Adding M.2 for PleX. Should I put all appdata on there? +other questions

[volcs0]

I have a regular SSD for my cache drive right now. One of the things I've read I can do to speed up PleX is to put the metadata on its own fast SSD.  So I'm adding an M.2 to my setup. 

Should I just make this my new cache drive for everything?

Should I set it up as a separate drive and just have appdata/plex on there?

Should I put the whole appdata folder on there (and leave cache for it's Mover functions)?

Thanks for the advice. 

 

Diagnostics, in case they matter.

 

 

EDIT: I put an M.2 in there and added is as a single-drive cache pool, formatted as XFS.

I didn't realize this was an option in 6.9.

I created a new share called plexdata and put it as "preferred" on the new M.2.

I used rsync to copy the Plex metadata to this new folder on the M.2 and put the new appdata path in the Plex docker template.

This seems to work well - the interface is definitely more snappy, both locally and remotely.

As a side note, I first use an SFTP program to copy the plex folder over to the M.2 and it broke everything. I had to go back and use rsync to preserve permissions and dates/times.

 

 

 

tower-diagnostics-20220126-1147.zip

Edited January 27, 2022 by volcs0

[Michael_P]

First, you need to define what it would mean to "speed up PleX" - what is your current problem with performance that you're trying to solve?

[volcs0]

7 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

First, you need to define what it would mean to "speed up PleX" - what is your current problem with performance that you're trying to solve?

 

I run PleX and Emby off of the same media folders (Movie, TV, home videos).

I experience some significant performance problems - searching, loading thumbnails, loading metadata, unpausing and scrubbing through movies.

This is not 100% of the time, but it is often enough to be annoying. On many occasions, my partner is just like, "Hey - let's just watch Netflix (or HBO or whatever), because waiting for PleX to start the movie or unpause is just annoying.

I think that when the cache drive is busy serving other apps and especially when the mover is running, PleX performance suffers, though I do not have hard data to prove this.

 

I spent some time reading forum posts here and on Reddit about improving PleX performance on unRAID. One suggesting I saw fairly often was to give the PleX metadata its own drive. Since I have space on my motherboard for an M.2, I thought I would give that a try. I bought a fast M.2 and am going to test it out - so, I was wondering what the best way would be to integrate it into my current set up.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

[Michael_P]

Is the new drive an NVME or just a SATA m.2

[volcs0]

12 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

Is the new drive an NVME or just a SATA m.2

NVME.

This is what I bought.

[Michael_P]

Cool, then you can put everything on there if you like, you're not gonna touch the limit of the drive in any practical sense (mover or not). But if you're trying to watch a movie on the array while the mover is putting stuff on the array, the speed of the array is likely your limiting factor - less likely if you're reading from a disk not being used to store things from mover.

 

Next on the list, is the device you're using to view the media - how it's connected to the network and whether or not transcoding is being done

[volcs0]

3 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

Next on the list, is the device you're using to view the media - how it's connected to the network and whether or not transcoding is being done

 

Right. I see these problems even on the local network - where everything is gigabit (and confirmed using iperf3 testing). I just don't know why PleX becomes bogged down sometimes - and even unresponsive. I have a card (1060) for transcoding, so I don't think that's a bottleneck. And at home, I run everything at the original resolution and bitrate.

 

[Michael_P]

2 minutes ago, volcs0 said:

just don't know why PleX becomes bogged down sometimes

 

When it happens, see what's going on with the CPU/RAM usage

[volcs0]

1 hour ago, Michael_P said:

 

When it happens, see what's going on with the CPU/RAM usage

Sometimes SHFS is pegged at 100% - I've read up on this as well. I've converted all my shares to xfs.

 

[volcs0]

2 hours ago, Michael_P said:

Cool, then you can put everything on there if you like, you're not gonna touch the limit of the drive in any practical sense (mover or not). But if you're trying to watch a movie on the array while the mover is putting stuff on the array, the speed of the array is likely your limiting factor - less likely if you're reading from a disk not being used to store things from mover.

 

Next on the list, is the device you're using to view the media - how it's connected to the network and whether or not transcoding is being done

So, sorry if I'm being dense here.

 

If my goal is to have most appdata and cache on the current SSD and then only have my Plex appdata live on the new M.2, how can I do that? How do I add the M.2 ? Into a cache pool? Or as an unassigned drive?

Thanks.

 

 

 

[Michael_P]

i wouldn't use the NVME for plex alone, it'd be a waste - i have my metadata living on an unassigned SATA SSD (just for space consideration) and the rest of appdata on the NVME cache drive

[ConnerVT]

I have all of my Docker appdata (29 Dockers in all, 20 running at this time) with all of the Plex metadata as well as my Docker image on my 500GB NVMe. cache  Takes up less than 100GB.

 

I rarely transfer more than 400GB at one time to this established server, so no concerns of filling it up before the mover puts it on the array.  My largest data moves are the monthly full backup of a couple of desktop PCs (600GB-1TB).  These I don't cache, as the data stream is really not any faster than the disk write speed of the array (and no worries of it living on the unprotected cache drive).

[Michael_P]

45 minutes ago, ConnerVT said:

Takes up less than 100GB.

 

My Plex metadata and thumbnail directory is over 400GB by itself. So, as always, YMMV 

[volcs0]

1 hour ago, Michael_P said:

 

My Plex metadata and thumbnail directory is over 400GB by itself. So, as always, YMMV 

 

Mine is about 380GB...

[hawihoney]

2 hours ago, Michael_P said:

400GB

 

What? And I thought my 292 GB would be much. 

 

com.plexapp.plugins.library.db is 1.5 GB

com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db is 2.3 GB

 

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by hawihoney

[Michael_P]

 

28 minutes ago, hawihoney said:

What? And I thought my 292 GB would be much

 

Yeah, it's a chonky boi

 

 

 

[ConnerVT]

I would assume someone managing a server with dozens of TB of media has an idea as to how best to manage it.  If you need to dedicate a drive just for metadata and such, then that's what you do.

[sunwind]

So, I'm at this point, as far as I can tell nobody actually answered the guys question, instead just asked him why he wanted to do what he wanted to do - So, How do I use a single SSD just for plex appdata, and keep everything else on the main cache ssd? Thank you.

Edited June 12, 2023 by sunwind

[Hoopster]

34 minutes ago, sunwind said:

How do I use a single SSD just for plex appdata, and keep everything else on the main cache ssd?

I do exactly this.  I have a pool SSD dedicated to Plex data with all other docker container appdata on the "cache" pool SSD.

 

 

I just set the appdata path in the Plex docker like this:

 

 

The other docker containers just use the default appdata path specified in Settings --> Docker:

 

 

[sunwind]

Thanks, easy. That's how I have been running things on truenas.