20+ Streams Plex Unraid Build


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So I currently have a Plex unraid pro server but it struggles to even do 3 streams/transcodes I need something a lot more powerful.
I seem to keep getting a bottle necking which I'm aware there are somethings I could try and fix with the current system but I really feel it would be better to build from the ground up to suite what is needed. I have a big family that travel for work and I want my whole family to be able to access the plex server on the go. We have all come together and brought all our media into one location so we can stream to all of us.

 

So we need the system to be able handle about 20+ streams and a good chunk of them would prob have to be transcoded to stop a internet bottle necking.

So I need a pretty epic build here.

 

I'm going to post some images from current system below but we need it a lot better than this.

 

So in point form what i need below:

- 20+ streams (mostly out of location streaming)

- 10-15ish + transcodes if not more....!

- expandable HDD for future. (another 10-20+ drives....!)

- energy efficient but not so much as stop it from transcoding and streaming what it needs to.

- Unraid with Plex Binhex Docker

- Fast and Reliable.

- Great cooling.

 

 

My current system has about 10 drives in it, just adding another now altho the cache drive is not big enough and needs to be upgraded.

I have been told GPU transcoding with dual GPU is prob the way to go. I think unraid only really supports NVIDA mostly for Plex.

 

Please help me.

Thank you so much for your time...

Screen Shot 2019-12-03 at 2.51.21 pm.png

Screen Shot 2019-12-03 at 2.51.58 pm.png

Edited by kaaizen
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Before you spend any money, what is your internet configuration? If you only have cable internet based offering using a cable modem over coax Docsis, you will be maxing out at 35 mbit/s on your uplink. That can barely sustain 4 streams at 8mbit/s. Let alone your desire of 20+ streams.

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My internet currently is 100/50. Im waiting on a new upgrade to com available which will be even faster.
I don't Im open to purchase a GPU, in fact it was high on my list. i know a NVIDA is best and don't mind putting money into a good one which will def help with transcoding.

 

SO what's better the p2000 or the p4000 or is there one better for value and transcoding??

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2 minutes ago, kaaizen said:

My internet currently is 100/50. Im waiting on a new upgrade to com available which will be even faster.
I don't Im open to purchase a GPU, in fact it was high on my list. i know a NVIDA is best and don't mind putting money into a good one which will def help with transcoding.

 

SO what's better the p2000 or the p4000 or is there one better for value and transcoding??

The Bytemybit channel had a test of transcoding comparing P2000 vs Ryzen 3970X and reported the P2000 can do up to 28 1080p streams.

So if you don't need more than that, you shouldn't need a P4000.

Of course, if you want to future proof (in a sense) your build e.g. if there are more 4k streams in the future then the P4000 would also be a good candidate.

The P2000 is also quite popular among Unraid Nvidia users on the forum too due to the low price point and having no limit.

 

I don't think 50mbps upload will be able to handle 20+ concurrent streams though.

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My plex server has dual hex core Xeon's and before I got my P2000 it was doing all the heavy lifting for transcoding. Since I got my P2000 however it hardly goes about 3-5% unless it's doing something specific, the P2000 handles all the trasncoding and it's great. I paid $375 USD for mine which I noticed for sale on a reddit forum and snatched it up right away. The beautiful thing about this card is that it doesn't requite and power like a gaming card, it gets all the power it needs from the PCIe slot.

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Upstream of 50mbit/s will only let you have around 4 upstreams if set at 12 mbit/s stream limit, or maybe 5 if set at 9 mbit/s.

 

If you have WOW cable, your realistic upstream is anywhere from 30 to 50 mbit/s, they oversaturate the upstreams so it's very variable quality. For all intents and purposes you're limited to 3 streams.

Edited by BRiT
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Yeah unfortunately you may need to invest in a symmetrical connection or rent rackspace for your server if you want to get the throughput for this many simultaneous streams. Once you get that throughput the next bottleneck will be spinning platters, and the transcoding hardware itself.

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53 minutes ago, kaaizen said:

i got a hold of this video card for free.

is there anyway to get this to work with unraid/plex to see if this helps at all.

 

AMD Radeon R7 260X - R7260X-DC2OC-2GD5

https://www.asus.com/au/Graphics-Cards/R7260XDC2OC2GD5/specifications/

Plex doesn't support AMD hardware acceleration. Only Intel Quick Sync and Nvidia NVENC

Source:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, squirrellydw said:

Don’t wanna hijack this thread but would the P2000 work on my system as well?  Only issue I see is my motherboard only has a PCI e 3.0 8x slot not 16.  Specs in my signature 

The GPU will still work in a x8 slot. Total bandwidth between the GPU and the CPU will be limited to 8x bandwidth; You will probably run into the encoder bottlenecking before x8 will be the bottleneck.

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The encoder can only do so much transcoding at once. Chances are streaming that many sessions will be the limit, rather than the PCI-E x8 slot. And you'll probably hit other limits before you hit the session limit;

For example,
https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding
Shows that this card (P2000) should handle ~17 1080p to 720p streams simultaneously (real world use shows it can handle a bit more depending on other factors) Assuming a 10MBit input stream, and a 4MBit output stream (their numbers, not mine) That's 14MBit/s per stream, 17 streams at that rate comes out to 238MBit/s - PCI-Express is measured in megabytes not megabits, so we need to divide that by 8: 29.75MB/s. PCI-Ex8 should have a bandwidth ceiling of around 7880MB/s. So you aren't even getting close to scratching the surface of PCI-E lanes there. A dedicated transcoding card could probably live in a x1 slot and not be impacted for most consumer use cases without 4k being prevalent.

  • Thanks 1
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21 hours ago, squirrellydw said:

Ok another question.  When I get this how should I configure it and how do I install the drivers, I'm not great with linux.

 

Thanks

Follow the instructions in the Unraid-Nvidia plugin thread's original post, and the instructions on the Linuxserver.io Plex docker's config page.
It's pretty straightforward.

  • Thanks 1
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On 12/12/2019 at 10:34 AM, kaaizen said:

The new internet connection coming soon choices will be 250/250 or 500/500

I would kill for a symetrical 500/500 service. I recently decided to upload all my media to my google drive with duplicati cuz, well why not... I had to upgrade my service to the fastest spectrum offers. They call it gig, but it is "up to" 940 dl (I routinely get about 800 Mbps). I did this just so I could up my UL speed to a whopping 35 Mbps. Utterly pathetic. Constantly running. it took about 9 months! But it was funny.... Really want to share my media with my family so they can ditch cable, but with 35 Mbps UL, that is not going to happen. Unfortunately, spectrum is the only game in town. 

Edited by jebusfreek666
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  • 1 month later...
On 1/8/2020 at 10:59 AM, jebusfreek666 said:

I would kill for a symetrical 500/500 service. I recently decided to upload all my media to my google drive with duplicati cuz, well why not... I had to upgrade my service to the fastest spectrum offers. They call it gig, but it is "up to" 940 dl (I routinely get about 800 Mbps). I did this just so I could up my UL speed to a whopping 35 Mbps. Utterly pathetic. Constantly running. it took about 9 months! But it was funny.... Really want to share my media with my family so they can ditch cable, but with 35 Mbps UL, that is not going to happen. Unfortunately, spectrum is the only game in town. 

 

Sorry to replay in 2020, but how did you upload so much to GDRIVE if they charge insane fees when you got above 1Tb? Is there some sort of deal? Unlimited?

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On 3/5/2020 at 7:18 PM, Hexenhammer said:

 

Sorry to replay in 2020, but how did you upload so much to GDRIVE if they charge insane fees when you got above 1Tb? Is there some sort of deal? Unlimited?

You have to register a URL, then use it to sign up for a corporate account with google. It ends up being like $12/month for unlimited storage. There is tons of tutorials on how to do it online. 

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On 3/5/2020 at 7:18 PM, Hexenhammer said:

 

Sorry to replay in 2020, but how did you upload so much to GDRIVE if they charge insane fees when you got above 1Tb? Is there some sort of deal? Unlimited?

 

Here's a thread for how to use Google's Team Drives.

 

 

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