Hi everyone. I’m on the verge of building a new NAS/Media server, and wanted to check here to see if any of you could provide some recommendations based on my goals (below) or your current builds. I currently have a Raspberry Pi 4 running some basic services (Portainer, Home Assistant, Plex, sonarr/radarr/prowlarr, sabnzbd, etc.), but would like to expand my options and capabilities as my interests in the hobby grow.

My goals:

  • Ability to have 4+ 1080p streams on Plex. Right now my Pi works surprisingly well at home with one 1080 stream, but basically shits its pants doing much more. Would like to give my parents and a friend or two access.

  • Document storage/backup. Interested in Nextcloud, but it seems people have mixed experiences here.

  • Photo storage/backup.

  • Hosting the services mentioned above, plus some extra headroom for others. I’ll probably move back to Home Assistant OS on my Pi, unless you think I should utilize it for something else.

  • OS - unRaid. Not opposed to others, but this does seem to be a great option with a lot of how-guides and videos available.

  • Storage/Drives - I honestly don’t know how much I want or need. As it stands, my partner and I probably have less than 1TB of files and photos between the two of us (being very generous with that figure). Would like to expand the media server capabilities as mentioned above.

  • Budget - $1000 max including drives.

While the details above are what I would like to achieve with this, you can also consider me an empty canvas. Open to all ideas and suggestions. Let me know if there are other details I can provide that would be helpful. Lastly, thank you all for creating such a great community here.

  • zerodawn@leaf.danceEnglish
    5·
    6 months ago

    To play off what others are saying i think a mini pc and a stand alone nas may be the better route for you. It may seem counter intuitive to break it out into two devices but doing so will allow room for growth. If you buy a creeper bare bones mini pc and put more of your budget towards a nas and storage you could expand the mini pc without messing with your nas. You could keep the pi in the mix for a backup if your main pc is down or offload some services to it to balance performance.

    • BakedCatboy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      Just want to second this - I use an Intel nuc10i7 that has quicksync for Plex/jellyfin, can transcode at least 8 streams simultaneously without breaking a sweat, probably more if you don’t have 4K, and a separate synology nas that mainly handles storage. I run docker containers on both and the nuc has my media mounted using a network share via a dedicated direct gigabit Ethernet connecting the two so I can keep all the filesystem access traffic off of my switch /LAN.

      This strategy was to be able to pick the best nas based on my redundancy needs (raidz2 / btrfs with double redundancy for my irreplaceable personal family memories) while being able to get a cost effective low power quicksync device for transcoding my media collection, which is the strategy I chose over pre-transcoding or keeping multiple qualities in order to save HDD space and be flexible to the low bandwidth requirements of whoever I share with who has a slow connection.

      • Tinnitus@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        What synology model did you go with? Do you host any other services with that type of setup?

        • BakedCatboy@lemmy.mlEnglish
          11·
          6 months ago

          I went with the DS1621xs+, the main driving factors being:

          • that I already had a 6 drive raidz2 array in truenas and wanted to keep the same configuration
          • I also wanted to have ECC, which while maybe not necessary, the most valuable thing I store is family photos which I want to do everything within my budget to protect.

          If I remember correctly only the 1621xs+ met those requirements, though if I was willing to go without ECC (which requires going with xeon) then the DS620slim would have given me 6 bays and integrated graphics which includes quicksync and would have allowed me to do power efficient transcoding and thus running Plex/jf right on the nas. So there’s tradeoffs, but I tend to lean towards overkill.

          If you know what level of redundancy you want and how many drives you want to be running considering how much the drives will cost, whether you want an extra level of redundancy while rebuilds are happening after 1 failure, how much space is sacrificed to parity, then that’s a good way to narrow down off the shelf nases if you go that way. Newegg’s NAS builder comes in handy if you just select “All” capacities and then use the nas filters by number of drive bays, then you can compare whats left.

          And since the 1621xs+ has a pretty powerful xeon, I run most things on the nas itself. Synology supports docker and docker compose out of the box (once the container app is installed), so I just ssh into the box and keep my compose folders somewhere in the btrfs volume. Docker nicely allows anything to be run without worrying about dependencies being available on the host OS, the only gotcha is kernel stuff since docker containers share the host kernel - for example wire guard which relies on kernel support I could only get to work using a user space wire guard docker container (using boringtun) and after the VPN/tail scale app is installed (presumably because that adds tap/tun interfaces that’s needed for vpn containers to work.

          Only jellyfin/Plex is on my NUC. On the nas I run:

          • Adguard

          • Sonarr/radarr/lidarr/prowlarr/transmission/overseerr

          • Castblock

          • Grocy

          • Nextcloud

          • A few nginx instances for websites

          • Uptime-kuma

          • Vaultwarden

          • Traefik and wire guard which connects to a vps as a reverse proxy for anything that needs to be accessible from the public internet

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    4·
    6 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    AP WiFi Access Point
    HA Home Assistant automation software
    ~ High Availability
    HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
    PSU Power Supply Unit
    Plex Brand of media server package
    PoE Power over Ethernet
    RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
    SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
    SBC Single-Board Computer
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
    VPN Virtual Private Network
    nginx Popular HTTP server

    [Thread #385 for this sub, first seen 29th Dec 2023, 21:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • stown@sedd.itEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    As far as motherboards go, you would probably be fine with any consumer desktop brand but you should probably look for something with dual NIC. If you want something a bit more robust AsRock Rack has some really great options. I’ve been using the X470D4U for about 4 years now without any issues.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    21·
    6 months ago

    Like others have said, for a thousand dollars you can get a ton of stuff. For comparison my latest bud cost me around $200 and has about 6tb of raw storage. It runs proxmox and is paired with a mini PC I bought when I first started. I have btrfs raid for the system and then a separate controller for a TrueNAS VM. It even has a bluray drive that I picked up second hand and a RX590 that had to be cut down to fit in the case.

    $1000 dollars can buy you a mini data center with used hardware. I honestly don’t know what to recommend but what ever you do make sure its flexible down the road so you aren’t locked into stuff from the past. I would go for a beefier CPU with good cooling and plenty of pcie. Just a note Intel CPUs work better for video encoding.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Does a Nas require a dedicated PC? I’m hoping to run a few bits including a Nas off a PC I’m getting.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        Maybe your misunderstanding. Nas stands for network attached storage. Thus means it is storage that is accessible over the network.

        You could run your desktop in a virtual machine like I do but keep in mind some proprietary software with DRM will straight up not work. I use my main machine as a desktop by passing though the USB controller and GPU with vfio so that my machines works like expected. It may cost you a few percent of performance loss but assuming your card is well supported it will be smooth sailing.

        Another option is to just build a separate system to work as a NAS the reason I was suggesting a full server setup is because you have a big budget. You can get something smaller and more power efficient for a bit less. SSDs are cheap these days you can pick up 4 sata drives which will work well with TrueNAS assuming you have plenty of RAM.

  • stown@sedd.itEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    For your CPU I recommend Ryzen 5700G. Powerful enough for everything you want to do, the TDP is only 65 watts so it’s not going to destroy your power bill, has a decent integrated GPU, and costs only about $200. Another positive is that it uses DDR 4 so you can load up on that for pretty cheap too.

  • thejevans@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    If you live near Washington, DC, I’ve got a good system ready to go that I’m selling.

      • thejevans@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        I put it all under a spoiler tag because it’s a lot. Let me know if you’re interested!

        inventory/specs

        UPS

        Eaton 5SC 1000 full sine-wave inverter

        Rack

        13U enclosed rack w/casters and magnetic front door

        Networking

        TP-Link EAP225 Wifi AP

        Aruba Networks S2500-24P-US Switch

        • 24 Port Gigabit Switch
        • PoE
        • 4x SFP+ 10Gbit ports

        Servers

        Dell R720xd

        Components

        • 2x Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 @ 3.3GHz (8-core CPUs)
        • 14x 8GB Samsung ECC 2Rx4 Dual Rank DDR3 10600R 1333MHz RAM (112 GB)
        • Intel 4P X520 NIC (2x SFP+ 10Gbit, 2x 1Gbit)
        • 2x 750W PSU
        • IDSDM 6YFN5 dual SD module
          • 2x Sandisk 16GB UHS-1 Extreme SDHC SD cards
        • PERC H710P Mini Host Bus Adapter
        • PERC H310 Host Bus Adapter
        • Dual 2.5" Hotswap Drive Backplane 0JDG3
          • 2x Crucial MX500 500GB SSD
          • 2x 2.5" Dell Hotswap Drive Caddies/Trays
        • Front Hotswap HDD Backplane
          • 12x HGST Ultrastar KP06 6TB 7200RPM HDDs
          • 12x 3.5" Dell Hotswap Drive Caddies/Trays
        • Rack Rails (They hold the server in place, but they’re missing some bearings. If the server is pulled out on the rails it may not go back. Replacing these should be less than $50)
        • Locking front panel
        • iDRAC Module

        Notes

        • Runs ~235W at idle
        • Can handle many VMs and multiple simultaneous 4k Plex transcodes
        • This is basically the best set of parts for the xx20 series Dell servers and is more capable than a lot of the xx30 units

        Dell R710

        Components

        • Rack Rails
        • Locking front panel
        • CD Drive to 2.5" Drive Adapter
          • Samsung 860 Evo 250GB SSD
        • Front Hotswap HDD Backplane
          • 6x 3.5" Dell Hotswap Drive Caddies/Trays
        • 2x 870W PSU
        • PERC H216 Host Bus Adapter
        • 2x Intel Xeon L5640 @2.26GHz (6-core CPUs)
        • 18x 4GB Samsung ECC 2Rx8 Dual Rank DDR3 10600R 1333MHz RAM (72GB)
        • Dell 0KJYDB 2xSFP+ 10Gbit NIC

        Notes

        • Set up to be an ideal backup server
        • Just add hard drives and it will be ready to go
        • iDRAC modules are available on eBay if you would like out of band management