Hello forum members!
So my little hobby has gotten the best of me and my current aging Plex server has run out of space and can't keep up with the demands of my family and friends. I originally built it as a Windows Media Center PC but once Microsoft dropped support I went full steam ahead with Plex. The current specs are below...
Build’s Name: Citadel
Chassis: HP DL380 Generation 6 2U Server
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Windows 7 64Bit with Media Center
CPU: Intel Xeon L5520 Quad Core Low Power
Network Card: 1GB on-Board
Drives: 6x Western Digital Enterprise 3TB 7200rpm drives in Raid5 (13.6TB and less then 300GB left)
Storage Controller: HP Smart Array P420i Controller
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Add-in Cards: AMD Radeon HD 7700, USB 5.1 Sound Blaster X-Fi Go (For MCE Hardware requirements), 3 Tuner HDHomerun Prime.
Power Supply: Dual 450Watt Gold power supplies
Other Bits: Sits in a HP 46U 10000 series G2 rack with a 3000va Eaton rack mount battery backup
Usage Profile: Full time private Plex server, serving family and friends.
So far my new proposed build in progress...
Build’s Name: Citadel 2.0
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016?? Any issues with going with a Server OS?
Chassis: HP DL380p Gen 9 2U Server
CPU: Intel Xeon lower power 10, 12 or 14 core (Low power or just rake that electric bill high?) Kabylake or newer?
Server: HP DL380 Gen 9
Network Card: 10Gb or 40Gb card (I need speed for transferring files)
Optional Chassis: Norco RPC-4020
OS Drives: 2x 1.92TB HP Enterprise SAS SSDs
Cache Drives: 2x M.2 SSDs on a PCIe adapter card
Storage Drives: 12x 8TB Drives in RAID10 (I don't feel like loosing any data so I'm thinking one big RAID10) Possibly more drives?
Storage Controller: HP Smart Array Controller?
RAM: 32GB DDR4??
GPU: NVidia Quadro P2000 (For hardware transcoding)???
Add-in Cards: SAS Expander Card?
Power Supply: Dual 500watt or dual 700watt?
Other Bits:
So my little hobby has gotten the best of me and my current aging Plex server has run out of space and can't keep up with the demands of my family and friends. I originally built it as a Windows Media Center PC but once Microsoft dropped support I went full steam ahead with Plex. The current specs are below...
Build’s Name: Citadel
Chassis: HP DL380 Generation 6 2U Server
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Windows 7 64Bit with Media Center
CPU: Intel Xeon L5520 Quad Core Low Power
Network Card: 1GB on-Board
Drives: 6x Western Digital Enterprise 3TB 7200rpm drives in Raid5 (13.6TB and less then 300GB left)
Storage Controller: HP Smart Array P420i Controller
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Add-in Cards: AMD Radeon HD 7700, USB 5.1 Sound Blaster X-Fi Go (For MCE Hardware requirements), 3 Tuner HDHomerun Prime.
Power Supply: Dual 450Watt Gold power supplies
Other Bits: Sits in a HP 46U 10000 series G2 rack with a 3000va Eaton rack mount battery backup
Usage Profile: Full time private Plex server, serving family and friends.
- So my main goal is to build a new server with enough storage and performance that will last at least another 5 years. I'd like to build a new server that can transcode up to 10 streams with a mimimum of two 4k transcoding streams. I may have an Nvidia Shield or Samsung TV locally playing but everything else is remote trans-coding. I'm leaning towards getting a Nvidia Quad P2000 but I saw a couple of people recommending the Intel Quick Sync Support for GPU trancoding. Can anyone enlighten me on that? It seems to be only lower level Xeons have the integrated GPU but is it that much better then the Nvidia Quatro?
- So far I've purchased two 1.92TB HP Enterprise SAS SSDs to serve as the C Drive for all of Plexs image cache and OS. I'm planning on purchasing a refurb HP DL380 Gen9 server with 12 Bays and possibly the optional two bays in the back for a total of 14LLF bays. I have a spare Norco rpc-4020 case that I've never used with everything needed to turn it into a jbod case. I was thinking about shucking 8tb western digital drives but will they work in a norco SATA\SAS backplane? My Norco case is probably 5-6 years old... should I be looking at 1 or 2 new JBOD cases that will support 12Gb SAS?
- If I use the shucked Western Digital drives will I see a big performance drop between 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives? Should I be looking at other enterprise drives?
- I was thinking about using a PCIe m.2 adapter card with 2x M.2 1TB SSDs to be used as Plexs cache drive and I am pretty sure that the HP DL380 Gen 9 server supports bifurcation so it should work. But am I crazy to want to use M.2 for cache in RAID1?
- So far I purchased MCEbuddy to get rid of my old MCE recordings but what other software is out there for Plex?
So far my new proposed build in progress...
Build’s Name: Citadel 2.0
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016?? Any issues with going with a Server OS?
Chassis: HP DL380p Gen 9 2U Server
CPU: Intel Xeon lower power 10, 12 or 14 core (Low power or just rake that electric bill high?) Kabylake or newer?
Server: HP DL380 Gen 9
Network Card: 10Gb or 40Gb card (I need speed for transferring files)
Optional Chassis: Norco RPC-4020
OS Drives: 2x 1.92TB HP Enterprise SAS SSDs
Cache Drives: 2x M.2 SSDs on a PCIe adapter card
Storage Drives: 12x 8TB Drives in RAID10 (I don't feel like loosing any data so I'm thinking one big RAID10) Possibly more drives?
Storage Controller: HP Smart Array Controller?
RAM: 32GB DDR4??
GPU: NVidia Quadro P2000 (For hardware transcoding)???
Add-in Cards: SAS Expander Card?
Power Supply: Dual 500watt or dual 700watt?
Other Bits: