Hey Folks,

 

Been using Unraid for a number of years. I used to share my Plex out with a couple family members but my internet is to slow to do this after a move. So I am pondering how to help them. They are all non-tech peoples. Trying to accomplish a few things with this and looking for some suggestions. Further due to a recent job change I cannot host an offsite backup anymore and I have been using CrashPlan which is going away.

 

Goals

Offsite Plex Server for 3 people

Offsite backup for me

Automatic mirroring of new media

 

I have an old Dell Workstation available with Dual Xeons (old E5405's) and 32GB of ram.. Was thinking I can install unRaid.. Then using some Dockers have some sort of backup system in place. Anything that lands in a certain folder on my Unraid gets compressed, encrypted and pushed across to the other box. Hopefully something with some smarts of Crashplan with Version History, incremental etc.  Same for new TV shows and Movies, have them copied across but not compression or encryption. 

 

I will have limited Storage for the Dell. I am hoping I can scrape together four or five 2TB drives to put in it. One will be reserved for my backup. I will see the others with all the newer media. I will have to manually delete older stuff from time to time to allow room to add the new stuff. 

 

Thoughts on how I might do this? Am I maybe better off playing with the google drive and hosting my media online? Any suggestions are appreciated. Hopefully I have described things clearly. Any questions let me know!

 

Thanks,

 

You seem to have two (or three?) different goals/projects all mixed together in this first post.  While they may be interrelated, that is not apparent from my view point.   Why don't you break down each one in a separate post in this thread so we get a better idea of what it is that you are trying to achieve.  

17 hours ago, bedpan said:

I am hoping I can scrape together four or five 2TB drives to put in it.

Why would you bother with several small drives? More bang for buck and fewer points of failure with fewer larger drives.

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Why would you bother with several small drives? More bang for buck and fewer points of failure with fewer larger drives.

Sounds like he's already got these drives available, but maybe I read it wrong.

8 minutes ago, FreeMan said:

Sounds like he's already got these drives available, but maybe I read it wrong.

Which is fine assuming they are good, maybe not so fine if they already have SMART issues or have a lot of hours on them.

I guess maybe I am asking a bit much for a single post.. I have done some more reading and have some more research to do..

 

The 2TB are drives that I have on hand. All drives will be tested prior to being put into production. That said Everything on this server will be duplication of files I have on my server. If I am to loose data here its not the end of the world. 

 

2 Main projects I am trying to achieve here.

 

1) Replace Crashplan for my offsite backup. I have been using Crashplan with a PC at a work. If I am building a box for Plex for Family then I may as well backup to it. I am starting to look at duplicati as an option. Any opinions on Duplicati or is there others I should look at first? 

 

2) Hosting some of my Media offsite for Plex so my very slow upload speed is not wrecked when one person is streaming (I cannot play online games when a single 720p stream is outbound. I was pondering trying to find a way to mirror to content to an offsite server but I am starting to look at Cloud storage. Any good starting points for Plex/Google Business accounts? 

 

Thanks folks!