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Buy a NAS (which brand?) or make one myself?


famulor

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I have a NAS (synology DS213+ i think) with about 7TB space in it and to be honest its not enough so i would like to hear whats the best solution for me and if its more cost effecient to buy a new nas (what brand is the most user friendly?) Ideally i would like it to be able to transcode 2 (maybe 3 so it isnt running max speed?) 1080p movies (8-10gb versions) and 3D movies. (SBS versions) What would i need?

Hope you have some insight :)

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Hi, welcome. Qnaps are a great choice I think.

They seem to be cheaper where i live compared to Synology so thats a good thing. You have any idea which one i would need? Especially if i want to use emby server and kodi on the tv? I have a asus vivo vm42 in the living room and a chromecast in the bedroom so if it could transcode to those (if needed) then it would be perfect.

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Koleckai Silvestri

I built a machine to work as file server / NAS. Seemed less expensive overall. However I wanted one case to hold 10-12 drives.

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I built a machine to work as file server / NAS. Seemed less expensive overall. However I wanted one case to hold 10-12 drives.

Well if its less expensive overall im going that route :) can your build do what im asking? (transcoding 1-2 MAX 3 (for having some spare power i guess?) 1080p (8-10gb versions) or 3D movies (SBS version) if yes would you mind sharing the build? :)

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ginjaninja
everytime ive looked at buying a nas, its always been cheaper to BYO.
especially if you have any of old atx motherboard, psu and cpu...and can accept a slightly lower level of hot plug ability.

Benefits of BYO
Quieter (larger fans)
Cheaper (especially as number of disks grow)
More flexible/more powerful cpus/os.

Benfits of NAS
Off the shelf/no need to build
Hot plug as standard without expensive chasis.
more flexible raid solutions as standard, easier expansion/migration
easier to use...clear led/health status per drive.
Lower power consumption.

 

other points of view

 

my understanding is that with off the shelf  nas the cpu horse power still isnt there and too much care is required with transcoding limitations (although alot might have changed in last few years)....not to mention the exorbitant price above 4 bays for off the shelf nas.

 

i have a large atx case with 200mm fans and 13 sata drives...very quiet and cool and significantly cheaper and more powerful than an off the shelf unit.

That said with 8tb drives+, a 4 bay unit (sweet spot for off the shelf nas) is more than big enough for most....

.

Edited by ginjaninja
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Deathsquirrel

With a goal of transcoding 2-3 streams I think you'll be better off just building your Emby server.  You'll likely save quite a bit of money and you'll almost certainly have a more capable server.

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MSattler

unRAID, costs about $80-120 for the software license.

 

Pro's:

 

You can mix and match disks, Parity disk needs to be as large as your largest disk.

Still can recover from one failed drive.

If you cannot recover, remaining drives still have their movies as data is NOT striped across disks.

Watching a movie results in spinning up one disk, not all of your disks as in Raid5/6.

It's Linux based and can run Docker, and let you run Emby/and other apps.

It includes KVM Virtual Machine ability.

Easy to upgrade drives, stop array, pull the 2TB drive, replace with a 5TB drive, it rebuilds the 2TB of data on the new drive and expands the array.

I've grown my array from 15TB to 35TB.

Nice Web Interface.

 

Con's:

 

It's not raid, use a synology/qnap for important documents

Takes some time setting up/getting used to.

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I tend to build.

 

My last build was around the Silverstone 8 bay DS380B. Not the easiest case to work with but the end result was a very small and fairly powerful system. It could have been cheaper but I decided on better motherboard, CPU, RAM and PSU. I even managed to get 2 PCI-E cards running from a Mini ITX board. The main slot for the RAID card and a little adapter that used the mini pcie to PCI-E X1 for the dual DVB-S2 card.

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Koleckai Silvestri

Well if its less expensive overall im going that route :) can your build do what im asking? (transcoding 1-2 MAX 3 (for having some spare power i guess?) 1080p (8-10gb versions) or 3D movies (SBS version) if yes would you mind sharing the build? :)

 

It serves my family's needs. It feeds three Rokus and the Web Client mostly. Two of the Rokus are Roku 3s with gigabit ethernet. The third is a Roku Stick. We also have the apps installed on iPhones and four different tablets (iPad Mini, Kindle Fire HDX, Samsung Galaxy 7, and a Windows Surface tablet) as well. Have 1080p content ranging from lossless to compressed. I would suspect there wouldn't be any problem with 3D. I don't have any 3D content though as it gives my wife migraines.

 

Intel i5-6500, Skylake Processor

AsRock B150M-HDV Mini-ATX motherboard

8 Gigabyte Patriot Extreme DDR4 2400 Ram

FSP Aurum 400 Watt Power Supply 80+ Gold Certified

IO Crest 4 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0 x1 Controller Card

Fractal Design Node 804 case

 

System drives are:

Kingston 60 GB SSD

Toshiba 750 GB 2.5 inch Laptop Drive.

 

Storage Drives are:

4 - Western Digital Red 3TB

1 - Western Digital Red 2TB

1 - Western Digital Green 1.5 Terabytes.

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Spaceboy

My experience of trying with my synology ds2413+ (which. I think has reasonable horse power for an off the shelf system) was it wasn't fast enough to even transcode one 720p stream to 480p

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AdrianW

Qnap and Synology units would be great for storage - but I wouldn't even think of transcoding on one. personally I wouldn't want to transcode on anything as I'd rather ensure everything direct plays.

 

I'm also not sold on the idea of having emby server running on anything but Windows - I tried it on my Qnap (TS-853) and was less than impressed. I'm happy with the server running on my NUC and all my content on the NAS,

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legallink

I also built my own with parts that were lying around.  On the whole, it's been more flexible/robust for at least a similar cost if not significantly cheaper.  I'm looking at redoing the build, but this is where I ended up with parts lying around:

 

micro atx asus board

intel i5 2500k

5 x4TB WD Red drives

3x 2TB hitachi drives

1x256GB Samsung Evo SSD

Fractal Node 804

 

It handles a max of 3 streams (which is why I am looking to upgrade

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AdrianW

It handles a max of 3 streams (which is why I am looking to upgrade

 

It really sounds like most people are watching on devices that can't direct play - it just seems strange to me. I'd avoid watching at all if I couldn't direct play. 

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legallink

It really sounds like most people are watching on devices that can't direct play - it just seems strange to me. I'd avoid watching at all if I couldn't direct play.

 

I watch either on an Apple TV, iPad, or a Roku. ("I" equals me, and my family).

 

They could direct play if we transcoded everything to MP4, but I've been slow/hesitant to do that as I want to preserve the uncompressed versions and don't want to increase the storage space requirements by 25-50% because of storing an MP4 on top of the uncompressed.

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MSattler

It really sounds like most people are watching on devices that can't direct play - it just seems strange to me. I'd avoid watching at all if I couldn't direct play. 

 

That's fine but that is also a very limited view.  Part of what makes Emby great is the ability to watch a movie, stop it, and then continue on an iphone, ipad, computer, fire tv stick, android device, roku, etc etc etc.   If you are only ever looking for Direct Play, then your potential players are limited to Kodi and ET, or MBC.  Sure it works, but it really limits Emby from what it has the power to do.

 

I was very against transcoding in the beginning, but the reality is my kids want to be able to use multiple devices to take in content, and in order to do so you need to be able to transcode.   And honestly it doesn't take a ton of $, you can buy a i7 Dell desktop for $700, bump it up to 32GB of memory for another $120, and have a powerhouse that can handle a ton of transcodings.   

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JeremyFr79

That's fine but that is also a very limited view.  Part of what makes Emby great is the ability to watch a movie, stop it, and then continue on an iphone, ipad, computer, fire tv stick, android device, roku, etc etc etc.   If you are only ever looking for Direct Play, then your potential players are limited to Kodi and ET, or MBC.  Sure it works, but it really limits Emby from what it has the power to do.

 

I was very against transcoding in the beginning, but the reality is my kids want to be able to use multiple devices to take in content, and in order to do so you need to be able to transcode.   And honestly it doesn't take a ton of $, you can buy a i7 Dell desktop for $700, bump it up to 32GB of memory for another $120, and have a powerhouse that can handle a ton of transcodings.   

 

Not sure where you get the idea you need 32GB of RAM for transcoding.......I have run 10 even 12 transcodes on my server and never see more than 10GB of RAM being used in total.

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Not sure where you get the idea you need 32GB of RAM for transcoding.......I have run 10 even 12 transcodes on my server and never see more than 10GB of RAM being used in total.

 

Very true. I go for 16 in 90% of my builds unless they are built for heavy VM work and only then will I put more in.

 

As for the point of direct play only. In house yes, if the device can that's playing the media. Certainly not always an option for WAN streaming.

 

Finding or building the right server has always been a clash of opinions but for me, I have always found the pre made NAS boxes lacking in power for a media server unless you spend a lot of money. One of my better bargains was a HP Micro server G8 which I got from Ebuyer for £159.00 with £50 cash back. It came with a Pentium CPU but as it was a standard socket I swapped it out for a 3rd gen i3. The 4GB of RAM it came with is enough for what it does. The storage in this one was just a mix of what I had spare and totals about 6TB. As it's a server there was no onboard audio so an old low end ATI HD 5 series solved that and gave it HDMI. I can't think of any NAS box that would equal that for the money... correct me if i'm wrong as i'm always looking for the next one.

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Check out the Lenovo ts140 

Would that be enough for my needs?

 

Qnap and Synology units would be great for storage - but I wouldn't even think of transcoding on one. personally I wouldn't want to transcode on anything as I'd rather ensure everything direct plays.

 

I'm also not sold on the idea of having emby server running on anything but Windows - I tried it on my Qnap (TS-853) and was less than impressed. I'm happy with the server running on my NUC and all my content on the NAS,

Well the unit in the living room can direct play without a problem but i got a chromecast in the bedroom and it would be nice to use my tablet/phone when on the move or just when im at my parents house and use their chromecast. 

 

I also built my own with parts that were lying around.  On the whole, it's been more flexible/robust for at least a similar cost if not significantly cheaper.  I'm looking at redoing the build, but this is where I ended up with parts lying around:

 

micro atx asus board

intel i5 2500k

5 x4TB WD Red drives

3x 2TB hitachi drives

1x256GB Samsung Evo SSD

Fractal Node 804

 

It handles a max of 3 streams (which is why I am looking to upgrade

When you say a max of 3 streams do you mean 3 1080p or?

 

Topic: You guys are amazing. so many reponses and so much knowledge on these forums! No matter if im going to transcode or direct stream i would like a build where its possible to transcode the 2-3 1080p (8-10gb versions) movies. So by all means keep coming with suggestions on what sort of hardware i should use. (somewhat low on power comsumption would be cool)

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Raducanu

Build my Emby also by my self.

Components

 

Intel Pentium G4400T 2x 2.90GHz So.1151 TRAY -> 67,76 €
ASRock B150M Pro4S/D3 -> 63,85 €
Arctic Alpine 11 Pro Rev. 2 Topblow -> 9,90 €
4GB HyperX FURY rot DDR3-1866 DIMM CL10 Single -> 19,95 €
128GB Intenso SSD for System -> 39,96 €
 
That's 200 € / 220 $ 
 
I already had 4x 3TB NLSAS Dell 7.2krpm Disks, so i bought a Dell H310 RAID Controller via eBay (90€, 95$) and flashed them to be a SAS Controller. So disks are directly mapped into Windows 10 and managed via Windows Storage Spaces.
 
Additionally i already had a big tower and power supply.
 
 
Currently only 2 of 4 disks are connected and used. Power Consuptions is < 45W
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Would that be enough for my needs?

 

Well the unit in the living room can direct play without a problem but i got a chromecast in the bedroom and it would be nice to use my tablet/phone when on the move or just when im at my parents house and use their chromecast. 

 

When you say a max of 3 streams do you mean 3 1080p or?

 

Topic: You guys are amazing. so many reponses and so much knowledge on these forums! No matter if im going to transcode or direct stream i would like a build where its possible to transcode the 2-3 1080p (8-10gb versions) movies. So by all means keep coming with suggestions on what sort of hardware i should use. (somewhat low on power comsumption would be cool)

 

Don't forget about your network and how the 3 streams are going to get delivered. I've had to fix quite a few where people have built an all whistles and bells server but have a way out of date network... mainly wifi. I swapped all mine out some time back to Wireless AC but even that has it's limits. If they are going to be a mix of LAN and WAN, what's your ISP upload speed and can it handle what you want?

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Spaceboy

Qnap and Synology units would be great for storage - but I wouldn't even think of transcoding on one. personally I wouldn't want to transcode on anything as I'd rather ensure everything direct plays.

 

I'm also not sold on the idea of having emby server running on anything but Windows - I tried it on my Qnap (TS-853) and was less than impressed. I'm happy with the server running on my NUC and all my content on the NAS,

Exactly where I am now
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Don't forget about your network and how the 3 streams are going to get delivered. I've had to fix quite a few where people have built an all whistles and bells server but have a way out of date network... mainly wifi. I swapped all mine out some time back to Wireless AC but even that has it's limits. If they are going to be a mix of LAN and WAN, what's your ISP upload speed and can it handle what you want?

I have 50mbit upload. the build will rarely be used while we out but its just a "nice to have" feature knowing it can do it but isnt a must :)

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I have 50mbit upload. the build will rarely be used while we out but its just a "nice to have" feature knowing it can do it but isnt a must :)

 

Ok, if your LAN, WiFi and Internet are all up to the job, let's go for the big question...Budget. Do you have a number in mind or have a number and parts list you already have?

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