FreeNAS, Plex, Transmission, and 2 NICs

[Chris Dill]

I have a great setup using a custom build, and I have been running FreeNAS with Plex and Transmission in jails for 2 years or so. I recently decided to upgrade, and I have been researching pro's and con's of multiple systems. I have an old T300 server to put it into, but I do not think I am going to do it. So, my other thought is to add an additional NIC to my existing setup. I have been reading that there is no NIC Teaming besides the aggregation setup, which I am not interested in. So here is the question:

Can I add a NIC to my FreeNas, and dedicate 1 NIC to PLEX jail and leave the other NIC for FreeNas/Transmission?

Right now when I max out transmission, over a VPN tunnel I am hitting 6.5 Mb/second hard limit. I would love to improve this, of course. When I watch PLEX, I often have 2-4 streams going at once, and I often have to dial back the resolution in order to have good playback. For instance, my TV (which is hard wired) will simply not play 1080p, I always have to dial back to 720p.

I believe this is due to a networking bottleneck on the FreeNAS unit itself.

Anyone have any thoughts or advice?

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201508250051
Platform AMD A4-4000 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Memory 15544MB
RaidZ1-0

 

[cyberjock]

Can I add a NIC to my FreeNas, and dedicate 1 NIC to PLEX jail and leave the other NIC for FreeNas/Transmission?

No, you cannot do that.

Your problem is almost certainly your CPU. We don't recommend anything below the G2020, and if you are doing plex with any kind of transcoding your CPU will be your bottleneck (hence you should consider something more powerful).

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A4-4000+APU&id=1913

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+G2020+@+2.90GHz

Your CPU benchmarks are only about 60% of what we recommend, and the G2020 is already the bare-bones minimum we recommend.

So I'd bet your issue is your CPU. Not to mention we don't recommend AMD since they lack much of the optimization that Intel-based systems get to enjoyhave.

The fact your TV can't play 1080p and has to be dialed back to 720p tends to corroborate this because virtually no TVs play video codecs that you'd want to store locally, so your CPU is almost guaranteed to be forced to transcode. In that case you shouldn't even be looking at the G2020, but something with much more power. Instead you have something with much less power.

And lets not talk about any CPU usage that is being taken up by the other jails and their functions, let alone the NAS functions. ;)

 

[Chris Dill]

Great reply! Thanks for the insight, I might consider upgrading the box. The T300 that I brought home is definitely not a fit, as it is dual core 1.86 Ghz single processor.

 

[depasseg]

No, you cannot do that.

What does the NIC setting under Jail configuration do then?

 

[trumee]

Can I add a NIC to my FreeNas, and dedicate 1 NIC to PLEX jail and leave the other NIC for FreeNas/Transmission?

Yes, you can have separate NIC's dedicated to different jails. However, you will need to use command line to do this and make use of VLANs. This post explains on how i was able to this.

 

[Chris Dill]

I have actually decided to rebuild new box for media sharing, Plex, etc. My existing box I will just keep as a backup/hot spare. When I built this first system I was on like a $300 budget, so I didnt spring for anything extra or server grade. The new one (which I already ordered parts for) will follow the mid grade in this guide: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

Thanks again,

Chris

 

[Chris Dill]

Duplicate Removed.