I am looking to replace my old setup of WHS v1 with 3x2TB WD Green drives. Along with this I used older SageTV extenders.

 

I am evaluating my options for the holiday sales and trying to decide the pros/cons of building 2 separate boxes, one with unraid just for storage and another to act as my media server or build one box for both with plenty of bays, redundancy for my data, and transcoding media.

 

Transcoding will only be necessary for playback on mobile devices away from the house, everything in the house is wired gigabit.

 

For media playback I am considering Plex or Emby on my xboxes and devices, since I have several, I can also still use my old SageTV extenders.

 

I have a lot of movies I have not backed up because of lack of storage so will definitely need more storage. So I will be probably be using 6TB WD Reds for storage.

 

I would like both boxes to be relatively silent as they will be living in my office.

 

I could buy a prebuilt NAS with plenty of horsepower to transcode and house all my drives, which is pricer than building, or I can build one one, or I can build two separate dedicated boxes, one for storage and one for playback and potential for other virtual machines as necessary.

 

Thoughts on the pros/cons of these options? I haven't rebuilt this setup in about 5 years and I am sure there are a lot of things I am not considering that I haven't thought of.

You don't need anything too special for playback of media these days. You can use a pi2, nexus player, firetv, etc. Since you mention plex, you can actually use anything that supports plex (which is even some smart tvs).

 

The only real reason I see to build 2 boxes, is that one will be a very robust/capable HTPC, with built in tuners for OTA/etc, PVR and other more involved tasks. If you don't already know what this box would do special, you are probably ready to make just the one. In fact, thanks to the VM capability of unRAID 6, you could even spin up an OpenELEC VM (with the right hardware for passthrough) and still get full x86 based power for a primary tv/etc.

 

Now, if you meant you wanted two servers, both unRAID, and one will be a backup of the other, thats different. That is a solid idea.

 

Also, keep in mind how much storage you REALLY need. Lots of people want to build 24 bay systems, but 6-6TB hdds is still 30TB or parity protected storage. Lots of small footprint, but powerful systems in the UCD forum.

 

TL;DR Sounds like you should just make one machine, either with enough storage upfront (or enough free bays/sata ports for reasonable expansion), and if you want to do VM's, multiple plex transcodes, then go with a solid haswell (or newer) based i3/5/7 system.

Unraid with Plex fulfills my need for storage and media server.  Because it's a DIY solution I can throw whatever CPU/memory I need at it for Dockers and VMs.  I try to use plug and play devices for media players - Rokus, smart TVs, iPads, etc.  My approach is put the effort into a single server and go low cost/effort on the players - I view players as almost disposable technology.

Unraid with Plex fulfills my need for storage and media server.  Because it's a DIY solution I can throw whatever CPU/memory I need at it for Dockers and VMs.  I try to use plug and play devices for media players - Rokus, smart TVs, iPads, etc.  My approach is put the effort into a single server and go low cost/effort on the players - I view players as almost disposable technology.

 

Ditto.

 

While its the "in" thing to make servers/players an all-in-one system using VM's its vastly more complicated, costly, and adds a great deal more management, in my opinion.

 

I apply the same approach as tdallen, a nice robust server with simple players (using Plex) throughout the house.

 

The additional cost for getting VM capable hardware (for passing a video card through, which you would need if you want a VM Kodi player) could easily buy you 1-4 RPi2's which can handle anything plex can through at it.

 

4 words of advise: Keep It Simple, Stupid, or "KISS". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

I am evaluating my options for the holiday sales and trying to decide the pros/cons of building 2 separate boxes, one with unraid just for storage and another to act as my media server or build one box for both with plenty of bays, redundancy for my data, and transcoding media.

 

As others have said, a single unRAID box running Plex in an Docker that streams to Roku/xbox/etc would be ideal.  You'll need a CPU with a passmark of 2000 for every concurrent 1080p stream you want to transcode:

  https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-computer-

 

Transcoding will only be necessary for playback on mobile devices away from the house, everything in the house is wired gigabit.

 

You'll probably find that you transcode more than that.  For instance, MKV files don't play direct everywhere and have to be transcoded.  And subtitles often need to be burned in, which requires transcoding.  You can spend time optimizing your media to avoid transcoding or you can just buy a powerful CPU and let Plex handle the details.

 

I bought powerful, server-class, VM-capable hardware because that gives me more options.  I don't regret that decision, but if I am being honest I haven't done much with VMs.  Dockers have been all that I need.

I am evaluating my options for the holiday sales and trying to decide the pros/cons of building 2 separate boxes, one with unraid just for storage and another to act as my media server or build one box for both with plenty of bays, redundancy for my data, and transcoding media.

 

As others have said, a single unRAID box running Plex in an Docker that streams to Roku/xbox/etc would be ideal.  You'll need a CPU with a passmark of 2000 for every concurrent 1080p stream you want to transcode:

  https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-computer-

 

 

keep in mind that you can use appropriate Plex Profiles for each of your target device to add more info to plex about your device capabilities to avoid tanscoding when it not needed. for example, i have and WD TV Live player - when i played movie through DNLA with stock settings of plex, a lot of transcoding accours - all 4 CPU cores assigned  to Plex was at 100% utilization. when i added Plex profile, then no problems with CPU usage at all. more info here for example: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/154652/transcoding-when-playing-to-wdtv-live   

keep in mind that you can use appropriate Plex Profiles for each of your target device to add more info to plex about your device capabilities to avoid tanscoding when it not needed.

 

Good point if your devices use DLNA!  If the devices run Plex apps, they should request the right stream types automatically.

keep in mind that you can use appropriate Plex Profiles for each of your target device to add more info to plex about your device capabilities to avoid tanscoding when it not needed.

 

Good point if your devices use DLNA!  If the devices run Plex apps, they should request the right stream types automatically.

 

sounds good about Plex app, good to know. But my device is really old, so no option for me