Plex Recommendations

[TrevorX]

I'm currently running the latest stable version of FreeNAS 11 (11.0-U4 (54848d13b)) and upgrading from 9.10 went fine - I've had no issues, which has been great. But I've noticed my Plex plugin is running a bit behind the current version, so I was thinking of reinstalling it from the command line and keeping it updated using a cron job.

And then I read a comment elsewhere that, actually, Plex runs a lot better from Linux than FreeBSD. So now I'm wondering if I should change the way I'm running it altogether. As well as my NAS, I also have a Hyper-V server that runs my PDC VM, RDP gateway and a bunch of test and development VMs that I only spin up when required, so it basically sits there 99% idle most of the time. Linux VMs now run perfectly well in Hyper-V 2016 (I've deployed quite a few for various roles now, they've all be rock stable), so running a Linux VM for Plex shouldn't be an issue. But it will be decoupled from the storage this way, which (without having read anything about it) I don't see any issues with, but I may be missing something here.

Additionally, if I either change the setup of Plex to be installed from the Jail instead of using the plugin, or install it to a VM on another server, do I need to transfer configuration files anywhere, or does it store the configuration within my Plex account, and it will be configured just by logging in?

I do realise that it is entirely likely that I could figure out the answer to my questions after spending a few hours reading through the forums, but I've done a few searches and couldn't easily see if converting the way Plex was running on FreeNAS required transfer of configuration files so I thought by asking a stupid question, at least it would help anyone else with similar questions.

Thanks!

 

[danb35]

do I need to transfer configuration files anywhere

The configuration is straightforward--I don't believe it's saved in your Plex account, but it'd only take a few minutes to redo. However, the Plex metadata can be considerable--in my case it's nearly a million files, and I've seen others with far more. You'd want to tar that up and copy it to either the new jail or the VM.

There are, as I understand, a few features that are available in Plex on Linux, but not in Plex on FreeBSD. I don't recall what they are, but when I heard of them they didn't strike me as very useful to me.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

it will be decoupled from the storage this way, which (without having read anything about it) I don't see any issues with

No worries at all.

I run Plex in a Linux VM under XenServer. The VM is stored on the FreeNAS NFS SSD pool. The actual media files live on a conventional pool in FreeNAS and are NFS mounted from the Linux VM. This gives me the best of both worlds. The VM itself and the Plex metadata (/var/lib/plexmediaserver) are stored on SSD which makes everything feel very peppy while the bulk media data is stored on cheap conventional disks.

I'd start with a clean Plex install instead of trying to move and of the configuration. Yeah, it'll bog the server while creating the metadata but that's the quickest path to success and you won't be second-guessing yourself if you do run into Plex oddness down the road.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[TrevorX]

Thanks guys.

Probably the main reason I'm seriously considering moving Plex from my NAS to my Hyper-V server is performance - Plex does run fine from the NAS, but if you enable subtitles performance drops to about ten frames per second, which is intolerable. I suspect the Xeon E5-2670's should have a heck of a lot more grunt than the octa-core Avoton, although the C2750 does have a more recent instruction set including hardware encode which could make all the difference... Does anyone know how I could find out what hardware optimisations Plex can take advantage of? I can always slap a GPU into the Hyper-V server and expose it to the VM if necessary, which is a heck of a lot easier upgrade path than upgrading the NAS.

I'd start with a clean Plex install instead of trying to move and of the configuration. Yeah, it'll bog the server while creating the metadata but that's the quickest path to success and you won't be second-guessing yourself if you do run into Plex oddness down the road.

I approve of your justification. It will be a little annoying reconfiguring fron scratch, but it's probably worth doing. Thanks Matt.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Thanks guys.

Probably the main reason I'm seriously considering moving Plex from my NAS to my Hyper-V server is performance - Plex does run fine from the NAS, but if you enable subtitles performance drops to about ten frames per second, which is intolerable. I suspect the Xeon E5-2670's should have a heck of a lot more grunt than the octa-core Avoton, although the C2750 does have a more recent instruction set including hardware encode which could make all the difference... Does anyone know how I could find out what hardware optimisations Plex can take advantage of? I can always slap a GPU into the Hyper-V server and expose it to the VM if necessary, which is a heck of a lot easier upgrade path than upgrading the NAS.


I approve of your justification. It will be a little annoying reconfiguring fron scratch, but it's probably worth doing. Thanks Matt.

Plex did not support hardware acceleration until recently (couple weeks). There is a blog post about it in the Plex forums. It's plexpass only right now. I have it and notice zero difference. I'll also add that hardware transcodes are not nearly as good as doing them normally. There quality will probably drop because doing it in hardware is significantly harder. I would not make any decisions based off hardware acceleration until it proves itself.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Does anyone know how I could find out what hardware optimisations Plex can take advantage of?

Check the Plex web site...

"There are a couple of drawbacks to Hardware-Accelerated Streaming:
The video quality may be lower, appearing more blurry or blocky. This is especially true and more noticeable when streaming at low quality levels below 720p. (Hardware-accelerated video encoders are faster, but lower quality than software encoders.)"

By the time Plex gets hardware acceleration working well and then hardware acceleration working properly in a VM, processors will be so fast as to make hardware acceleration unnecessary in all but the most cloudscaled environments. And then a new codec will come out unsupported by silicone and Plex will be back at the beginning.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[raidflex]

I installed Plex manually in jail over a year ago and it has been running since then without issues and through many updates to the Plex software. I have no problem transcoding 25+GB MKV files to devices remotely with the server in my sig. I also have about 4-5 people using the server and have had up to 3-4 users at a time streaming from the server without issues.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

I have no problem transcoding 25+GB MKV files

Your Xeon E3-1230v2 is more than twice as powerful than his Atom C2750. I wouldn't expect you to have problems running Plex under FreeNAS while he might. Moving Plex to a VM on his HyperV server which has a Xeon E5-2670 - three times faster than the C2750 - makes a lot of sense.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[raidflex]

Your Xeon E3-1230v2 is more than twice as powerful than his Atom C2750. I wouldn't expect you to have problems running Plex under FreeNAS while he might. Moving Plex to a VM on his HyperV server which has a Xeon E5-2670 - three times faster than the C2750 - makes a lot of sense.

Cheers,
Matt

True but it would also depend on what he is transcoding and if you are playing files on the LAN, then no transcoding is needed. Despite the C2750 being much slower then the Xeon, its still a reasonable CPU.

Also depending on the size of the library It could take many days to rebuild the plex database if you use video thumbnails. If no thumbnails are used then it shouldn't be an issue.

 

[pschatz100]

You can restore a saved meta-data file to a new installation of Plex. I've done it several times. If you experience Plex oddness with the new installation, then delete the Plex preferences file and reconfigure your preferences. You should not have to rebuild the meta-data file. This is discussed in the Plex forums.

 

[TrevorX]

Sorry, I thought I'd replied to this last week :-/

hardware transcodes are not nearly as good as doing them normally. There quality will probably drop because doing it in hardware is significantly harder. I would not make any decisions based off hardware acceleration until it proves itself.

Thanks S&L. If transcoding is done solely on the CPU, then there should be a significant improvement moving from the C2750 to E5-2670.

Since I wrote that ^ I've successfully set up the Ubuntu VM, installed Plex, created an NFS share on FreeNAS, connected a permanent mount point on the VM, added it to Plex which detected everything ok and recreated a new DB (which only took a few hours, I left it running overnight so not sure exactly how long it took), and I added the plex repository to the auto-update list, so everything can now be updated with a simple 'apt-get update' - everything's on latest release and will now stay that way.

I've given it some light testing and can confirm there are no performance issues pulling the media files off the NAS to the VM, and with subtitles enabled playback is now buttery smooth.

Now to finish setting up my new pfSense VM... Anyone happen to know how to do SR-IOV passthrough of an i350T4 to a pfSense VM on Hyper-V 2016? ;) :P

 

[SweetAndLow]

Thanks S&L. If transcoding is done solely on the CPU, then there should be a significant

Switching to dual CPUs like the 26xx would be a huge jump. Even a 1620 or 1650 would be Overkill for most people.

 

[TrevorX]

Switching to dual CPUs like the 26xx would be a huge jump. Even a 1620 or 1650 would be Overkill for most people.

Oh I have no doubt it is now overkill, but by doing it this way it has all the performance it could need on tap. Most of the time it will just sit idle, like most of the VMs already there. At least with pfSense running it will have a more consistent job to do, even if it's not particularly taxing. It has also freed up the FreeNAS server, as I don't have to worry about that being busy driving Plex - it was the only plugin I had installed, but I'm liking the fact it isn't distracted anymore. All respect to FreeNAS and its tremendous flexibility to do so many things, but in my situation it's better to run those tasks on hardware that's far better designed for it.

Oh and if you think the E5-2670v1 was overkill, I'm planning to upgrade to E5-2667v2's next year, as they have the highest clock speed (useful for my Win10 VMs) and improved PCIe compatibility (a lot more devices will operate at PCIe 3.0 instead of 2.0). I expect I'll get at least five more years out of it with those