Jumping forward a decade in hardware :)

[melmac 0]

Hi 

I've been running emby about 6 years pretty much in its base settings as I'm not much of a tweaker if everything is working. My main client is an AppleTv. 

The server is installed on an aging laptop and the data was held on a HP X510 running WHS 2003 but ol' faithful finally died last week RIP little buddy.  

So now I'm looking for suggestions for some new hardware ideally I would like the Data and Server on the same machine I see Synology has a good rep around here so I'm leaning towards that but which one? The DS920 is around my budget would this be sufficient to transcode files for the AppleTV? my files tend to be 720p xvid or 1080p x265 also is the software easy to learn? I am coming from a windows only background.  I tend to keep my hardware for a long period is there a better model I should be considering ?

Thanks in advance

Mel 

[Luke 37095]

Hi, the ds920 should be a great choice. @FrostByte I'm sure will have good things to say.

[FrostByte 5052]

The DS920+ has a J4125 4K gpu so it can use hardware assisted transcoding when needed.  It's not got a monster cpu/gpu like some PCs, but it will get the job done.  The DS920+ is also expandable which is always nice.

@cayarshas either a 918+ or 920+ and I believe says transcoding is sufficient.  My NAS has a Ryzen which doesn't have a gpu for hardware assisted transcoding, but then I don't transcode at all.

[Carlo 4330]

If you have any specific questions about the DS920+ just ask.

Carlo

[arrbee99 1560]

Can I hijack a bit and ask does anyone know how much a fairly strong pc will use power compared to a NAS, eg Ryzen and GPU vs 920. I have a Ryzen, but I'm not remotely into gaming so its mostly overkill, except for some Handbrake / ffmpeg stuff in which case its flat out, so most of the time its not trying very hard at all and I guess is not using a huge amount of power.

[RanmaCanada 345]

On 24/06/2022 at 18:38, arrbee99 said:

Can I hijack a bit and ask does anyone know how much a fairly strong pc will use power compared to a NAS, eg Ryzen and GPU vs 920. I have a Ryzen, but I'm not remotely into gaming so its mostly overkill, except for some Handbrake / ffmpeg stuff in which case its flat out, so most of the time its not trying very hard at all and I guess is not using a huge amount of power.

Take about 5-7 watts per HDD and whatever the idle power usage of the CPU is.  My e5-2670 (150 watt TDP) with 15 drives, my i3-8130u server (15 watt laptop) and my 8 port gigabit switch use a max of 175 watts.

[melmac 0]

On 25/06/2022 at 05:23, cayars said:

If you have any specific questions about the DS920+ just ask.

Carlo

Hi 

I finally got around to purchasing the DS920 and setting it up, its been running for a few months but haven't had a lot of time to watch much,  there's a horrible audio sync issue it appears to be present on the Appletv client but not on the iPad or PC any tips on what the problem may be? it doesn't seem to be file-type specific.

Secondly, when I set the machine up I installed one new 6TB drive and reused some old smaller HDDs which I plan on replacing when funds are available, the machine is set to SHR would the process for replacing the small drives be 

Deactivate the old Drive, install new 6TB drive, repair the storage pool ?

[Carlo 4330]

I do not have an AppleTV client so I can't test this.  By process of elimination if you test a bunch of different devices and the sync only happen on one specific device that would tend to point the finger at that device. 

On a PC assuming you have Premiere download and test the Desktop Theater app as well as Microsoft store version of Theater (2 different apps). If you have any Smart TVs, Roku, Android or Android TV devices or even a PS4 or Xbox they could be tested as well. That would help narrow down the problem to a specific device type.

If your server is setup for remote use and this is easily reproducible, I could try a few of the devices just mentioned.

You could try and watch this for a pattern on the Emby Dashboard.  For example, does it happen with a specific audio type like Dolby 5.1. Does it happen only with Remuxes or with Transcoded files. Does it happen only on with MKV files, etc...

Does this happen on everything you play on the AppleTV or just some files?

 

First go into Storage Manage and check every storage pool you've setup using the 4 drives.  Make sure they all say:

It's VERY IMPORTANT to make sure it says 1-drive fault tolerance (or higher).
Unless you have a hot spare (doubt it) then you already have 4 drives in an SHR poor with 1 drive fault tolerance.  As soon as you deactivate one of the drives to replace you will have 0 fault tolerance which means if any drive dies or crashed you could lose everything. Hence make sure you have a good backup of your data before you start!

Run a test on the 3 drives you could replace to see if any particular one has more bad sectors or perhaps is "aging" faster than the other 2 and if so, make that the drive to replace.

This can take a while.  For example replacing a 14TB SATA drive with an 18TB drive took 4 to 5 days to rebuild.

Here are the instructions for upgrading the size of a storage pool using SHR. 
https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/storage_pool_expand_replace_disk?version=7

Chances are you won't have a spare on a 920+ so you will want to follow the procedure in this section:
To replace a drive (when there are no unused drives or empty drive slots):

Before doing the above go into Storage Manager.
Click the Global Settings button up top.
Scroll down the page and set these two options like shown below to resync/repair as fast as possible. per the picture to make resyncing/repair as fast as possible.
Keep in mind if you