In case this doesn't come across, I'm not trying to be a punk when I ask ...

 

So where did you see the gains?

 

Plex is really the only major thing I have/do on my box (other than you know, being a NAS), and I didn't really test or try to notice any speed improvements when I went to an SSD.  Not to mention I never even got around to making index files until after I added my SSD.  My main reason for even doing it, as I've mentioned, was to keep from having a 24/7 spinning drive.

 

So I'm really just curious, as others might be who are looking for performance bumps doing things other than just Plex.

Plex is really the only major thing I have/do on my box (other than you know, being a NAS), and I didn't really test or try to notice any speed improvements when I went to an SSD.  Not to mention I never even got around to making index files until after I added my SSD.  My main reason for even doing it, as I've mentioned, was to keep from having a 24/7 spinning drive.

 

So I'm really just curious, as others might be who are looking for performance bumps doing things other than just Plex.

 

Plex is the primary purpose of my unRAID. I have gone from a 1TB 5400RPM cache drive to a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD.

 

Here are the improvements I have found:

 

PAR2/unrar processing in sabnzbd is much improved.

Executing sabtosickbeard.py only takes seconds now instead of minutes. (Copying any thing to /mnt/user/ as it first goes to /mnt/cache/ is much faster. I have been copying a lot of things within /mnt/cache/ as copying things to /mnt/user was too slow previously.)

From a download complete, to verify, repair, unrar, and execution of sabtosickbeard.py takes less then a minute for a 2GB file. IO throughput for this process clocks in at over 200MB/s. It gets higher with larger files.

 

Plex/Web is much faster, I still get the Processing xxxx when accessing a show but it does not slow me down and I do not get the spinner of waiting constantly at all any more. I was getting it

 

Generating indexes has not changed. That is a CPU intensive process and is not IO bound.

 

Streaming to my Rokus. Previously when fast forwarding/rewinding/stepping back/stepping forward and then hitting Play would result in several seconds of audio but no video as things caught up. Now it is instantaneous. Also the caching to the Roku of the streams is much much faster. No longer do I wait for the bar to slowly creep along. It is completed in under three seconds as opposed to at times waiting 10-20 seconds.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Hmm interesting.  I can see how all the post-proc and copy/move going on with sabnz can really be helped.  I don't really do any of that hence my ignorance. Good deal!!!

 

I'm little surprised you noticed a difference with Plex-web, but I guess the sooner it can grab all the thumbnails etc the snappier the UI will be.  Like I said I never "looked" for improvements in stuff like that and I don't use plex-web all that often except when I want to force a DB update for a torrent that just landed >;-)  But it is good to know having an SSD is helping.  One more reason I'm glad I have it

 

Streaming to Roku, now THAT surprises me.  I take it then you are transcoding? 

 

For me, the biggest improvement I noticed, which allowed me to switch from Boxee to Plex+Roku was that development had gotten far enough that I was no longer transcoding (locally) to my Roku when playing scene releases or full bit-rate BD rips. Well and finally getting 5.1 support!!!  Up until that point scanning fwd/rwd was unbearably slow/laggy as to be useless.  Without transcoding it was immediately better.  Now of course that was all with an HDD soooo, I suppose had I ever tried it with an SSD I might not have been so annoyed   But even given that, I would say finding a way to avoid transcoding whenever possible is the best solution to slow Plex+Roku performance. 

 

As you said, I know index production is CPU limited.  I wonder though if the SSD speeds up their access when scanning.  I mean of course it does, I just wonder if access is more limiting than serving it up over 100mbit [shrug]

I have not tried not having it transcode. I have a Roku 2 and primarily have 1080p content.

I have the Roku XS but there is no difference from the as far as Plex would be concerned. Most of my downloads are 720p, but my BD rips are not only 1080p but also full bitrate.  Ever since about 2 versions ago I've had much better luck with direct stream, and now the latest Roku Plex-test app officially supports L4.1  Also technically 720 or 1080 should not effect direct streamability (yes I made that up ).  It is all about stream feature compatibility.  Obviously 1080p is even harder to transcode, and thus NOT transcoding it is even more beneficial.

 

That said, you shouldn't have to experiment so to speak, it SHOULD be direct streaming automatically if it is supported based on the Roku Apps advertised capabilities. Though I've had a few cases where it doesn't and a forced direct stream has worked flawlessly.

 

I think you need the test app for this, but it is now very easy to know your stream method on roku.  Just press the down arrow on the roku remote and a little HUD pops up with some useful info.  It will tell you how both audio and video are being processed.

 

Just some more thoughts.

Thank you for this. I will have to experiment as soon as possible! I am currently running the official client but may make the hop over to the test.

I've had one roku reboot on this version of the test app and afterwards the file played just fine.  So no idea what even caused it, but its been pretty stable otherwise.

I am also tempted to make the jump from sabnzbd to nzbget.

You're way outside my wheel house   Good luck with that.