Reddit mentions of QNAP TS-451+-2G-US 4-Bay Next Gen Personal Cloud NAS, Intel 2.0GHz Quad-Core CPU with Media Transcoding

Hi!

I am very new to Plex and am currently running some videos from an external HDD by using an old MBP. My fear is that if the disk fails, I lose everything so I was wondering what to do and someone I talked with suggested I got a QNAP like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015VNLGF8/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I, however, have never used anything like that so I'm not sure what would happen. If I get something like that, I understand that I need to buy HD to put in and it offers some redundancy but can I connect the one I already have? And then, how do I run Plex on that? It seems to be more of a device to serve media to a tv than to stream.

Thanks in advance for any help!

> What rotation?

Any properly managed Tape Library requires Tape Rotation.

>A library with onedrive goes for 1500 euro and a second drive will be another 800.

You will not have a Multi-tape drive for drive for $1500 in the US, looking at ebay the used market is running $1000-1200 for single drive LTO-6, you might find a LTO-4 muti-tape drive for that price.

>That is def affordable, and as much as a QNAS.

Base 4 Drive USB qNAP $199 + $140 ea for consumer 8TB Drives and you have 16-24 Usable TB for under $800, Add $150 if you want a NAS unit which still comes in under your tape drive with no cassettes

Ah, that version of that plan. I actually had the same idea -- a cabinet with vertical 1/4" plywood "blades", each with the SBC and disk stuck to it. The best I could find (i.e. cheapest thing with a SATA port) was something based on the Allwinner A10. The issue I had with this solution is that I would need an additional (more powerful) machine that can act as a gateway for anything that doesn't use the cephfs directly.

I've been considering a slightly less extra extreme solution: grabbing three of something like this, dropping a little memory upgrade and a linux install on them, and getting my three independent OSD hosts. This gives them much higher specs (even on a per-disk basis), although it's moderately more expensive. Also, it's a lot less work to put together.

I'm running a QNAP TS-451+ and it runs Plex natively with hardware transcoding quite well. $500 on Amazon.

The one i set up recently was similar to this: https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-451-Personal-Quad-Core-Transcoding/dp/B015VNLGF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493601922&sr=8-1&keywords=qnap+ts-451

if you want a rackmount with a little more power take a look at this: https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-453U-2-0GHz-Hot-swappable-Single/dp/B00S0XU2HK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1493602058&sr=8-2&keywords=qnap+rackmount

As far as opening files, when you're on the LAN you really won't notice any difference at all. Accessing files via WAN you may notice a minor difference but it really should be negligible. Obviously this is dependent on the file type and size, i was mainly working with excel files and pdf's. Hope this helps

EDIT: Keep in mind both of those are diskless, so you still have to purchase drives. You can change the config like with the first one they have an option with 8 GB of RAM and some options with drives. So price can get up there but should still be under like 1500 even fully loaded

I'm confused, wouldn't something like the QNAP TS-251 be a stand alone system? Or are you wanting a NAS storage that is located remotely and streams to a media player that is connected to your home theater, thus requiring you to build a new machine?

 

Its not something I'm super familiar with, but your post did intrigue me. Wouldn't you just need the QNAP and blank drives?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
Storage | Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | $319.99 @ B&H
Storage | Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | $319.99 @ B&H
Storage | Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | $319.99 @ B&H
Other| QNAP TS-451| $479.00
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $1438.97
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-11-14 16:00 EST-0500 |

In terms of consumer NASes, the only two choices IMO are QNAP and Synology. Others will get the job done, but they just don't have the features and polish nor can you expect support because they're made by companies who make other things as well. QNAP and Synology primary products are NASes.

The difference between the two. QNAP has slightly more powerful hardware and even higher end hardware if you want to pay a premium. Synology's strength is their software which is very very polished and easy to use. QNAP however is constantly updating their software and it's constantly getting better to. I have an old QNAP TS-439p running off an og Intel Atom from 2009 and it's still getting all the latest updates and features and is a different machine then when I got it, for the better though. It's not my primary NAS anymore but it's still kicking.

Unfortunately, in terms of hardware you'd be comfortable running Plex on, consumer NASes are kind of in no mans land at the moment. And even if you only direct stream, Plex can still hit lowend hardware hard, especially if the NAS is doing other things.

The QNAP TS-451 @ $530 has a quadcore Celeron, but it's passmark is about 1100, when 2000 is recommended for a single 1080p transcode. This is the NAS for you IMO if price is your main concern. You might run into a problem occasionally but it'll get the job done.

The QNAP TVS-471 @ $990-1090 for the Pentium and Core i3 respectively, will give you peace of mind but is very expensive as you can see. The Pentium has a passmark score of 3330 enough for 1-2 simultaneous transcodes, and the Core i3 has a passmark of about 4900, enough overhead for 2-3 simultaneous transcodes.

That's what I mean by no mans land, there's not an inbetween option at the moment, or sweetspot IMO for consumer made NAS's and Plex yet.

In terms of hard drives. Stick with WD Reds and HGST Deskstar NAS drives. Avoid Seagates, especially their 3TB models.

You could look at something like a 4-bay Qnap or Synology:

https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-451-Personal-Quad-Core-Transcoding/dp/B015VNLGF8/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&qid=1551036590&sr=8-31&keywords=synology

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS418-Diskless/dp/B075N17DM6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1551036686&sr=8-4&keywords=synology

I have a synology (not this one in particular) and I love it but as far as I am aware Qnap makes damn fine products as well.

> 2 - 3 users at most, 1080p content

are you transcoding for them? If you're doing transcode for 3 streams (or even 2, honestly) you will likely want a better processor...but that one will probably be fine.

The Synology/Qnap/etc have a worse processor but have hardware accelerated transcode which you wont. At about the same price point you're looking at the TS-451+, DS418play.

Even the DS918+ you mentioned has hardware accelerated transcode, so I suspect you'd see better results from it [though, it's more expensive] if you have plex-pass to allow for it.

Edit:
the 9100 supports hardware accelerated transcode, but the 9100f does not.