Plex Docker NVME drive for volume and transcoding?

[jmcguire525]

Hi, I'm new to Freenas and starting to do all of my research for my first dedicated server. Here is a list of my hardware and plans

- Asus X99M-WS Motherboard
- Xeon E5 2683v3 CPU
- 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM (with room to upgrade to 64GB)
- 6x8TB WD RED RaidZ2

For now it will mainly be used as a Plex & Get Channels (Live Cablecard TV) server and I want to be able to access and transcode file as quickly as possible. With speed in mind and due to a limited (8) on-board sata connections I thought it may be best to utilize the M.2 slot with an NVME drive.

1. Will the dockers for each program benefit from the speed of an NVME drive?
2. Can both dockers utilize the same drive as their volume and transcoding location?

 

[Ericloewe]

"Docker" and "as quickly as possible" are incompatible concepts.

- Asus X99M-WS Motherboard

That's a rather poor choice. Dubious compatibility, limited expansion (especially RAM), lots of useless crap (audio, Bluetooth/WiFi), wasted SATA ports (the PCH provides 10, not just 8).

- Xeon E5 2683v3 CPU

Holy crap, that is one expensive CPU...

1. Will the dockers for each program benefit from the speed of an NVME drive?

I have some doubts that a small fast drive is useful for this application...

 

[jmcguire525]

"Docker" and "as quickly as possible" are incompatible concepts.


That's a rather poor choice. Dubious compatibility, limited expansion (especially RAM), lots of useless crap (audio, Bluetooth/WiFi), wasted SATA ports (the PCH provides 10, not just 8).


Holy crap, that is one expensive CPU...


I have some doubts that a small fast drive is useful for this application...

Can you explain a little more why the motherboard is a bad choice, specifically the compatibility? If I get ~28TB of usable storage with the 6 drive RaidZ2 that is more than enough for the foreseeable future and I doubt I'll ever need more than 64GB of ram. I got a good deal on the CPU and wanted a mATX form factor motherboard with the server case I am using, this Asus X99m and the ASRock X99m Extreme4 were the two motherboards I considered, got a good deal on the Asus and figured the 2 extra sata ports and m.2 would be enough (althought 10x sata would have been preferable). I assumed any board that supported 2011-v3 Xeons and ECC would work fine with FreeNAS, if not its not a huge deal being that its early in the build. ANy information you can provide as to what issues I may have with he board would be appreciated.

 

[Ericloewe]

All the motherboards you're looking at are workstation boards (at best...). In fact, my experiences with ASRock X99 boards have been less-than pleasant.

I assumed any board that supported 2011-v3 Xeons and ECC would work fine with FreeNAS

"Work fine" is a very loosely defined concept (not to mention that some Asus boards won't even boot FreeNAS due to some stupid incompatibility, but let's assume that they boot correctly). For starters, ECC support on X99 is dubious at best (and I say this as the owner of an X99 board with a Xeon and ECC RAM). Furthermore, the previously mentioned useless stuff (audio, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) drains power needlessly while simultaneously presenting a non-trivial risk of preventing the system from booting normally and you miss out on valuable server-oriented features like IPMI.

 

[jmcguire525]

For starters, ECC support on X99 is dubious at best (and I say this as the owner of an X99 board with a Xeon and ECC RAM).

ECC X99 support within FreeNAS or are you just referring the ram X99 boards support in general?

 

[Ericloewe]

In general. FreeNAS has no effect on ECC support.

 

[Stux]

Wouldn't expect the NVMe to make a big difference. Plex is cpu constrained.

 

[nightshade00013]

About the only place where you would see a performance difference with a faster device holding Plex is something like when you are loading the pages where movies posters and such are displayed. To be honest NVMe devices are overkill for anything like that. A 6 drive RaidZ2 or a 7 drive RaidZ3 has worked great for Plex on my system and I use much more than just Plex.

Since Plex already works just fine in a jail there is no good reason to run it in docker unless you want it to run slower and take more resources. As far as transcoding, it shouldn't be happening all that often to really need a storage point. If your media is in a format that plays nice with your devices it should just work and again a multiple drive RaidZ setup like the one above should do just fine.

As far as the "Live Cablecard TV" server you will need to elaborate on what it is. The one site I came across was EXTREMELY sparse with information. If it's something that grabs a cable tv channel stream from within your home and then plays it across the network then just buy a HD HomeRun device and let Plex do it's thing there as well.

If it's some sort of software to stream stuff through the internet you will need to figure out if they even have a server component.

As has already been said, get a server board. They work without a bunch of extra frills and a lot of the things you are thinking could be nice will just end up being wasted real estate on a home server build that is mainly dealing with media. If you were running a bunch of VM's or large amounts of data per second flash based storage could be worthwhile but for a first foray into a FreeNAS I don't see that being the case. I would honestly suggest grabbing a board where you can have more HDD's connected either with an onboard SAS controller or plan to pick one up at some point so you can build out a larger pool when you get to a time when you need more storage.

 

[jmcguire525]

I've got everything up and running for testing, just using 8GB of Non-ECC RAM that I pulled from another machine, USB boot drive, and an old 2.5" HDD. Boots fine and installed Plex and Channels. As far as the MB goes, it may not be ideal but I think it has the features that I need, up to 64GB of ECC RAM, plenty of control through the bios for fan/performance settings, and I don't foresee needed to add to the 6x8TB RaidZ2 array. I guess we'll see what happens when my RAM arrives, fingers crossed...

Since Plex already works just fine in a jail there is no good reason to run it in docker unless you want it to run slower and take more resources. As far as transcoding, it shouldn't be happening all that often to really need a storage point. If your media is in a format that plays nice with your devices it should just work and again a multiple drive RaidZ setup like the one above should do just fine.

As far as the "Live Cablecard TV" server you will need to elaborate on what it is. The one site I came across was EXTREMELY sparse with information. If it's something that grabs a cable tv channel stream from within your home and then plays it across the network then just buy a HD HomeRun device and let Plex do it's thing there as well.

Channels uses the HDHR the same as Plex just with more features built in. I'm glad to see that Plex is adding a grid guide but even with that their live tv implementation isn't on par with Channels other than having support for more devices (which is already something Channels has been expanding on).

I transcode content a good bit for watching on the go and sharing with friends/family, my upload speed is limited and I prefer to keep lossless encodes only rather than converting everything of having "optimized" versions. I'm simply looking to make the transcoding process as quick as possible without sacrificing quality for remote stream startup times. I guess I could add a video card and turn on HW transcoding but I've read that it hurts the overall picture quality and I'm not sure if it would actually reduce the start time.

 

[diedrichg]

I don't think you can do pass-through on the capture card.

 

[jmcguire525]

I don't think you can do pass-through on the capture card.

You mean video card? On advice I'm running in a jail, it should be able to use gpu HW transcoding in that scenario correct? (haven't tried yet since I used the included plugin and not the plex-pass download)