Hey all
Been playing around with plex and the *arr’s for a while on my main desktop.
Now looking to set up a server to run plex, downloads, pi hole and eventually some other backup’s.
Unfortunately the PC I had laying around is 32bit and it seems like most things are removing support for that architecture if they haven’t already. Now I’m faced with the problem/opportunity of getting something new (to me).
But I’m struggling with the absolute sea of options out there and also don’t want to spend on brand new gear.
There’s quite a bit of server grade hardware floating around (like a Dell Poweredge server T410, 32GB ram, Intel Xeon E5645 2.13GHz Quad-core for $100AUD) or even rackmount gear (probably overkill but a boy can dream).
Or should I just get a consumer case with the most drive bays I can find and build from there?
Lowish power consumption is a priority, planning on running ubuntu or similar.
Any and all tips welcome! Thanks.
I’m just going to say, you don’t need to run everything from one machine.
There are several arm SBCs that are made to function as a nas, and they have slots for several drives. You could start with something like that, especially if you don’t plan on transcoding video. You could always add more computing power later and still use it as storage. Or, you could just get an older laptop and start with a few tb USB drive for data. I started with a core duo Dell that was at least 10 years old. Integrated battery backup, decent power consumption, and you won’t be spending much money on it. If you run everything in docker with mounted volumes, and I highly recommend that you do, it’ll be super easy to migrate to something else once you get a better idea of what you want.
In other words, don’t spend a lot of money till you figure out what your needs will be.
I’d go for the consumer case with as much drive space as possible, but in the end it’s up to your taste. With rackmount full professional server stuff, you have to keep in mind, it’s not only quite large in terms of space, but also noisy. This is something for the basement or something. Another option would be a mini pc like a NUC combined with a NAS - here is the limit the upgradability of the hardware. Like you can usually upgrade the RAM a little and the system drive, but that’s it. Especially for media stuff (Plex, Emby, Jellyfin) it can be interesting to have a dedicated GPU, like an Intel card, to have more transcoding capabilities. I’m currently running most things from a SFF PC, but also have a Pi and an old laptop in use for various tasks (main reason is lazyness to move the services to the SFF lol)
raspberry pi? just asking because i’m currently setting up a home server with plex in mind using a raspberry pi 4 and a 5tb ssd. dunno what i’m in for but hey, the project is for learning!
You’ll have to keep in mind, that the pi is not really suitable for RAID and not at all for transcoding. The latter means if you have all your media in codecs your devices support, it’s direct play only, it will work, but as soon as you need to transcode, you will have a hard time
Thanks for the information. Being completely honest, I had to look up what transcoding even was. But hey, that’s the point of this current project I’m working. To learn all this stuff! I have a pi4 and really only plan to use that to run the server. Then i was going to use my PC (Linux) and macbook for coding project, etc. and building the front end(s). Does any of that make sense?
Don’t worry, most of this is about learning :) You could also put Docker on the Linux, install Jellyfin as a Docker container, and only fore it up when you are using Jellyfin. It’s a little less convenient, than having it available all the time, but storing all media in H264 AC3 (most common video and audio codecs) costs a lot of storage (H265 and AV1 are far more efficient). Another pro of Docker is, when you decide to move your server, you just shut down the container, copy it’s data and start the container on the new device
thanks for the info. Sounds like i need to find some tutorials on containers, Docker, Jellyfin…
I’d recommend finding a tutorial for Docker+Portainer - Portainer is a container as well, which provides a web-gui to conveniently manage all your other containers (without having to touch the CLI ever again)
I have a Pi 3B+ I run qBittorrent, Plex, ProtonVPN through Wireguard, and a Samba share on and have had 0 issues. It’s connected to a 2 TB external SSD which is where the Plex media library lives and coincidentally where qBittorrent downloads to by default wink wink. I also have a P2P VPN called ZeroTier that allows me to securely connect to the Pi from anywhere. You should be golden with a Pi 4.
I’ve had zero issues even transcoding 4k BluRay content, but it required adding active cooling to prevent the Pi from overheating. Thankfully you can get a tiny heatsink and fan for under $10.
Edit: Accidentally said RPi 5 which didn’t exist… Fixed.
Im quite sure your rpi didnt transcode 4k, it was probabl direct play. Rpi 4 cant even transcode 1080p, but for direct play its more than enough. Didnt know raspberry pi 5 was available. Yeah rpi4 is not bad at all if you use powered case for hdd/ssd. The problem is that its not cheap anymore, but its super efficient ~5W I think. If you want 8gb model, psu and hdd case, its probably caround 150$
RPi 5???
I have a fan running on mine. You made me feel good about that choice! I have a 5T external SSD i purchased. Would I be able to house media, as well as a private lemmy instance with a front end and the ability to hold pics users upload, etc? Just family stuff, nothing enterprise level.
I would definitely recommend consumer grade hardware for a small home server, I ran older server gear (dual e5645+42GB ram) and found it to be loud and power hungry, especially at idle. Moved over to only slightly newer consumer stuff (i5-3470+8GB ram) and it still did what I needed it to, without costing $40AUD a month to run.
8GB of RAM is perhaps a bit limiting at times but I’ve not yet run into any critical issues because of it. I wouldn’t want to try simultaneous, high bit-rate transcodes on it but aside from that it’s been fine for my use case.
Thats some good info, I had a sneaking suspicion that the server stuff might suck the juice. Currently trawling marktplace for a new i3 or i5 or someone’s older gaming rig I can strip down
Checkout Lenovo ThinkCentre m900 SFF (small form factor) or m900 tiny. They have i5-6500T cpus (T = low power), ram is upgradeable in both, and the SFF version has some expansion slots.
Yep these are a great starter I got one about a month ago for $70 with everything included to go alongside my NUC and its been fantastic with proxmox running LXC containers
For Plex you’d probably want something that is able to do some transcoding (although that also depends on you library), so a current Intel CPU (11th gen +) or a Nvidia GPU. If this is your first standalone server you light want to look into something like a mini pc instead of a full rack. You can get a rather new i7, 32gigs of ram and 512gb of m2 storage for 400€.
For example : https://store.minisforum.com/products/elitemini-th60
