Streaming performance issues but fast transfers

[depasseg]

That is a good point. I am expecting around 25 clients at a time. Possibly more in the future. Server hardware will be upgraded by then but this is good practice for me. It is a headache though and I am going to leave it as gigabit connection for now. I am happy with the answers I got.

LACP Clients means local network, as in not being routed through a firewall from the internet.

 

[Wally]

Good news! Worked on the Plex Media Plugin. Followed the freenas video on youtube. It works way better than I thought it would. I tried streaming 4 movies at the same time and CPU load was under 20% consistently. I didn't expect it to work this well on such an old rig. It lives on!

 

[Steve Brown]

Wally its probably because its directly streaming which is what you want. Also going forward I suspect that more clients will be able to directly stream (doesnt require on the fly transcoding). Also I see that DGS-1024A is NOT a managed switch so I would stay away from that.

I would look at this or if you need a larger one get the 16 or 24 port...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...f_a4KJWVaRrxe01uajKlGRoCHh3w_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[Wally]

Hey guys,

Another update. So I do need a managed switch but I am going to have to wait for my tax return (minimum 16 port switch though). I now have 5 internal clients and 3 external for plex and it is running great still. I had upgraded my internet connection too since rogers has changed there policies a bit so I qualify now. I also figured out the minecraft server and ownCloud. My freeNAS system is handling it all extremely well. It sucks that I can't get over 80mb/s write or 70mb/s read but everything works otherwise. I believe this to be related to the configuration of drives (raidZ2 + SSD cache).

Very happy I got plex working, it is an amazing setup. Got lifetime membership.

Kind Regards,

Wally

 

[epox999]

Have you done any calculations on how much power that system is drawing? sounds like a electricity hungry beast

 

[Wally]

Hey epox999,

I have not tested it yet. Low on funds and can't afford to get a meter. I imagine it is.

An update of Plex: It seems I found the servers limit, trans-coding. It seems to struggle with 3+ people streaming. Sometimes some videos are met with constant buffers. Yet the server is never near full load. This will become a huge problem as I planned to have at least 4-5 people streaming at a time without issue. Locally, things seem to work just fine. I upgraded my internet to 150mbs down and 10mbs up. Can't get any higher with Rogers (Due to business internet with a static ip). Was thinking of doubling the internet up with another provider. Bell has 250 down and up for the same price (static extra). Unsure if I can get it at a residential location at the moment. Moving all equipment to the future office this summer.

Can a SSD cache be causing the above described issue? Note: I have experienced local buffers when external streaming is going at the same time.

I also have a Proliant DL380 G5 with 2x Xeon 3.0Ghz and 32GB ram. I was thinking of using this for plex in the future.

 

[depasseg]

The 10mbs uplink will be your bottleneck very soon after you fix the transcoding issue.

 

[Steve Brown]

Yep depasseg is correct you will need a bigger uplink going from 30 mbs 1080p to a 4 mbs 720p will require transcoding. It all depends on what you have configured. You can keep the bandwidth down by downgrading the quality but who wants crappy quality unless its from a phone then the lower quality's seem like HD.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Hey epox999,

I have not tested it yet. Low on funds and can't afford to get a meter. I imagine it is.

An update of Plex: It seems I found the servers limit, trans-coding. It seems to struggle with 3+ people streaming. Sometimes some videos are met with constant buffers. Yet the server is never near full load. This will become a huge problem as I planned to have at least 4-5 people streaming at a time without issue. Locally, things seem to work just fine. I upgraded my internet to 150mbs down and 10mbs up. Can't get any higher with Rogers (Due to business internet with a static ip). Was thinking of doubling the internet up with another provider. Bell has 250 down and up for the same price (static extra). Unsure if I can get it at a residential location at the moment. Moving all equipment to the future office this summer.

Can a SSD cache be causing the above described issue? Note: I have experienced local buffers when external streaming is going at the same time.

I also have a Proliant DL380 G5 with 2x Xeon 3.0Ghz and 32GB ram. I was thinking of using this for plex in the future.

If you don't have lots of memory the ssd cache is probably hurting your performance. You should remove it until you know it will help.