plex talk

[intertan]

sometime soon I want to build a second unraid server that will be my main media server. I am gonna build it kind of beefy as I want to use it for plex and other stuff.

Talking about plex I have family who I want to share my stuff with using plex 4-5 people. any more and it will interfere with my internet speed. I noticed that the plex plugin uses the ram to help with trans coding. I don't know the full understanding but something with plex trans codes to the ram then out to the devices. I think

 

I am thinking of something to include in the case to help with this

So far I am wondering if a dual xeon setup would work, and if I just load it up with ram.

Or I have a dedicated drive to help, some time ago I saw a disk that uses ram as storage, every time the computer turns off the files are gone but in this case who cares.

 

what are your thoughts?

 

 

[kaiguy]

Honestly, a dual Xeon is overkill.  You'd be fine with a Xeon or an i7 (if you want to do virtualization), or even less if you're just doing multiple transcoding streams.  But if you want to go big, who am I to stop you

 

My server is virtualized.  PMS is on Windows 7 (only because the Linux version wasn't stable at the time I set it all up) with 4 cores and 6 GB of RAM assigned.  With this setup, my internet upload speed is my bottleneck.  I can have 2 transcoding sessions going outside of my network and multiple internal transcoding sessions with no issues.  I even have the transcoding temporary folder on a slow spinner (just because I didn't want to have a lot of writes to SSD) and I still haven't had any problems.

 

People here seem to have had success with running PMS on unRAID 6 in a Docker container and pointing the transcoding directory to unRAID /tmp (which is all in RAM).  The "chunks" of video that is transcoding aren't all that large, so you don't need a huge amount.  Figure 8 GB is a safe bet at the lower end.  Anything above that and you'd be golden (especially if you'll want to virtualize/have a lot of Dockers). 

 

So, if I re-did my whole setup from scratch, I'd likely go with unRAID as my host (instead of ESXi), use Docker for the majority of my apps--including PMS--and use a SSD cache disk. 

[jakea333]

A single i7 or Xeon are more than adequate. A few things you should consider before making decisions: what quality (bitrate) is your media, how many simultaneous transcoded streams do you realistically expect to see, how large are your media files?

 

I think a lot of people overestimate the amount of processing power they need for Plex. I have an i5-4570 that hums along nicely with my setup - a docker Plex Media Server on UnRAID that serves 12-14 individuals locally and remotely with a Xen-based Window 8.1 VM that functions primarily as a Plex Home Theater front-end.

 

Quality is important, as people give a general recommendation of ~1000 passmarks per 1080p stream. So a Haswell i5 will support 7 or so simultaneous transcodes. That said, my media is usually at a lower quality. My largest files are only 4-5 GB and average file size is probably closer to 750 MB. This translates to bitrates around 1000 - 5000 kbps usually. At that size, only my largest files are even transcoded during remote playback, and they are likely requiring less than the 1000 passmark recommendation anyway. Even sharing to so many people I never see more than 6-7 people watching at the same time and usually only 1-2 of those remote connections are transcoded. Now, if you have nothing but 25 GB Blu-ray rips at 20+Mbps bitrates, your needs may change - especially if every single remote file has to be transcoded down to ~3Mpbs.

 

As far as Plex's usage of RAM, it doesn't seem to use much unless you decide to make your transcode directory in the Plex settings the /tmp directory on UnRAID (which is stored in RAM). This is the location those temporary transcoded files are stored. You can easily set this to the a regular location on a HDD/SSD as well. The thing to keep in mind is that Plex doesn't delete the "chunks" as it goes along. It builds the entire file up as it does the transcode and doesn't delete it until the viewer closes the stream. If you've got large files being transcoded, this can take up a lot of space. I transcode to the /tmp directory on my system because I never really see more than maybe 2-3 transcodes taking up 3-5 GB depending on where they each are in playback. So, if you choose to use the /tmp directory you'll need adequate RAM. I believe it defaults to half the amount of RAM UnRAID has available to it. I have 16 GB installed > so /tmp is ~8 GB.

 

My point is just that the simple act of using Plex doesn't necessitate some super beefy system. The files that you'll be serving and how those will be accessed matters. Obscene amounts of RAM aren't necessary - as there is minimal advantage to transcoding to RAM over an SSD unless you've just got the extra resources anyway. For remote streams, I think most people find the bottleneck to be their upload internet speeds rather than a CPU limitation. If you've got something like Google Fiber where that's not the case, just tell your remote users to change the settings to allow direct play so you don't tax the CPU anyway.

[tdallen]

Now, if you have nothing but 25 GB Blu-ray rips at 20+Mbps bitrates, your needs may change - especially if every single remote file has to be transcoded down to ~3Mpbs.

 

This is an important consideration.  My media is largely 35GB high bit rate Blu-Ray rips and my 4,000 Passmark CPU is frequently spiked on all 4 cores transcoding a single stream.  I've never seen it choke, but it's working hard.  The quality of your source files and transcoding target definitely matter.  If you are trying to support multiple users and very high quality streams then dual Xeon's might be appropriate.  I'd tend more towards /tmp on an SSD in that case rather than RAM for the reasons mentioned.

 

 

FYI, The actual recommendation is 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream.

[gundamguy]

FYI, The actual recommendation is 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream.

 

And that's just a rule of thumb. But from my experience a good one. 

 

I also recomend putting your transcode directory on an SSD as well if you are going to be doing multiple transcoded high def streams at the same time.

 

I also think dual Xeon is overkill but maybe overkill isn't the worst thing.

 

 

[HellDiverUK]

Clock speed is the most important thing with Plex.  I find my i3-4350 performs better with Plex than my E3-1225v3.  The E3 is 3.2GHz with 3.4GHz turbo.  The i3 is 3.6GHz.