ConnerVT

I use the Uptime Robot website. It's free, and it can email you and/or send other notifications (I use Telegram). I run two instances, One pings my firewall device, the other checks one of my https services that run on my server, through my domain and Cloudflare Tunnel. This way I can tell if my ISP is down or just my server.

They are in your Plex appdata folder:

Trial requires the server has an Internet connection. Is your server connected?

Any insight on how Soon™ until we will see 6.12.4?

If all you need is transcoding for a few users, the Quadro T400 or P400 are inexpensive and low power (35W max). The older Quadro P500 can be found used in the $50-75 USD range.

This statement is the key to it all. It is all about cost when built to scale. So many factors come in to play in the data center, which a barely a rounding error when looking at it from a typical user's perspective. (Even if that user is looking at a small site's network. Costs come from so many places. Power usage. Longevity of device. Speed. Frequency of data access. Heat generation. Physical size. That's just a few that popped into mind just now. Each has a cost associated with it, and how it fits into your data center's needs and usage are calculations that are quite nuanced.

Check out Docker-WebUI in Community Apps.

There is a lot of wisdom in this thread.

Attach the entire zip file.

I've wanted a solution for this for several years. The biggest issue is on the iPhone side - It really does have no good way to handle these transfers in the background with a third party application. Even Nextcloud (which I do have set up) is a frustrating experience which requires active monitoring and actions.

Mo' bigger?

I'm a Jack of all trades in the microprocessor world for nearly 40 years now. First gig after college was creating one of the first hi-res graphic cards (640x480!) to go into the soon to be released IBM PC/AT. Hardware, software, networking and systems since then. My current gig is supporting systems for the place that manufactures the IO die in every AMD Ryzen and EPYC. Thank you for your purchase. 😉 I think you will enjoy Unraid. At its most basic level, it is a very simple GUI that is easy to configure. Due to the maturity of the application, you will find that it has many ways to configure it to do so much more. With a large number of plugins and Docker containers (configured to play out of the box) in the Community Applications (Unraid's take on the Apple App Store) and some great folks active here in the forum, the learning curve should be fast and easy for you.

Hot swap-able drives would be my first thought.

Thank you Spencer. I also found for the first time where to ignore a forum member.

Glad my feedback was useful. Many times it is difficult to answer the "I want a server that does X,Y and Z. Will this hardware work?" type of post, as it comes down to not what you are doing, but how much of it (and if X/Y/Z are all happening at the same time). If your are running Plex and only you and the family are using it, a couple of movies playing in your home LAN is easy. If there are always 5-10 streams going at the same time (with people outside the LAN being served), obviously the workload goes up. The devil is in those details. It sounds as your workloads are fairly low, so you shouldn't have any issues. The motherboard is pretty solid, not what I usually think when I read "I have a spare barebones PC." It should give you enough PCIe lanes, as I mentioned above. Some things to note: The MB shares some bandwidth between the M.2 and SATA connectors. Looks as each M.2 you add has you lose one SATA connector. Keep that in mind when you spec out your drives. You can share a GPU between Plex and Tdarr. This can save you some power and room in your server. You can also use the iGPU of your 8700k for transcoding. (I'm an AMD guy, but have been running Plex for years. Check details of this on your own.) I put my first Unraid server on line about 3 years ago. I really have been impressed with how it all works.

Can this be done? Certainly. Both Plex and Tdarr can be run in Docker containers, each with a dedicated NIC. A third NIC can be for general Unraid usage and management. Plex and Tdarr are available in the Community Applications, relatively simple to install and can be configured for both the dedicated network and using your GPUs for transcoding. My main server runs Plex and Unmanic (very similar to Tdarr) and 17 other dockers full time. Only one GPU (Quadro P400) for transcoding. I was running on a Ryzen 5 1500X (1st gen) and 16GB. It ran OK but occasionally it would start to get a workout if I asked it to do too much at one time. I've since updated to a 5700G which never breaks a sweat. The red flag for me is if your hardware will be up to the task. 8700k and 16GB may be on the edge of where things may be hardware limited. The 8700k is more powerful than my old 1500X, but you have more hardware to manage as well. The other issue is (not knowing what MB you have) is if there are enough PCIe slots/lanes available to install 2 GPUs, a multi-port NIC, and potentially a HBA to add drives (if your MB doesn't have enough on board SATA).

Maybe take a read through this?

Believe you are overthinking some of this. You can use your current domain and NPM to connect to any device on your network. In NPM, enter the Forward Hostname/IP and Forward Port of the other server (and appropriate entry in your domain DNS). I do this to connect to several devices in my network. Much easier to manage, as everything is in one place. As for Plex, ideally you have both the server application and the media on the same machine. You can put the data on any machine you can access from the Plex server (even out on the cloud) but you then are increasing network activity and also have the reduction of access speed inherent with the network. More complexity and the increased potential for buffering.

Try this: watch -n1 "grep \"^[c]pu MHz\" /proc/cpuinfo"

At least we can post again. Earlier I could browse, but was unable to enter text in the Reply box.

I usually wait until the chatter for the new release simmers down. There still is a bit regarding macvlan/ipvlan, networking and crashes that keep me from embracing 6.12.x for now on my main, critical server.

What you needi s a bit up from your link: Parity Disks

Cloudflare Tunnels are encrypted, just like VPN tunnels, except are only encrypted between the Cloudflare servers and your endpoint server. With CF Tunnel, the data between your client device and Cloudlare server is not encrypted (other than typical https SSL). I use Cloudflared for accessing a number of docker services and some other devices on my network, but haven't yet reached the confidence level of exposing the Unraid server interface itself. For those services that I want an extra layer of security, I've been adding 2FA through Cloudflare's Zero Trust > Access > Applications.

You have a couple of questions here I'll give some input on. USB backup - I do this on my main server. The server itself holds backups of several other systems/computers. Weekly I back this data onto a USB drive (drive connected to server via Unassigned Devices plugin). I have written a pretty basic script which uses rsync to copy the folders to back up to the USB drive. I have two USB drives, and once a month I'll swap them, taking the unconnected one to store offsite at work. Spinning down USB drives - This is pretty hit or miss. It mostly depends if the USB-to-SATA controller in the drive enclosure supports this. I suggest you Google and do some research. If you don't plan on swapping drives (as I do to take off-site) it probably is would be simpler to add the drive as a pool and let Unraid control the spin down. Appdata backup - Easiest would be to use the Appdata Backup plugin. (get the latest version of what is compatible for the Unraid version you are running) I back up my Appdata to my array, and then it is one of the folders I back up to the external USB drive.