Advice on budget plex server for home

[idrobnjak]

Obviously a noob here looking to learn/play with FreeNas for the first time and setup a home server for backup and plex for existing movie collection and maybe a little bit of torrenting. Movies will go to my Roku's, Android devices and PCs throughout the house. I do not anticipate more than 1 or 2 streams of Plex at any given time and this will not get shared with anyone outside the house.

I have 3 options at the moment and looking to go with the most economical which will work and last for a while. All will start with 2 x 3TB Seagate Baraccuda 7,200 rpm drives which I have had for a long time and will be setup in RAID 1:

1. Reuse an existing old PC I have. MSI H61 chipset home PC grade board, Intel i3 2100, 2x4GB DDR3 1600 RAM, Realtek Gb Ethernet. They sit in my SilverStone HTPC case with an OCZ 500W modular PSU. Cost $0

2. I see on these boards the tigerdirect deal for an HP Proliant ML10 Gen 9 for $169 plus another 8GB stick of ECC RAM for $100. Not sure what board/chipset is here but an i3 6100, 12GB DDR4 ECC, looks like also a Gb ethernet chip, but probably better than the Realtek I have in my current available PC. Cost $269.

3. Dell Poweredge T30. Current deal with coupon for $329 + tax. Intel Xeon E3-1225 v5, 8GB DDR4 2400 RAM Non-ECC, Gb ethernet. Plus potentially another 8GB RAM stick ($63 for non-ECC) for a total of 16GB but that can wait. What I like about this one is the small size and from what I read runs very quietly. Cost $348 for the Dell with tax.

Based on my projected needs, should I just start with what I have or invest in a new setup for seamless intro to FreeNas? Any help or advice is appreciated.

 

[gpsguy]

Option #2 is an excellent choice. i bought one back in March.

We have been discusssing it here this morning - https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/home-build-2017.55418/page-2#post-404453

It only has 4GB of ECC RAM, you'll need to add more, especially if you want to use Plex, etc. It's got an Intel i-219LM NIC.

 

[gpsguy]

Sorry, I didn't notice that you were planning on another 8GB RAM.

 

[idrobnjak]

Sorry, I didn't notice that you were planning on another 8GB RAM.

Yes, I just fixed my post since the HP uses ECC RAM, I see an 8GB stick of that is more expensive ($100), vs the non-ECC RAM that is in the Dell. But Dell can accept ECC RAM as well, I would just have to replace the 8GB that is in there already down the road.

 

[Jailer]

I'd go with option 2.

I've been trying to come up with a reason to buy one of these to play with but I just don't need another server right now.

 

[idrobnjak]

So what I am hearing is if I am going to spend the $ to get the HP plus memory. 12 GB of ECC and i3-6100 (2 cores with hyperthreading) on the HP is better than Dell T30 even though the Dell, for $80 more, comes with:
1. Xeon E3-1225 v5 (4 true cores, but no hyperthreading)
2. Extra 1TB HD (realize this is very small value)
3. 8GB non-ECC RAM it comes with (i realize this is not an advantage)

Also - any issues with tigerdirect lately? I remember they were sold and some people were cheated out of product they paid for at some point in time. How legit are they these days as an online vendor?

 

[Jailer]

I wouldn't trust my data to a non ECC system. There are a few members on this forum that have purchased the HP ML10 system from Tigerdirect and they seem to be happy with it.

 

[gpsguy]

If you can afford it and think you'll need the Xeon as opposed to an i3, then consider the Dell. You might want to search the forums/Google, if anyone has an comments on using it with FreeNAS.

Are you sure it's non-ECC RAM? I'd be very surprised to hear that they use non-ECC RAM, even in an entry level server.

 

[idrobnjak]

Thanks all for advice. I am still considering purchasing hardware, but decided to start with what I have initially to play with. I set up FreeNAS 11 yesterday as a Plex server, put in a torrent client (via OpenVPN to my PIA service) and was ecstatic to get it all working and watching my DVD collection on any Roku / PC in my house. After some issues with permissions, everything ran flawlessly. Granted my DVDs are only standard resolution so it wasn't a large load.

Bad news, I had previously ripped all my DVDs in VideoTS folder format with menus and Plex doesn't like those. So it will be quite a project to run MakeMKV on every single movie I have to get it onto the NAS in acceptable format.

Now to swap out the hardware into a larger Lian-Li HTPC box which is quieter and has a hard drive cage in it which will come in useful down the road with more hard drives (my son who used it can use the Silverstone instead, to him it doesn't matter). Also the Lian-Li accepts full size ATX boards so potential to upgrade to Supermicro/Xeon/ECC down the road if a deal pops up is there.

Again, thanks for help and I still have the hardware itch...

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

[idrobnjak]

To show you how volatile I am, as I was moving hardware around, I was thinking what am I doing... I love this new setup and want to keep it long-term. These 6 year old Seagate (2 x 3TB 7200 rpm Baraccuda) drives can't have much more time left and I should probably invest in some storage that will run cooler. So I looked into the 8TB WD Reds at Best Buy via shucking the USB enclosure on them for $170. Currently the best deal I can find. Since I need at least two I thought, if I buy 2 now, I can add 2 more later. Looking around the forums, I understand FreeNAS ZFS doesn't really work like that and the general advice is to start with the hard drives and array you want upfront. So 4 x 8TB drives it is I thought.

Then realizing I am about to spend $700 on hard drives, I thought, well if I am investing for the long term how much more would be to go to a server/workstation platform from what I currently have that would last a while. Thus I just placed the order for the Dell PowerEdge T30 deal I mentioned earlier for $350 including tax.

Now off to Best Buy to pick up some hard drives. How quickly I went down this rabbit hole for over $1k... However this setup should be fast, energy efficient, look nice, quiet and last for at least the next 5-7 years of backups and media streaming. Again thanks all for the advice on my entry into this world.

 

[fugeesnfunions]

To show you how volatile I am, as I was moving hardware around, I was thinking what am I doing... I love this new setup and want to keep it long-term. These 6 year old Seagate (2 x 3TB 7200 rpm Baraccuda) drives can't have much more time left and I should probably invest in some storage that will run cooler. So I looked into the 8TB WD Reds at Best Buy via shucking the USB enclosure on them for $170. Currently the best deal I can find. Since I need at least two I thought, if I buy 2 now, I can add 2 more later. Looking around the forums, I understand FreeNAS ZFS doesn't really work like that and the general advice is to start with the hard drives and array you want upfront. So 4 x 8TB drives it is I thought.

Then realizing I am about to spend $700 on hard drives, I thought, well if I am investing for the long term how much more would be to go to a server/workstation platform from what I currently have that would last a while. Thus I just placed the order for the Dell PowerEdge T30 deal I mentioned earlier for $350 including tax.

Now off to Best Buy to pick up some hard drives. How quickly I went down this rabbit hole for over $1k... However this setup should be fast, energy efficient, look nice, quiet and last for at least the next 5-7 years of backups and media streaming. Again thanks all for the advice on my entry into this world.

Ha! I can't believe how similar our thinking is. I just purchased a T30, and also realized it would be less expensive to buy 8TB external drives and harvest the drives from them. So all this time later (I can't believe how similar prices are in 2019 btw), any advice for me or others doing something similar?