families. If I need to, I can change DNS on whatever to view something.

That only blocks malware and porn if you choose to. What about ads, marketing crap, tracking, etc.?

@Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

Average 1080p movie is about 25GB.

Ehhhh... No. Average 1080p is about 3gb. It really depends on the bitrate used when you encode the ripped data. I have 2 1080p movies and one is 18564 kbps bitrate while the other is 2634 kbps. The second one is 2:40 long and just under 3gb, but the other one is 1:30 and just shy of 16gb. You really have to pay attention to more than just the resolution. Audio can change things a lot, too.

That's on the low end, usually ripped from Netfilx, iTunes or some other web source. And most likely with AC3 audio. If you want good quality rip, 25GB is actually conservative estimate, I have some files over 65GB.

Ah, you're a videophile.

Good to know that they don't enforce the file limit. As long as they don't, you have a good thing going. Google is loosing money on you for sure. But who knows how long that will last?

The only thing I'm wondering is how you watch your movies? If a movie is 25GB and say 90 minutes for simplicity, then that's about 50 Mbps average transfer rate. That's about 10 times more than Netflix at their highest 1080p quality. Do you get that from google drive consistently?

I don't think Google cares too much, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of users like me. And if we all upload the same file, which is quite likely if you get them from torrents or usenet, it gets deduplicated, so Google hardly even notices it. I wouldn't be surprised if my actual usage was 0.

I have symmetric 1Gbit Fios, so I never have any issues with streaming. And some stream 4k videos, I've heard about 90GB 3D 4k files, encrypted, streaming smoothly, without any hiccups. I think both Plexdrive and Rclone have decent buffering logic built in.

Plex will test your network connection and transcode to whatever you have. One of the reasons I had to upgrade from the 2950, aside from all the other reasons, was this transcoding process that uses cpu. The 2950 just couldn't keep up. My first 4k movie (Dark Crystal) was impossible to watch. After my recent storage upgrade, it's smoothly delivered with transcoding, if needed. As the line is tested, it also buffers the video to prevent stutters. I've done server updates with no interruption because the buffered video is longer than the plex delay caused by the software update.

I had the same experience with 4k, on local storage, even before I moved to Gdrive. General consensus is not to transcode 4k files at all, because it's so taxing on your system, and just download 1080p version and keep both.

@Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

Average 1080p movie is about 25GB.

Ehhhh... No. Average 1080p is about 3gb. It really depends on the bitrate used when you encode the ripped data. I have 2 1080p movies and one is 18564 kbps bitrate while the other is 2634 kbps. The second one is 2:40 long and just under 3gb, but the other one is 1:30 and just shy of 16gb. You really have to pay attention to more than just the resolution. Audio can change things a lot, too.

That's on the low end, usually ripped from Netfilx, iTunes or some other web source. And most likely with AC3 audio. If you want good quality rip, 25GB is actually conservative estimate, I have some files over 65GB.

Ah, you're a videophile.

Good to know that they don't enforce the file limit. As long as they don't, you have a good thing going. Google is loosing money on you for sure. But who knows how long that will last?

The only thing I'm wondering is how you watch your movies? If a movie is 25GB and say 90 minutes for simplicity, then that's about 50 Mbps average transfer rate. That's about 10 times more than Netflix at their highest 1080p quality. Do you get that from google drive consistently?

I don't think Google cares too much, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of users like me. And if we all upload the same file, which is quite likely if you get them from torrents or usenet, it gets deduplicated, so Google hardly even notices it. I wouldn't be surprised if my actual usage was 0.

I have symmetric 1Gbit Fios, so I never have any issues with streaming. And some stream 4k videos, I've heard about 90GB 3D 4k files, encrypted, streaming smoothly, without any hiccups. I think both Plexdrive and Rclone have decent buffering logic built in.

@Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

Average 1080p movie is about 25GB.

Ehhhh... No. Average 1080p is about 3gb. It really depends on the bitrate used when you encode the ripped data. I have 2 1080p movies and one is 18564 kbps bitrate while the other is 2634 kbps. The second one is 2:40 long and just under 3gb, but the other one is 1:30 and just shy of 16gb. You really have to pay attention to more than just the resolution. Audio can change things a lot, too.

That's on the low end, usually ripped from Netfilx, iTunes or some other web source. And most likely with AC3 audio. If you want good quality rip, 25GB is actually conservative estimate, I have some files over 65GB.

@Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

Average 1080p movie is about 25GB, so just 400 will fill 10TB. Unless DVD rips are your thing, then sure, you might fit few thousands.

@Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

Plex needs lots of CPU power if your clients require transcoding. I have a 4 core E3 Xeon, 1231 I think, running Fedora on bare metal, but Plex and others run in docker containers. All my media is sitting in Google Drive, I have that mounted with https://github.com/plexdrive/plexdrive , some use rclone too. Google Drive for business cost me $12 a month and comes with unlimited storage, I think I'm pushing close to 100TB now. I've had way too many drive failures, I even had LSI SAS controller flipping on me, and after spending close to $1500 on storage alone, I said screw that. There's even Plexdrive docker image to keep your base system kosher, I think it comes with option of UnionFS and MergerFS, but that's more advanced topic.

See https://cloudbox.works/ for some ideas, I built by server in similar way. Cloudbox is a set of Ansible roles to setup completely automated media server. Mine is a bit different, I use Traefik as reverse proxy, with added OAuth2 authentication layer.

Has anyone priced out storage and/or services through Vultr?

It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hetzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

@wirestyle22 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@DustinB3403 My wife ripped all the DVD and Blu-Ray discs. It is pretty much her "project". I just maintain it. I believe we have about 460 movies or so. I ripped all my music to flac files and have it on there as well. Works great for my needs.

Even if you buy the media the act of breaking the DRM is illegal, so there doesn't seem to be any legitimate way to do it outside of non-DRM content.. Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Crunchyroll, etc are really not a replacement for Plex. I deleted my Plex server when we moved into the house and moved over to streaming services. It feels very limiting. I also hate having to search for content in multiple applications. If someone developed a website that shows you a single pane for all of your streaming services I bet a lot of people would use it.

I only mentioned paid streaming services as an alternative to usenet. If you have to pay to pirate media, you might just spend that money on legit services.

There's AppleTV and iOS app, WatchAid TV Show Planner, it tracks your TV shows and links directly to streaming services. Not perfect and not a complete solution as it doesn't support movies, but it's a start.