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Looking for a Good Media Server
- Thread starter unWoke_inLA
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I just use a Raspberry Pi 4 installed with Ubuntu, with Plex installed on that. 1TB External HDD and then I watch everything through my Apple TV via Infuse.
hmm seems bit too jerry rigged for what im looking for, I also cant stand plex
Emby, Jellyfin or just use Infuse (on AppleTV, iOS, macOS) and SMB to your server which holds the media - that way you don't actually need emby/plex/jellyfin etc
Infuse doesn't do Photos or Music, just video
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
There is no big storage affordable SSD unless big storage is defined as relatively small. If 2TB would be plenty, I see 2TB m.2 sticks on Amazon for < $100. If needs are only a little more, there are some dual m.2 slot enclosures for relatively little too, so that could get you 4TB (2 times 2TB) or maybe 8TB (2 times 4TB) sticks for not huge money (as I measure "huge").
On the other hand, if you need maybe 12-30TB+ for a library of present or future media, the "old spindles" are the way to go. Since you are worried about their reliability in spite of the vast world of storage- including just about all cloud capacity leaning on them- get yourself a RAID 5 setup and/or regularly backup to at least one other drive (ideal would be 2 drives with one of them stored offsite, regularly rotating backup at home with backup off site).
Since cost is a concern, you could pick up a relatively cheap 18-20TB single drive and 1-2 backups and store a library up to capacity all on a single local drive. Again regularly back up that drive to another or ideally 2 and store one offsite.
If the media is formatted for Apple tech, AppleTV plays all such media just fine, so that can handle presenting and playing the media on TV(s) in your home. UI is novice friendly and mostly "just works."
Use the Computers app on AppleTV to play all of your own movies, videos and photos. It is an often overlooked app but does this job exceptionally well. I much prefer it to the AppleTV+ app which seems much more about trying to sell rentals than effectively serve up my own media already owned/shot/made. It can do it too but Computers (app) does it better (IMO).
If your media is not formatted for Apple, Handbrake is a free tool that is great at converting video into formats for AppleTV, iDevices and Macs. Convert it, store it, drop it into the Music or AppleTV app on a Mac and stream it all through the Computers app on AppleTV to your television(s).
Perhaps you are looking for hardware recommendations for the drive itself? If that's what you are after, you need to define the total size of your photos, movies, video library today and best guess at how much bigger it will be maybe 5-8 years from now (capacity need will be for the latter vs. today). Generally:
On the other hand, if you need maybe 12-30TB+ for a library of present or future media, the "old spindles" are the way to go. Since you are worried about their reliability in spite of the vast world of storage- including just about all cloud capacity leaning on them- get yourself a RAID 5 setup and/or regularly backup to at least one other drive (ideal would be 2 drives with one of them stored offsite, regularly rotating backup at home with backup off site).
Since cost is a concern, you could pick up a relatively cheap 18-20TB single drive and 1-2 backups and store a library up to capacity all on a single local drive. Again regularly back up that drive to another or ideally 2 and store one offsite.
If the media is formatted for Apple tech, AppleTV plays all such media just fine, so that can handle presenting and playing the media on TV(s) in your home. UI is novice friendly and mostly "just works."
Use the Computers app on AppleTV to play all of your own movies, videos and photos. It is an often overlooked app but does this job exceptionally well. I much prefer it to the AppleTV+ app which seems much more about trying to sell rentals than effectively serve up my own media already owned/shot/made. It can do it too but Computers (app) does it better (IMO).
If your media is not formatted for Apple, Handbrake is a free tool that is great at converting video into formats for AppleTV, iDevices and Macs. Convert it, store it, drop it into the Music or AppleTV app on a Mac and stream it all through the Computers app on AppleTV to your television(s).
Perhaps you are looking for hardware recommendations for the drive itself? If that's what you are after, you need to define the total size of your photos, movies, video library today and best guess at how much bigger it will be maybe 5-8 years from now (capacity need will be for the latter vs. today). Generally:
- HDDs have pretty good reliability, so ALL of the major brands can be good choices.
- Enclosures can easily be researched to get whatever you need: RAID or not RAID, 1 slot vs. 2 slots vs. 4 slots vs. 8 slots. For most of them, there are abundant online reviews.
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Again, I really suggest doing research yourself. My suggestions will be what seems best fit for me. They may not be best fit for you.
But what I use for me is Synology as a NAS RAID and OWC as a DAS RAID. NAS is network-based storage while DAS is direct-attached storage (like directly attaching a single drive to your Mac).
There is plenty of competition to those brands for both and I'd simply do OBJECTIVE research and read reviews (not just Apple fan reviews) to influence which I might choose for my own system. For example, my NAS is a 12-bay option. You probably don't need 12 bays unless you anticipate needing HUGE storage on your own network.
One good tip: for your need of media to stream via AppleTV, you should favor DAS over NAS. Media access needs to be "always" available and addressable as if it is attached to your Mac vs. network stored. There are some workarounds to this and some other apps that work with NAS options just fine, but in keeping it very simple and using a very good Apple UI in AppleTV, DAS is very likely the way to go if you need storage above single drive capacities.
Note too that you don't necessarily need RAID for media storage. You could get a number of multi-drive options that simply offer individual drive storage in several bays. So a 4-bay enclosure would offer 4 HDDs instead of merging them as if they are one big HDD. Media doesn't "care" where it is stored, nor whether it is all together on one big (RAID) volume or in up to many individual volumes. You could conceptually buy a 4-bay enclosure and load it with 24TB drives: one or two for video, one for music and one for photos. Or start with one big drive with 3 folders for each media type and then add another drive and another 3 folders when that one is filled.
I like RAID5 for the backup benefit: one drive can conk without losing all of the files. Replace the drive, choose an option to rebuild the RAID and nothing is lost. I also back it all up to external storage with at least one backup stored offsite and regularly rotated with the onsite backup to keep it fresh. My worst case scenario is losing the last 30 days of new files because I choose to rotate the offsite drive every month. However, since I also have more than one backup option in place, it requires a catastrophic level of loss to "lose all": RAID5 DAS, Synology NAS, Dedicated backup all have to be lost together so that ONLY the offsite "final straw" can resurrect it all.
But what I use for me is Synology as a NAS RAID and OWC as a DAS RAID. NAS is network-based storage while DAS is direct-attached storage (like directly attaching a single drive to your Mac).
There is plenty of competition to those brands for both and I'd simply do OBJECTIVE research and read reviews (not just Apple fan reviews) to influence which I might choose for my own system. For example, my NAS is a 12-bay option. You probably don't need 12 bays unless you anticipate needing HUGE storage on your own network.
One good tip: for your need of media to stream via AppleTV, you should favor DAS over NAS. Media access needs to be "always" available and addressable as if it is attached to your Mac vs. network stored. There are some workarounds to this and some other apps that work with NAS options just fine, but in keeping it very simple and using a very good Apple UI in AppleTV, DAS is very likely the way to go if you need storage above single drive capacities.
Note too that you don't necessarily need RAID for media storage. You could get a number of multi-drive options that simply offer individual drive storage in several bays. So a 4-bay enclosure would offer 4 HDDs instead of merging them as if they are one big HDD. Media doesn't "care" where it is stored, nor whether it is all together on one big (RAID) volume or in up to many individual volumes. You could conceptually buy a 4-bay enclosure and load it with 24TB drives: one or two for video, one for music and one for photos. Or start with one big drive with 3 folders for each media type and then add another drive and another 3 folders when that one is filled.
I like RAID5 for the backup benefit: one drive can conk without losing all of the files. Replace the drive, choose an option to rebuild the RAID and nothing is lost. I also back it all up to external storage with at least one backup stored offsite and regularly rotated with the onsite backup to keep it fresh. My worst case scenario is losing the last 30 days of new files because I choose to rotate the offsite drive every month. However, since I also have more than one backup option in place, it requires a catastrophic level of loss to "lose all": RAID5 DAS, Synology NAS, Dedicated backup all have to be lost together so that ONLY the offsite "final straw" can resurrect it all.
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Synology NAS + DS Video has worked great for me.
It is well known that RAID5 is is a poor, ineffective backup solution. There are statistically significant failure modes that will kill your data. Then RAID5 in large drives will take days to rebuild/recover during which time your NAS will be agonizing slow.
RAID5 is good for combing a bunch of small cheap drives into a large volume. Now that larger drives are also cheap, not as much use. If you are enamored with RAID5, use RAID10 (mirrored RAID5 sets) as that is a more potent backup and provides all the issues of RAID5
Neither will protect against an OS defect.For video and serving more than one or two users, I've used large mirrored drives (built in MAC utility) and then use CCC to backup that drive daily. Drives are cheap so I also use mirrors on the backup. I've abandoned RAID 5 years ago, along with most of us hobbyists, and have been much happier. Oh, and yeah you may like SSD for editing, but its unnecessary for a Video/Photo/music server. Years ago I repurposed an older inexpensive mac mini as the video/photo/music iTunes server host and it has been running without issue with a rich feature set.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I appreciate your point. However, in my experience RAID5 is quite good for "smallish" DAS volumes (in my latest, I use multiple 16TB drives). RAIDs have served me well for at least a decade. I don't need them to be my ONLY source of data security- just one of them.
As I wrote, the RAID is backed up. In my case, 3 times: to the Synology NAS and dual external storage options that rotates between onsite and offsite. In addition, most recently written files & data tends to be synched between desktop and laptop too, so even my own worst case is not really so bad.
As OP asked about RAID, I presume OP needs more storage than can fit on a single drive... or anticipates such a need. If so, OP could pool several large drives into one big volume (RAID) or keep the drives separate in a multi-bay enclosure (JBOD). I offered both options in my last post.
I assume that various forms of RAID are still in massive use, including much of the "cloud." Whether that's good or bad can be debated. But I myself would not be so quick to dismiss its usefulness. For storage beyond the needs of a single drive, it is likely towards ubiquitous.
As to big drive RAIDs taking a long-time to rebuild, I fully agree. However, during such re-builds they can still be used. And especially as a media streaming source, the speed decrease during a rebuild does not affect their use. I've had occasional drives fail and been through several re-builds. No big deal for OPs purpose. Replace the dead drive, begin the rebuild and continue using the drive like nothing is changed. After a good long time, the notice that the RAID5 is fully rebuilt lets me know the process is completed and I'm (also) backed up that way again too.
Also, I don't know where the "the fact" (about higher-performing NAS) comes from. Streaming media is NOT that demanding. Any old spinning HDD- even ancient ones that spun SLOW- are plenty fast enough to hold media to stream to AppleTV. If any 2 are paired together in RAID, they are effectively faster. Add more and speed increases. But I could easily dig up a circa 200X (retired) single drive that spun at less than 5K and easily stream media to AppleTV from it without stutters.
Now if OP was wanting to edit 4K video with little buffering, etc, yes, speed is much more important. But streaming media is not demanding. Just as we could at one time stream video on 56K modems, we can easily stream video on SLOW single drives.
As I wrote, the RAID is backed up. In my case, 3 times: to the Synology NAS and dual external storage options that rotates between onsite and offsite. In addition, most recently written files & data tends to be synched between desktop and laptop too, so even my own worst case is not really so bad.
As OP asked about RAID, I presume OP needs more storage than can fit on a single drive... or anticipates such a need. If so, OP could pool several large drives into one big volume (RAID) or keep the drives separate in a multi-bay enclosure (JBOD). I offered both options in my last post.
I assume that various forms of RAID are still in massive use, including much of the "cloud." Whether that's good or bad can be debated. But I myself would not be so quick to dismiss its usefulness. For storage beyond the needs of a single drive, it is likely towards ubiquitous.
As to big drive RAIDs taking a long-time to rebuild, I fully agree. However, during such re-builds they can still be used. And especially as a media streaming source, the speed decrease during a rebuild does not affect their use. I've had occasional drives fail and been through several re-builds. No big deal for OPs purpose. Replace the dead drive, begin the rebuild and continue using the drive like nothing is changed. After a good long time, the notice that the RAID5 is fully rebuilt lets me know the process is completed and I'm (also) backed up that way again too.
Also, I don't know where the "the fact" (about higher-performing NAS) comes from. Streaming media is NOT that demanding. Any old spinning HDD- even ancient ones that spun SLOW- are plenty fast enough to hold media to stream to AppleTV. If any 2 are paired together in RAID, they are effectively faster. Add more and speed increases. But I could easily dig up a circa 200X (retired) single drive that spun at less than 5K and easily stream media to AppleTV from it without stutters.
Now if OP was wanting to edit 4K video with little buffering, etc, yes, speed is much more important. But streaming media is not demanding. Just as we could at one time stream video on 56K modems, we can easily stream video on SLOW single drives.
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Synology has apps for photos, music and other things as well. As for the $$, my 218+ has never failed me, performance wise or other, and I don't consider that model "high end" or very expensive. YMMV
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What is this for, storing your own media that you shot or Hollywood movies? The difference is that your own work can not be replaced if lost. But a downloaded movie is no big deal if lost. So how you store and back-up the content is different
And then how much do you have? Is it 2 TB or 20TB? And how fast will this grow? do you add 10 TB per year ot 1TB per year?
That said Synology can cover all of those cases. But then the question of which NAS.
And no, SSD is not yet there. It is not the best option for storing very large amounts of archived data. You can buy 16TB disks and put 4 or 5 of them in a RAID but you can't buy SSD in that size.
With a RAID in a Synology NAS if a disk drive fails you don't loose data. You. remove the failed drive and replace it with a new one and the NAS continues running while you swap the failed drive.
The OP wants to keep it simple with a single app, not multiples.... and my synology has never failed me either short of an occational hard drive and one power brick. Since the drives are mirrored it was a straight forward and relatively quick repair. It still took an hour, did I mention performance? Then the mini has been operational longer and has had zero failures, not even a hard drive. And then it speaks my language, not the convoluted synology speak.
My early model synology 218 is not powerful enough to do more than file serving, forget about any kind of GUI. I've pretty much given up on it otherwise. That pushes one into big $$$ models. Last I checked the basic 218+ runs well over $500. There are tons of apps, and many run dockers on them for even more apps. But like windows apps, not many are that useful.
Anyway, its nice to have choices, but if I was setting up just a media server, synology is not the first place I would look.
All hardware can fail, SSDs as well. I run some ~30 HDs some of which have been spinning for 31000 hours. Haven't had a failure for many years. See Backblaze disk drive statistics.
I use Plex for my media server. Infuse is a simpler alternative. My ~60 TB of media is copied to both QNAP and Synology NASs and backed up to several on-line services. Primarily use my QNAP NAS Plex server as I find QNAP to be a better NAS than Synology.
In contrast to many, my main DLNA server is Serviio running on a late 2012 Mac Mini.
As a mac user, I prefer Serviio’s simple setup, UI and operation to the complexity and clutter of Plex. As a bonus, Serviio is one of the few DLNA servers that is able to give native DSD stream to a Sony renderer device (AVR or Bluray player). Again, with minimal setup required.
I run a Drobo 5C DAS as a media storage since 2017 with 5x WD Red NAS drives. Not a single one has failed during that time.
I admit, somewhere along the timeline, I rebuilt the array from 3TB drives to 6TB drives for additional space.
Doing that with SSD is just a waste of resources as home media serving does not need such performance. Hence I can not justify the cost difference either.
As a mac user, I prefer Serviio’s simple setup, UI and operation to the complexity and clutter of Plex. As a bonus, Serviio is one of the few DLNA servers that is able to give native DSD stream to a Sony renderer device (AVR or Bluray player). Again, with minimal setup required.
I run a Drobo 5C DAS as a media storage since 2017 with 5x WD Red NAS drives. Not a single one has failed during that time.
I admit, somewhere along the timeline, I rebuilt the array from 3TB drives to 6TB drives for additional space.
Doing that with SSD is just a waste of resources as home media serving does not need such performance. Hence I can not justify the cost difference either.
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I really don't get all the hate for Plex - I know it's not perfect, but it's more perfect that the alternatives, and it's undeniably a great solution for serving and playing your own media, particularly if you upgrade to Plex pass. If you want simple, then infuse is great - but I don't really get on with the interface, and it doesn't do music. I haven't tried Emby, but its supposed to be good.
If music is important to you, then Plex is hard to beat - Plexamp (music app) is really good.
Personally, I think it sounds like you want a NAS. Get a Synology or a QNAP - both are good. Otherwise you could build one yourself and load unraid on it.
I have a Synology (DS918+) and use it as a Plex server (the server software runs on the unit), target for timemachine, and as a file server using synology's own dropbox-type software. Their photos app is supposed to be good, but their video and music software isn't great. I use an Apple TV as my Plex client - works great.
If music is important to you, then Plex is hard to beat - Plexamp (music app) is really good.
Personally, I think it sounds like you want a NAS. Get a Synology or a QNAP - both are good. Otherwise you could build one yourself and load unraid on it.
I have a Synology (DS918+) and use it as a Plex server (the server software runs on the unit), target for timemachine, and as a file server using synology's own dropbox-type software. Their photos app is supposed to be good, but their video and music software isn't great. I use an Apple TV as my Plex client - works great.
Agreed.
I have been using Plex for 10+years. Very happy with it.
Originally on a DS212j, then for a while on a 2012 Mini, and now on a DS918+ (which just died (2 blue flashes only on powerup, resolved with new PSU). I got a PlexPass for the lifetime cost a few years ago and think it provides good value added content.
I don't think so - DSD is a pretty niche market, so I think you'll be restricted to Roon or something.
Me either. I understand that there is a learning curve to it, but it really isn't that hard.
I can't remember when, but I made the switch from iTunes to Plex for all my DVDs and BR library after the Computer app on tvOS started being really buggy.
I wished I would have done it sooner. Yes, there was a learning curve, but the UI is much better, and Plex is a lot less buggy.
The only thing I wished was better was how Plex handled TV show episodes, especially special features and movies that fall within a TV show. Think The Files movies that would fall within seasons, or Battle Star Galactica (2000's), that start with two feature length movies as basically the first two episodes.
But, besides that, Plex is superior in every other way, imo.
A side note, I am really annoyed with Plex's refusal to make "Discover Source" available for managed users. This feature is awesome and makes Apple's search look really bad. Not sure why managed users can't use it. The excuse that children might see results that are inappropriate is such a weak argument.
I think Infuse on tvOS is a better Plex client than Plex app itself.
I do not like how Plex (and Youtube) completely ignore all apple’s UI rules and destroy the look and feel of whole user interaction.
I do not like how Plex (and Youtube) completely ignore all apple’s UI rules and destroy the look and feel of whole user interaction.
FIFY. Tongue-in-cheek obviously. There are a few things that I don't like about the Plex interface on Apple TV, but overall I prefer it to infuse. And infuse doesn't do music....
Currently, if you want to do anything useful with PLEX, it requires a monthly subscription. Used to be pretty much free. That and it is an ugly interface, but that may just be me. It seems to be liked by SW coders, however. Speaks their language perhaps. As far as quirks, my neighbor has pretty much given up on PLEX and its annoying bugs.
As far as quirks, my neighbor has pretty much given up on PLEX and its annoying bugs.