Best Synology NAS to run Plex server (planning on 5-15 users)

Synology
1

Hello,

After much research on the internet and YouTube videos, I have decided to set up a NAS, to use primarily as a movie server, and secondarily to share photos and documents.

I will have 2 users on my local network, and from 3 to 15 external users for movie streaming, with 3 to 6 of those external users also participating in photo and document sharing. It’s not likely that all 15 will be accessing the NAS at the same time.

I currently have about 350 movies, with 90% on DVD, 5% on blu-ray, and 5% on VHS source tapes. I plan on acquiring up to 100 additional movies, mostly on DVD but maybe a few blu-rays. (Not planning on any 4K movies.)

I also have many boxed sets of TV series (all on DVD), but that is a lesser priority than having the movies available for streaming.

I am considering purchasing a Synology DS1523+ NAS, for the following reasons:
• The extra 5th bay
• Optional 10GB adapter
• Optional two NVME caching SSDs

I have a few questions before purchasing a NAS:

QUESTION 1
The DS1523+ and DS923+ use the AMD Ryzen chip, which does not have transcoding, but has error correction.

The older DS423+ uses an Intel chip, with transcoding, but no error correction. However, there is no option for a 10GB adapter, or for memory upgrades.

My primary usage for the NAS will be as a Plex movie server. I will also be storing photos and documents, but those will be accessed by far fewer users, and response time doesn’t seem as critical as with movie streaming.

Will the older NAS with transcoding be better for me than the newer NAS with more speed and memory, but no transcoding?

QUESTION 2
I read that in a 4 or 5 bay NAS with RAID, 3 to 4 disks are used for data storage, while 1 disk is for redundancy. How can the data from 4 other disks all be redundantly located on just 1 other disk?

QUESTION 3
I am unsure whether to use 8TB hard drives, or SSD drives in my NAS.

  1. Hard drives offer greater capacity at lower cost, but the downside is noise and heat. I heard that hard drives over 8TB tend to be the noisiest, so if I use 3 to 5 8TB drives, will the noise level be minimal?

  2. SSD are noiseless and give off less heat, but they are more expensive and of lesser capacity.

The NAS will be in the same room as my primary TV, but then again, so is my DVD player now, and the noise level from that is minimal. When I play music from an external CD drive on my laptop, the noise level is also minimal. Are those devices an apples-to-apples comparisons to a NAS?

QUESTION 4
I am not clear about the video streaming process:
a) Is the entire movie streamed to the user at once, then they watch it from their local memory, or
b) Is the movie streamed while the user is viewing it, so that they are watching parts of the movie that were streamed to them just seconds earlier?

If “b” above, then what if two or more users are watching the same movie, but are at different parts of the movie? How does the disk’s read head accommodate needing to be in two places (for two different users) at the same time?

Will this NAS setup support the 10 to 15 external users with acceptable response times for streaming movies?

2

I would suggest that the DS1523+ would not meeting your expectations, primarily based on the likely requirement of hardware transcoding to serve your varied users.

Given that Synology has apparently distanced themselves from CPUs with integrated graphic processors, I suggest you consider instead, a mini-PC designed for your Plex server. Otherwise, the DS1523+ is sound choice for your remaining objectives.

RAID 5

I would rethink that. Even with SSDs, cooling fans will be noticeable.

How does streaming work

The stream goes out in chunks. The “typical” HDD manages 200 MB/second.

Unanswerable. How many simultaneous 4k transcodes to 1080p? What about audio transcoding? Multiple simultaneous audio transcodes will likely crush a NAS CPU (an i7 CPU might manage 5-6 coincident audio transcodes). Is tone mapping be required? Will your network manage the bandwidth? Your ISP upstream?

Even with hardware transcoding, consider that the max QSV bitrate on a KabyLake processor is 600 Mbps.

If you rule out transcoding, this may be suitable.

2 Likes
3

Thanks for your thoughts and the links you provided.

I have pretty much decided to get a NAS from Synology, because of the OS.

So if the DS1523+ is not suitable because of a lack of transcoding, then the DS923+ is as well.

That leaves me with only the DS423+ model (having transcoding, and 2 slots for NVME SSD cache, but only 2GB of memory, and no 10GB ethernet port).

Q1: Does the ability to transcode outweigh the lack of memory and a 10GB port?

Q2: Will transcoding mostly be necessary when streaming 4K and blu-ray files? (Most of my files will be from DVD formats.) Or is the need to transcode dictated by the client device receiving the stream (phones)?

In other words, if most of the streaming activity will be from files sourced from DVDs, and streaming to TVs or laptops (rather than phones), will transcoding be done in those cases?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide to this noob.

4

Question #1- I have a DS923+ with movies and my Blueray Disk player is connected to it. The player has transcoding capability as most reasonably good network capable players do, so you will not notice any difference with or without NAS transcoding capability.

Question#2- The extra drive is used for parity, not redundancy. Depending on the RAID you select, the redundancy is spread over the other four drives in various ways.

Question#3- The only noticeably noisy hard drives are the Enterprise drives used for commercial servers. Most all of the other kinds of hard drives are very quiet. I have an AV closet in my bedroom with 4 NAS’s running hard drives (none enterprise). They’re not a problem when going to sleep. You can get more capacity for your money with hard drives. If I were you I’d buy fewer and bigger drives than what you are looking to do. In my DS923+ I started with two 12Tb hard drives with Synology Hybrid RAID to max out the capacity as I add drives. As I needed the space I just bought another drive. As you start filling your NAS with new drives you will also have options to change your RAID setup.

Question#4- No streaming is a buffered flowing stream, not a lake. You’d have to wait a long time before the movie starts. As a result, the more you tax your NAS while streaming, the more you are likely to see freezing or sputtering. I’m guessing that your connections are not via WiFi since NAS and player (and router or switch) are in the same room, so you should have no problems. If you use WiFi to connect the two you will be more apt to see glitches during streaming. Your NAS should be able to handle several users at a time but a wired ethernet connection will be much better for everyone to use at the same time than if everyone is connecting to the NAS via WiFi. Signal strength is the important factor here. The stronger everyone’s connection is, the better the performance for all. I have one BlueRay player connected to my TV that is wirelessly connected to my network. They are near the kitchen. Every time someone uses the microwave the movie sputters or freezes. The poorer the signal strength is to the network the worse the effect.

5

Memory is upgradeable, so that is a non-issue. The 10GbE capability depends on your needs. Is your LAN fully 10 GbE? What needs do your forsee that would demand 10 GbE.

Yes and, well… If your DVD videos are 720p and MPEG encoded, it’s unlikely trascoding is an issue. But yes, the need to transcode is generally determined by the end device capability.

If transcoding is a likelihood, another option would be to use a mini-PC with an onboard graphics processor, as your video server. N100/200 and i5 processors are favorited by mnay for such application.

6

SpicerRex,

Thanks for your response.

Regarding #1 - I’m not sure what function your Blu-ray player serves in this example. Do you stream movies from it, as well as from the NAS? Or are you inferring that the player will transcode movies streamed from the NAS? That seems like defeating the purpose of having a Plex server on the NAS.

Regarding #4 - The 2 in-house users will be on a wired network, but other family/friends may be streaming also, and that would be over WIFI. AS that would be 1GB, I’m hoping the NVME cache and possible memory upgrades will help.

7

NewLeaf,

Thanks for your 2nd response. My LAN is not now 10GB, but I thought with adapters for my laptop an TV, and a better switch, having 10GB on the NAS would help the streaming speed). (But with both of us being on a wired LAN, and all other users being over the non-10GB-internet, 10GB will be unnecessary on the NAS.)

8

I guess my original question should have been “Is there anyone out there satisfactorily running a Plex server on a DS923+ or DS1522+?”

9

1#- My BlueRay Player is connected over WiFi to my NAS using DLNA. My NAS will stream an .mp4 file to my BlueRay and the BlueRay transcodes the file and plays the transcoded movie to my TV. The TV & BlueRay are connected using a standard HDMI cable setup. My BlueRay and for that matter, any BlueRay that has the feature that it can play .mp4, .avi, .mov or .mp3 files must be able to transcode otherwise it can’t play those kinds of files. Most DVD/CD/BlueRay players these days can play these kinds of files.

2#- A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Generally, when playing media over Wifi, the WiFi connection is the weakest link. If the WiFi signal strength drops, so will the rate of the data stream (Mbps). If the rate of the data stream drops below a certain threshold [threshold varies based on your equipment, connection distance, media file type (mkv, mp4, etc), quality of movie (ex. 720p, 1080p, UHD, 2,5 or 6 channel sound), etc.] the player’s data buffer will deplete and the movie will not play smoothly. Generally the screen will freeze while the player buffers new data. The NAS NVMe cache is not the bottleneck here and more RAM in the NAS will do nothing. It’s your WiFi connection that is the weakest link. If everyone decides to watch movies from the NAS, the person with the WiFi connection will suffer most. Even those who have ethernet connections to the NAS will experience minor performance issues if the NAS is taxed enough (like people doing computer backups).

10

Thanks to everyone who offered assistance. I have made my decision, based on what I’ve read, input from this forum, and the final straw being a video from YouTuber NASCompares, comparing the 423+ and 923+.

Here’s my rig:
DS423+
Additional 4GB RAM
Two NVMe cache SSD
Three 12 TB Iron Wolf HDD
Network switch
UPS

The NAS arrived today, along with 1 HDD and the memory, but I’m still waiting for 2 of the 3 HDD and the NVMe’s to arrive, then I can start setting up the NAS.

Meanwhile, I’ve started uploading DVDs to my laptop. I’ve done 7 so far today, averaging 1/2 hour each. (I think the time will improve, now that I’ve reset the MakeMKV title length cutoff from 120 seconds to 3600 seconds (I only want the movie file for my NAS. The rare times when I want to see special features, I’ll just pop the disc into my player.)

Thanks again, y’all.