Hardware recommendations?

[AndyBak 17]

Hi All, for the last 10 years my Emby server and a few other bits have being running on an old HP N54L Microserver using a mix of Window Server operating systems and drive pooling software (Currently Win Server 2019 and StableBit DrivePool). Whilst it has always been useless for any form of transcoding it's been rock solid as an Emby and general file server.

Well it's now on its last legs and this time I don't think I can patch it up anymore so looking like a full replacement is needed. Whilst I used to be very technically minded when it came to machine builds its been years since I've built a Windows machine, most of the systems in the house are now either Mac OS or iOS.

Therefore any pointers for replacement hardware as I have loads of questions, starting with....

• Should I still be looking at a Windows server, or does Emby run better on other platforms?
• If I went with another Window server (as thinking I could just move all my media drives across, 4x 4TB drives) are there any decent dedicated systems similar to the micro servers?
• If I need to build something myself, any recommendations on hardware that would be half efficient and not too noisy when running?

Many thanks!

[RanmaCanada 494]

I'll chime in with my recommendations. I've made several posts in this sub about people upgrading, and I would suggest a NAS. You can either build a smart NAS or a dumb one, whatever you prefer, but it would make life easier for you. A smart NAS you can have everything being run in containers or dockers, pending on what OS you chose, a dumb NAS would be just powerful enough to do checksums, and you would have a secondary micro system like an N100 or N150 with windows installed (linux still has problems with these processors) and have your encodes done with minimal power usage. As you want to move your drives over this may not be ideal for you, but it would give you the opportunity to upgrade more than just your server hardware, and you can get some new, larger drives. I would recommend a disk shelf, as it will make life easier to add new drives in the future.

When I started with Emby, probably 10 years ago, I had my server in my main desktop and used only 2 drives. Then I moved to a Fractal Design XL running UNRAID and eventually filled it with 13 drives while moving my Emby server over to a low power laptop, first an i3-8130u and then to a i5-1235u. I am now running it in a 24 bay disk shelf, with UNRAID with 18 drives, and still using the i5-1235u as my Emby server. "Future proofing" is important at this stage and you need to decide what way you want to go as it will help you to avoid a potentially expensive upgrade further down the road. Moving my server to a different build cost me $$ each time which could have been avoided if I had moved to the disk shelf at the time of the first upgrade. My NAS has a i5-12400 in it, but I have never moved my Emby server over to it as moving my users over to a docker would be a pain, and virtualizing windows on it would be a pain.

But this is what I did, and it may not work for you. I hope this gives you an idea of what you could potentially do.

[AndyBak 17]

Thanks for the info, something of that spec if probably overkill for my needs but has given me a few things to think about. Been a LONG time since I did any virtualisation  but I do want to stick with a Windows server as there are a few other bits that I'd like to run on it.