G+_Nicholas Franks Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 WARNING NOT QUAD MATERIAL. Okay quick Q for the network/server geeks. Running a Freenas Server ( Four 2 TB HD in Raid Z2, AMD Athlon II X2 250 Processor, 16 gig ram ) Using a Win7 box as a media PC hooked up to TV ( Intel i5 cpu, 6 gig ram ) . I installed Plex on the Win7 box and pointing to folders on my FreeNas Box. but i noticed in the Freenas Plugins that they have a Plex server option also. Whats better.??.. leave the PLEX Server on the Win7 box and do some "load balancing" or leave it all too the FreeNas server to do all transcoding and streaming ? i think leaving the freenas box a pure NAS is probably better unless the Freebsd version of PLEX is much better ?? Let me know what you think . Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Heinz Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 I'm sorry. This is one of my triggers. Now I'm having a panic attack about whether my Synology NAS is properly backed up. ;-) My understanding about whether to install a Plex server on your NAS is that it depends on a few things: 1. File server protocols aren't optimized for streaming video, so if you're getting poor video performance, you might want to install the Plex server and see if it helps. 2. Whether you want the NAS to do the transcoding. Personally, I would think that your PC would do a better job at that than your NAS, but YMMV. 3. Whether you want Plex to serve video to a device that doesn't understand network shares. My playstation works, really badly, with DLNA, but it also has a Plex client, so installing Plex on my Synology make sense if I wanted to stream video from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 I only use Plex for my Roku. I don't stream to a phone (yuck!) or tablet. So I encode everything for the Roku and dump on the Plex server (Synology NAS) If you are having network congestion, you could pop a second card into both the Win7 & FreeNAS machines and have them have a direct isolated link. If its a CPU loading issue, I'd let the Win7 machine to the xcoding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Keep in mind that FreeNAS is really FreeBSD with a web gui on top. You shouldn't have any issues running Plex from it, I'm just not sure an Athlon II X2 250 will handle that well. If nothing else you can always try both, just be sure to only have one server active at a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Timothy Hamlett Posted May 21, 2015 Share Posted May 21, 2015 Meh, I use a hyper-v machine for my Plex server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Timothy Hamlett Posted May 21, 2015 Share Posted May 21, 2015 "WARNING NOT QUAD MATERIAL" lmao On second thought.... WHY DIDN'T YA USE YUR QUAD FOR A PLEX SERVER! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU! :P sorry, couldn't resist! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Nicholas Franks Posted May 21, 2015 Author Share Posted May 21, 2015 You are right, if you can't fix it with QUADS, use more Quads Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted May 21, 2015 Share Posted May 21, 2015 True. Sneaker Net is often faster than Ethernet. Just have your quad deliver a USB drive with the data you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_David Wiggins Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 I would also look into VortexBox (http://vortexbox.org/about). I'm in the process of setting that up in my home. It works as the back end media server, with my PS3, PC, and Kodi (xbmc) devices on the front end. VortexBox is geared to media storage rather than flat file NAS storage. VB and Kodi are managed by different folks, but are aware of each other and seem to play well together (even mentioning each other on their websites). I haven't played with Plex any so if you are invested in it, just ignore me, hehe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Nicholas Franks Posted June 1, 2015 Author Share Posted June 1, 2015 Well I guess my first instinct was right .. keep freenas box as a Storage and let the media center do all the transcoding and what not. I moved to a new home so i still have to hard wire my home back to my switch/router and NAS ... Nothing better than a fully wired home .. wifi is practical but... you know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts