I want to make a plex nas so I don’t have to deal with Netflix and streaming services, here are some questions I have.
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What NAS should I get? I’ve heard Qnap is good, but I want to know around what nas I should get
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Is plex somewhat simple to setup and is there other software I should look at?
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Is there anything else I should know?
Edit: I ended up using an old laptop and running a file share from it then installing kodi on the other devices and using it as a storage point.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers Plex Brand of media server package RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer VPN Virtual Private Network k8s Kubernetes container management package
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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in addition to “dedicated Nas + compute node” and “just use a desktop” suggestions, there’s the microserver option in between. Small, but has enough power to run stuff other than storage.
Hp proliant microserver is what I use, you can try getting a previous generation from second hand market.
Build a basic i5 desktop.
It’ll cost less, be much faster and easier to upgrade; the “NAS” platform is so overrated.
I used an old laptop and Kodi in the end
So I‘m a Synology user for years (currently a DS921+ with a DX517 extension) and use it mainly to store movies/shows.
For you here are some things that might be useful to know:
- Consumer NAS are massively underpowered in terms of CPU and RAM. Both is needes if you run a few Docker containers. Especially the transcoding of media files is very CPU intensive.
- using a very small „compute“ node, like an Intel NUC, takes care of this problem. I run all Docker containers on this one, while I use the NAS only as storage.
- Consumer NAS are super easy to setup and also to scale, in case you need more diskspace.
- I was never a big fan of Plex for various reasons. I use Emby and I‘m very happy about it. I also hears many good things about Jellyfin
Do you need streaming?
Direct file playback via Kodi is better in every way IF all you need is local playback within your LAN and have devices that can run it. If you’ve got decent upload then it’ll work outside of it, too. Kodi also supports syncing between devices if you set up a MySQL database. Definitely not as simple as spinning up Plex/Emby/Jellyfin, though.
I ended up using Kodi with an old laptop as a server and it’s good
Glad it worked. Have fun!
