Danoff's NAS and PVR Build

[Danoff]

As a best practice you should have a loops worth of slack for the back end connections to the patch panel as a maintenance loop. The wall mounts generally are set up to swing open. You will want to run the ethernet cables for the patch panel, and keep the power cables managed on the side with the hinge.
For a floor mount. If the base is wide, casters might not be bad. If it's a more narrow base, it might not be a good idea. Best practices is to mount the rack to its surface to keep your equipment from tipping. That, of course, also depends on the height of your rack. If it's a short rack, casters again shouldn't be an issue. I have a floor rack is pretty deep. What I do is tuck it into a corner so its away, but getting to the back and front of the rack isn't difficult.

I had seen some of the swing-out wall mounted units, but kinda dismissed them because it looked like you only get 2 posts to mount equipment on with those. After further research, it looks like there are some 4-post swingable racks. I didn't know that existed.

It sounds like you're not a fan of casters. I'll see if I can find a decent size 4-post swing. I counted up a possible 17U worth of equipment, and some of that could expand.

 

[Rallywagon]

I'll be honest, I had a two post in mind when I was writing this. I've been in data closets a lot these past few months. 2 years ago and 48u four post tracks would have been what I was seeing. Something like this I would recommend in fact.

Wall mounts cab be tricky. The only places where we really do wall mounts is in prisons and garages. 3/4in ply wood is anchored to the wall then lag bolts are used to anchor the rack. Even 12u racks without all of the extra cabinetry gets pretty have when you start tossing equipment in. For a private residence a 17u cabinet would definitely be more practical.

 

[TB]

The only places where we really do wall mounts is in prisons and garages.

There are a handful in conference rooms in one of the buildings on campus. The VAST majority of the network racks are two post, though. Having never done anything besides see them, I have no further insight.

 

[Rallywagon]

There are a handful in conference rooms in one of the buildings on campus. The VAST majority of the network racks are two post, though. Having never done anything besides see them, I have no further insight.

It's not unusual to see them in large conference rooms. Especially if the have AV equipment as well. Where I work though, pretty much everything in the field is in a data closet racked on two posts. Being a government entity, we have done pretty strict policies about where switches can be housed and who can access them. Except for prisons and police departments for some reason.

 

[Danoff]

I'll be honest, I had a two post in mind when I was writing this.

Well I have a 4U server case. Pretty sure it's this one:

I feel like 2 posts would not be enough for this guy. But maybe I'm underestimating what a 2-post can handle.

 

[TB]

I feel like 2 posts would not be enough for this guy. But maybe I'm underestimating what a 2-post can handle.

Not enough as in capacity? Because a 42u rack is a 42u rack regardless of form factor.

 

[Danoff]

Not enough as in capacity? Because a 42u rack is a 42u rack regardless of form factor.

No I mean in terms of weight. It seems like a lot of mass to be putting on that lever arm. But maybe I should't worry about it. Probably most of the weight is right at the front (all of the HDDs), but there is also the power supply hanging at the far end on a long lever. This is a very long case.

 

[Rallywagon]

We hang up to three of these off a two post.

But not without them anchored to the floor. That's why I was saying no about castor's, totally not thinking about 4 posts. That said, we have some out in the field that we have a couple stacked 9300's that aren't properly anchored and they have managed to stand for years. Always very careful when working on those switches.

 

[Danoff]

Still looking into this. I've been side-tracked a little by the notion that perhaps I should not get a rack mounted case for my DVR, since I could buy an HD Homerun box and pay for a plex subscription. Plex is already running on my NAS, and it would be nice to store the data there directly. Then I could drop an entire system and maybe reduce the rack size.

 

[Danoff]

Ok, tried plex DVR over the weekend. Plex cannot chromecast live tv, so I was stuck using my HTPC accessing via the plex client to watch recording in progress.

The Good:
Easy to set up recording
Recording quality is actually very good, uncompressed... this surprised me and was a huge requirement
Finds commercials and removes nicely
Timeshifting is possible during the recording, which is excellent.

The Bad:
Plex client playback sucks, whether it's live recording or a saved recording, the playback client is not very good (though it's better for playing back a previously recorded program).
Luckily VLC can play back a recorded (TLS) file, and VLC is better, but not perfect.
Windows Media Classic plays back the TLS file beautifully, full crisp perfect, even better than chromecast ultra. But windows media doesn't update the stream as a live recording gets saved to the file. So it stops where the file was when you opened it, and you have to close, refresh explorer, and re-open to see the new portion. Totally unworkable.

Unfortunately it seems like I'm stuck with mythbuntu (backend) and Kodi (frontend) for now. If plex would support chromecast, I think that could change. Though honestly chromecast playback is not quite as good.

Edit:

Maybe a roku could run a plex front end more effectively. Not sure why that would be the case, but the plex PC client seems to suck

 

[Danoff]

Ok, tried plex DVR over the weekend. Plex cannot chromecast live tv, so I was stuck using my HTPC accessing via the plex client to watch recording in progress.

The Good:
Easy to set up recording
Recording quality is actually very good, uncompressed... this surprised me and was a huge requirement
Finds commercials and removes nicely
Timeshifting is possible during the recording, which is excellent.

The Bad:
Plex client playback sucks, whether it's live recording or a saved recording, the playback client is not very good (though it's better for playing back a previously recorded program).
Luckily VLC can play back a recorded (TLS) file, and VLC is better, but not perfect.
Windows Media Classic plays back the TLS file beautifully, full crisp perfect, even better than chromecast ultra. But windows media doesn't update the stream as a live recording gets saved to the file. So it stops where the file was when you opened it, and you have to close, refresh explorer, and re-open to see the new portion. Totally unworkable.

Unfortunately it seems like I'm stuck with mythbuntu (backend) and Kodi (frontend) for now. If plex would support chromecast, I think that could change. Though honestly chromecast playback is not quite as good.

Edit:

Maybe a roku could run a plex front end more effectively. Not sure why that would be the case, but the plex PC client seems to suck

The issue is/was native mpeg2 playback. OTA signals are stored in mpeg2, and some of my devices/software can handle native playback, and some of them convert to another format. The conversion destroys motion in sports images. Roku ultra (and apparently kodi and windows media classic) can handle the mpeg2 stream without converting.

 

[TB]

The issue is/was native mpeg2 playback. OTA signals are stored in mpeg2, and some of my devices/software can handle native playback, and some of them convert to another format. The conversion destroys motion in sports images. Roku ultra (and apparently kodi and windows media classic) can handle the mpeg2 stream without converting.

Looks like the NVIDIA SHIELD handles MPEG2 natively. That's likely what I'll be picking up when the PS3 in the theater room inevitably dies as I want need something that can play back Netflix, Prime and Plex in one box.

 

[Danoff]

Looks like the NVIDIA SHIELD handles MPEG2 natively. That's likely what I'll be picking up when the PS3 in the theater room inevitably dies as I want need something that can play back Netflix, Prime and Plex in one box.

The sad thing is that my HTPC could handle all of that in one box and play MPEG2 natively. And I already have it!

But alas, the software is just better elsewhere. The Plex frontend is better on the roku. The Netflix frontend is better on the roku. And chromecast ultra is not quite as crisp for OTA signals. It's good, very good but not perfect (I think it's converting but just doing it better than the others), and at the moment plex doesn't handle chromecast for live TV, only recorded stuff.

The shield is an interesting device, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around why it's so expensive.

 

[Danoff]

Bought a rack!

28U, 4-post with casters. I installed the patch panels (which was surprisingly easy), and it has the necessary loop to roll the rack away from the wall. I have not yet taken the plunge to get the UPS.

At the moment I have 2 servers on the rack. One running freenas, the other running plex and pi-hole. I also have a shelf for various router, modems, and non-rack switch, and I got a cheapo adapter for my cisco router rack that guy. I am very pleased, it is quite clean. Definitely more expensive, but so much more organized, contained, and extendable.

My roku ultra front end let me down a little bit. It's not handling native playback of some old recordings. It seems that roku is a bit sensitive about the contents of the file that it's willing to play back natively. If there's anything funky at all about the file, it puts garbled crap all over the screen. So I have some old files that I know are just fine, but which come out garbled in roku ultra. Luckily my plex server is pretty powerful now, so I can just transcode it on the fly to a high quality setting and that solves the issue.

Still... I'm not blown away by its compatibility with files.

 

[Danoff]

Picked up a UPS. I bought a 1500VA 2RU system. It says that it can keep the entire system online for 2 hours in a power outage. The total load is 2 servers (freenas and plex/pihole), 2 routers, 2 modems, 1 switch, and 2 wifi access points.

I hooked it up to freenas to trigger automatic shutdown on power outage, but have since changed that to shut down the media server when the UPS is running out of power instead of immediately shutting it down. If I set the servers to shut down automatically on a power outage, I'd be able to keep my local internet up for longer (potentially much longer), but at the expense of having to reconfigure my router to use public DNS instead of the pihole. That's not a big deal but if I'm not home, my wife is not going to do it.

So I figure if I'm home and the power goes out, I can shut stuff down manually and configure it for the longest possible uptime. If I'm not home, I think I want everything to stay on as long as it can and then gracefully turn itself off when the UPS runs dry.

The rack currently has (I'm doing this from memory) 2U of UPS, 4U of media server, probably another 4U of plex server, 1U router, 1U patch panel, and then I'm guessing about 4U of shelf reserved for modems and stuff that don't rack mount. So I'm at 16U used from my 28U rack.

 

[Danoff]

Absolutely pounded the Plex and NAS servers this weekend. Was watching a football game on one TV while the kids were also watching a (non-compressed) Blu-Ray on a different TV, both streamed via the Plex Server. The football game was watched from the beginning instead of live, but plex was recording 2 games (to the NAS) at the same time. So Plex and FreeNAS were both handling 2 HD streams being written and simultaneously 2 streams being read.

The system handled the load just fine. Plex got confused when trying to jump around within a currently-recording file. I updated plex just now, hopefully the software update smooths out that particular issue. Playback on plex was fine as long as the game wasn't mid-recording. The problem it was having was that it would jump to a specific spot in the file every time you navigated within the file, some sort of indexing problem.

Edit:

Either the reboot or the software update seems to have fixed the plex in-progress in-program navigation issue.

 

[Danoff]

This is getting waaaaay out of hand, because I (finally) discovered pfsense (router software).

So now I have another 2U server running pfsense and another patch panel to receive connections from the back ends of my server boxes so that they can be patched across.

So it goes 4U NAS, 3U pihole/plex, 2U pfsense, 2U patch panels, 1U work router, 2U UPS, and like 6U for a shelf with accessories (including my switch, which is sadly not rack mountable). Also my 4U is on rails, and my 2U is about to be. I do not think I can bring myself to buy cable management arms, but it has been considered.

Also I'm buying a couple of 3TB drives to expand my NAS pool. So I'll go from 12TB to 18TB (for a grand total of 9TB mirrored usable space).

 

[Rallywagon]

PFsense! If I weren't already running Cisco switches I'd be all over it. It's a really good tool for sure. I think you should definitely spring for the CM arms btw. They are quite nice if your equipment is on rails.

 

[Danoff]

PFsense! If I weren't already running Cisco switches I'd be all over it. It's a really good tool for sure. I think you should definitely spring for the CM arms btw. They are quite nice if your equipment is on rails.

 

[Rallywagon]

I mean, if you need a counter point, not using arms means you can keep power running on one side, network on the other side of the rack, minimizing interference.
Out of curiosity, are you using IPV4 or 6?

 

[Danoff]

I mean, if you need a counter point, not using arms means you can keep power running on one side, network on the other side of the rack, minimizing interference.
Out of curiosity, are you using IPV4 or 6?

V4. Is there a compelling reason to use 6 internally?

 

[Rallywagon]

V4. Is there a compelling reason to use 6 internally?

Super compelling? Not really. There is some ease since IPv6 doesnt need subnetting (yet) but nothing compelling. I've been considering going to v6 once we finally get moved just because I havent done an v6 setup before. They keep saying eventually we will have to go to it, so I'd rather early adopt. But, they way that IP blocks are being handled on an enterprise level, chances are IPv6 won't last either, despite the huge amount of IPs possible.

 

[PocketZeven]

I have upgraded to a 2017 i7 Mac mini (headless) a year ago (from a 2010 Core2duo Mac mini) running Plex Server conncted to a 4-bay Synology NAS with 12TB (9 TB useable and hotswappable) running Transmission, Couchpotato (outdated, but still works) and SickRage. I do not have any 4k content, but mainly have 1080P and 720P and for older shows 480P. I also have ExpressVPN running on the NAS and Mac Mini.

I only run a maximum of 3 streams of 1080P max. I prefer iCloud or onedrive for my backupstorage though.

It is compact, quiet, easy to use and low power.

edit: Forgot to mention I view content in my livingroom with the Plex App on an AppleTV 4 with Plex Premium.

 

[Danoff]

I have upgraded to a 2017 i7 Mac mini (headless) a year ago (from a 2010 Core2duo Mac mini) running Plex Server conncted to a 4-bay Synology NAS with 12TB (9 TB useable and hotswappable) running Transmission, Couchpotato (outdated, but still works) and SickRage. I do not have any 4k content, but mainly have 1080P and 720P and for older shows 480P. I also have ExpressVPN running on the NAS and Mac Mini.

I only run a maximum of 3 streams of 1080P max. I prefer iCloud or onedrive for my backupstorage though.

It is compact, quiet, easy to use and low power.

edit: Forgot to mention I view content in my livingroom with the Plex App on an AppleTV 4 with Plex Premium.

I don't have any 4K content either. I don't have a 4K TV at this point. I'd like to think that my system could push 4K though. With the router upgrade, I'm finally getting gigabit transfer speeds internally, so the system is very snappy with raw blurays.

 

[PocketZeven]

I don't have any 4K content either. I don't have a 4K TV at this point. I'd like to think that my system could push 4K though. With the router upgrade, I'm finally getting gigabit transfer speeds internally, so the system is very snappy with raw blurays.

Personally the step from 1080P to 4K is much smaller then 480P to 1080P. Especially the filesizes are also not worth it. Bandwith shouldnt be the bottleneck. Rather the transcoding (if you transcode). The problem is not if you can play it, but rather how fast are you going to butn through your diskspace.

I am at only 50% of my 9TB useable space after 5 years. That would not be possible with 4K content.

 

[Danoff]

Just a quick update to this thread. My system has been humming along just fine for the last 6 months. No disk failures, no problems serving data, no real maintenance need. Just rock-solid service. Also I love having everything organized and accessible in the rack, and extendable if need be. I've never looked back on that upgrade, even though it did snowball a bit.

Also, the UPS has been fantastic. It turns out that I have a backup battery for one internet connection (fiber). So when power goes down, one internet connection stays live. I was using intermediate switches along my network which got hosed when power goes down, so I've hardwired everything straight to the rack by installing extra cat 6 jacks in my office.

Due to coronavirus, my wife and I both now work from home 24/7 (ok, not 24/7, but sometimes it feels like it). She was on a conference call during a power outage (due to road construction nearby). Her laptop stayed on, her VPN stayed connected to work, and she maintained the conference call without interruption. Beautiful test of the system. UPS lasts plenty long enough for me to go manually shut down servers and keep the essential systems alive. In that kind of low-power config, the whole thing stays up for several hours.

I don't have a ton of power outages, but it sure is nice to not get dropped at work when I do.

Also, that server case does so much better at preventing disk failures. I had previously been using a standard desktop tower with rubber grommets along the mounting points of the disks. But I guess airflow wasn't good enough, or vibration isolation wasn't good enough, but the server case has basically put an end to disk failures.

 

[Danoff]

I updated plex recently and found that it has new commercial detection and skipping features for over-the-air broadcasts. One is that it detects commercials and puts a "skip" button like you might see on youtube. You grab your remote and hit the ok button and it jumps past the commercials. The other feature is a commercial delete function which actually surgically removes all of the commercials so you don't even have to touch the remote. This feature results in some compression and image quality loss, which I did not consider acceptable for football broadcasts (but are probably fine for anything else). I'd put the net result at about the youtube.tv or satellite/cable TV broadcast quality - which is to say that it's good, about as good as many people think is possible, but it's not OTA quality which is quite a bit better. The bitrate is reduced after commercials are removed, although it's really the compression artifcats, and not the bitrate itself that are the problem.

Skip feature it is then!

 

[Danoff]

I had to replace a HDD the other day, which I did from a refurbished 2TB drive off of amazon for $30. Why did I go with 2TB? Long story.

I hate replacing HDDs. Actually, I just kinda hate platter drives altogether. They're slow, they're fragile, they spin constantly (chewing up electricity), and they're hard to dispose of properly when they die. I have been thinking about the future for my NAS, and it has caused me to move toward lower drive sizes so that SSDs can be added easily to replace the removed drives. This has introduced a new issue though.

SSDs are going through their own transformation away from SATA connections and toward M.2 connections. In fact, M.2 drives are very similar to SATA SSDs these days in terms of price, but with quite a lot more performance. This leads me to a conundrum. It's not that easy right now to create a NAS solution for M.2 drives. The most M.2 compatibility I've found for a motherboard is 4 slots with a possible expansion card for 4 more. That's on the very very pricey end of the motherboard lineup (~$900). At the low end, you're lucky if you get 2 M.2 slots, and the expansion card options are somewhat limited (and compatibility is not there yet). So basically, M.2 has some growing pains to get through before it's going to be an easy solution for a NAS system, but in the meantime, SATA SSDs seem to be a completely orphaned technology.

So I guess my question is, do I have this right? M.2 is the way of the future (if you've seen Aviator with DeCaprio, you get my reference here), and yet it's not quite here yet for NAS applications. No point in investing in SATA SSDs at all, which kinda leaves me stuck limping along with HDDs for the time being.

...and I just discovered U.2 so... it's just a bad time to buy an SSD right now it seems.


Edit:

Actually U.2 is kinda cool. There is an 8-port u.2 card for $300 which I could theoretically add to my existing MB, and then use a u.2->m.2 adapter to mount an m.2 in a 2.5" slot.

That's not all that bad.

 

[Team THRT Drift]

So I guess my question is, do I have this right? M.2 is the way of the future (if you've seen Aviator with DeCaprio, you get my reference here), and yet it's not quite here yet for NAS applications. No point in investing in SATA SSDs at all, which kinda leaves me stuck limping along with HDDs for the time being.

...and I just discovered U.2 so... it's just a bad time to buy an SSD right now it seems.

I would agree with you about M.2 being a possible direction for future mainstream storage solutions however I feel like we're at least 5 years away from that becoming the norm. At least for NAS purposes that's definitely the case.

SATA SSDs are finally getting larger with minimal impact on read/write speeds so I wouldn't personally shun them away just yet.

HDD are evolving, at least in data centre applications with most centres opting for HGST drives due to their reliability. Which means you can buy enterprise HDDs brand new for a lot cheaper nowadays.

In terms of home servers like in your case and what I'm personally planning on building in the near future, HDDs are king. SATA SSDs are almost there in raw storage. M.2 and U.2 are great but lack raw storage as well as connectivity, as you've pointed out in M.2's case.

U.2 is going to take some time to catch up. I would give it another two to three years before we, as consumers, can think about using them in our home servers.

 

[Danoff]

I would agree with you about M.2 being a possible direction for future mainstream storage solutions however I feel like we're at least 5 years away from that becoming the norm. At least for NAS purposes that's definitely the case.

SATA SSDs are finally getting larger with minimal impact on read/write speeds so I wouldn't personally shun them away just yet.

HDD are evolving, at least in data centre applications with most centres opting for HGST drives due to their reliability. Which means you can buy enterprise HDDs brand new for a lot cheaper nowadays.

In terms of home servers like in your case and what I'm personally planning on building in the near future, HDDs are king. SATA SSDs are almost there in raw storage. M.2 and U.2 are great but lack raw storage as well as connectivity, as you've pointed out in M.2's case.

U.2 is going to take some time to catch up. I would give it another two to three years before we, as consumers, can think about using them in our home servers.

I started thinking that I'm headed for SATA SSDs, even though it's already an orphaned technology. Basically it uses up most of the speed of a gigabit connection. In order to get more speed out of an NVME NAS, I'd have to upgrade not just my switch and router, but also everything on the receiving end - like every computer basically (wiring is cat 6, so that part should be ok). So basically a 10gig switch, 10gig router, 10gig nics at every client (which means upgrading laptops entirely), and NVME drives at every client (again, in some cases, that's more than the client can handle).

Really the speed should start at the client. Every client should be NVME first. And then the NAS only goes NVME when 600 mb/s is not fast enough - which is going to be quite some time. My media frontends (roku ultras) can't even handle 10gig as far as I know. That means that an entire generation of SATA SSDs can probably live and die in my NAS before it becomes an issue.