Current setup is PMS running on a Synology 5-bay, and another PMS running on a Shield Pro. The NAS server is primarily used for remote streaming, while the Shield serves to my home LAN (AppleTVs mainly).
I’ve been seeing stuttering on larger files, either using the Plex app or Infuse, and I’m fairly certain the Synology is the weak link. Network performance in the house has pretty solid, though admittedly I could stand to test it more thoroughly. I’ve been looking at moving my library to a standalone system. I’ve been looking at the Beelink ME Mini (which happens to be on sale!). What I don’t know is the best way to build this out.
I don’t want to have to buy all 6 SSDs (ar at least 6x4TB ones!) at once, so I’d be looking at either a stock Linux (Ubuntu or Rocky) install w/ I guess a BTRFS pool for the SSDs (I’m guessing I can use the eMMC for OS depending on how big the install is - that or use the SSD in slot 4). Alternatively, i could possibly set up TruNAS w/ the Plex pp to manage the storage.
As for populating the media, I plan to keep the Synology as the central repo of my data. I have it replicating to another NAS at my dad’s house, with movies/music/tv replicating using Syncthing. I plan to also use Syncthing to populate the Beelink.
Anyway, please poke holes in this plan and/or suggest a better one. My main goals are to get the media I’m streaming off spinning disk w/ minimal power draw (didn’t mention that above) in a way that I can expand storage as necessary to accommodate the media library. Nothing’s purchased yet, so I’m not married to the hardware. I would ideally like to convert the library to h.265 or even AV1 if I can make it work.
ETA: For clarity: I’m not transcoding AFAIK. My Shield mounts the Synology over SMB and mostly works fine, until I try to play anything 4k - then I get stuttering. On the surface, this sounded like a network issue, but I can’t find a problem w/ the LAN. My thought was to move the PMS to a single location w/ local storage, and use the Synology just as an archive.
ETA2: FWIW, I have not expanded the memory on the Synology or installed any cache drives.
I was like you and had my Synology DS920+ doing everything - the full *arr suite in docker containers, Plex server (native), torrents (in container), etc. I’ve recently moved away from that to a new setup which I think will be significantly better and simpler.
Mac Mini M4: this is running Plex Media Server and all the *arrs. I’m currently running them natively, but might move them off to docker. Don’t really see any need to though, they’re safe and I know how to configure them like the back of my hand at this point.
Terra-Master D5-310 5 Bay DAS: running in RAID5 with 5x10TB WD Red drives. Since this is connected directly to the Mac via USB-C, so is essentially a external HDD, it can be backed up with BackBlaze for $99/year! This is great because it’s just plain RAID5, not Synology’s proprietary RAID (which is great btw) so I’m not locked in to their hardware ecosystem.
The Mac has absolutely no problem transcoding as many streams as you can throw at it, and the power draw is just insane. It tops out at like 50W or something stupid, and idles at about 4W.
This sounds pretty great, TBH. I think I’m probably tied to Synology for the foreseeable future with my parents’ and my NAS being each others off site backup. I know there are other ways to do it, but the investments are already made on both ends. Plus, they’re retired, so the 1522 with 18TB drives wasn’t a small expense for them!