Looking to upgrade the NAS I use to stream files around the house

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Looking to upgrade the NAS I use to stream files around the house

gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#198308 4-Jul-2016 11:02

Hi folks.

Hope this is the correct forum as I just removed it from networking forum and placed here.

Looking for some advice regarding an upcoming NAS purchase.

Currently have a readynas NV2+ which is about 4 years old. It has 8 TB of storage over raid5 and has run out of space and is getting old. A good excuse to spend some $$$ on a shiny new tech toy

Am looking to supplement it with a newer / larger capacity model but am typically an overbuyer and will spend monies on features I probably don't need or indeed understand so would appreciate some feedback.

Primary Use

Backup of all photos, media, digital files from main desktop PC - Requires about 10TB currently.
Backup of Laptops and associated files from around the house. Email accounts. Pics. Documents, PC images for reinstall etc
Use to stream to several media players around the home - an NUC and a couple of raspberry Pi boxes. These are currently running XMBC or Kodi. I have a wealth of DVD's and Blurays that I access digitally. Might stream to PS4 and or XBOX1 if possible.
Plan to install a number of IP cameras around the home and use NAS ( require some licence purchases ) to monitor and record.
Easy interface for control and managing user accounts / access to media as it ranges from cartoons to 18+ movies.

To date have been looking at Synology. Looked at the new DS 916+ and it seemed to get good reviews and can transcode as well although I don't reckon I'll have much 4k content. A friend has the Synology DS1515+ 5 Bay and swears by it. He has recommended the DS1815+ as it provides 8 Bays for not a lot more in the longer term. His experience is more space is always useful and his approach is to now maximise that in the first instance even if you don't need it today. I would plan to populate with 4 x 4TB Red drives in first instance.

Another friend uses QNAP and is pointing me towards the TVS-871 I3 8 Bay model as it has a huge amount of grunt for transcoding PLEX as well as running multiple streams around his house. From what I've read the older processors on the Synology kit struggle with PLEX etc.

So this is where I have gone from spending approx $1200 on a base model to $2800 on a base model with drives on top. I'm thinking that's overkill and while I like shiny toys, I'm not convinced it's monies best spent.

I'm not even sure of the benefits of PLEX for example or if I even need it.

While I appreciate tech is out of date as soon as the buy now button is pressed, the Synology kit is now 12 to 24 months old as a platform and I keep reading about their latest and greatest being around the corner in the next few months.

I'd probably use my older NAS to backup the critical pics, images, documents and movies so essentially would have 3 copies of them ( albeit on one site and network) - Desktop, New NAS, Old NAS.

Any tips, pointers, straight out advice or further questions to make me think about this from a different angle appreciated.

Cheers

Ged

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#1585492 4-Jul-2016 11:15

DISCLAIMER: I am a Synology enthusiast - I run a DS1813+ (8 bay) and two DS415+ (4 bay) units, all with WD Red HDDs.

The DS415+ is very similar to the DS916+.

An excellent choice

see: The Synology DS916+ Quad-Core 4K NAS Walkthrough and Talkthrough with SPAN.COM

Just do it

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gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1585587 4-Jul-2016 13:36

Thanks Sideface. Had already seen that review . Glad to hear from an enthusiast of one brand over another. What is the difference in the 916 between transcoding on the fly where it can provide 3 high bitrate streams ( synology specs) and plex transcoding where it seems to fall over a bit from what I've heard and read. I'm trying to figure out what plex is and if indeed I'm ever gonna need it for my purposes.

mrdrifter

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#1585629 4-Jul-2016 14:03

gedc:

Thanks Sideface. Had already seen that review . Glad to hear from an enthusiast of one brand over another. What is the difference in the 916 between transcoding on the fly where it can provide 3 high bitrate streams ( synology specs) and plex transcoding where it seems to fall over a bit from what I've heard and read. I'm trying to figure out what plex is and if indeed I'm ever gonna need it for my purposes.

I recently installed plex on my Asustor NAS, it mainly provides a nice visual interface for finding movies/tv/music that is stored on the NAS, it also allows remote playing while outside my network. They could really do with a few enhancements to the Xbox One app, but otherwise works well for the family as the interface is much nicer than a DLNA list. I haven't had a chance to play around with the transcoding as yet.

The Asustor NAS itself works well with options for installing various apps and capabilities etc...

gedc

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1585647 4-Jul-2016 14:21

Thanks for that.

From what I can see I wouldn't need PLEX if i used KODI ( XBMC) ?? It's an alternative to it?. That's what I had running on my INTEL NUC HTPC prior to switching it and the NAS off a few months ago to undertake house wiring and renos.

I am looking to purchase a couple of rasperry pi's V3 that can also run KODI for the kids bedrooms but thought that their PS4 and XBOX 1 may actually work instead.

stevenz

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#1585707 4-Jul-2016 15:50

I've got the DS415+ and it's fantastic, very impressed with it, one of those times when I've been more than happy with having paid a significant premium for a higher end product, it "just works". Even had to set one up for iSCSI which was a piece of cake.

Plex is a lot more versatile than Kodi, but if you will _only_ ever be viewing the media from within the same LAN, then probably worth just sticking with Kodi.

The main reason I got it is for the ability to expand the array with bigger disks over time without losing data. It started with 4 spare 640GB 2.5" drives I had laying around and has been upgraded piece-by-piece so it's now up to 3 3TB and one 2TB drives.

Being able to create a "folder" and make it a Time Machine backup destination was a nice bonus, got rid of another piece of hardware.

@KnightNZ

mentalinc

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#1585759 4-Jul-2016 17:19

Things to consider

Cost per drive?

i.e. 4 vs 6 bay nas whats the cost for each bay you could connect a drive to?

Are you interested in just building a white box server?

I.e. i just scored a dual CPU server motherboard, dual CPU, with 16GB ram with 6 Sata ports for $350.

throw it in a case (which I had already) and away you go.

Do you want to tinker, or just let it be (Server vs NAS).

NAS software on a server - http://xpenology.com/forum/

world of different things you can do once you have a full on "server" to do things with...

Are you better buying 6TB ($424), 8TB ($575) drives now and just buying less to start with and grow into them in time? Refer above around cost per drive... those 4TB drives may be cheap, but once you add the cost per bay they are not such a good value prop...

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KrazyKid

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#1585790 4-Jul-2016 18:14

I've tried Plex for a limited time. I also used Mediaportal a fair bit and played with Kodi.

I ran Plex on a FreeNAS box that couldn't transcode.

From my experience of just viewing via chromecast, PC, mediastreamer and Andriod (limited tests) the interface was nice, but on the TV Mediaportal with skins looked much better and had more information.
Not being able to transcode was not an issue as everything but the chromecast could play MKV so I just used DLNA.
For the chromecast I had a seperate lower resolution MP4 of the few things I expected to watch on that.

Can't speak on how well Plex handles multiple streams but really that is probably more hardware dependent.

From memory Plex will allow easy internet access to you media if you want to let it so you can stream it when away from home, but then again that is not that hard to manage with a bit of research anyway if that is what you want.

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gedc

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#1586791 5-Jul-2016 21:19

Thanks for all the advice and questions.

After some thinking I'm looking for a solid NAS - pretty much set and forget and not necessarily a server to tinker/ play around with.

I'm pricing the Synology DS1815+ and will most likely look to get 6TB drives - possible 4 to start with.

That should give me heaps of space that will see me through and leave 3 slots free for further expansion in the next couple of years.

Sideface

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#1586879 6-Jul-2016 07:39

gedc:

Thanks for all the advice and questions.

After some thinking I'm looking for a solid NAS - pretty much set and forget and not necessarily a server to tinker/ play around with.

I'm pricing the Synology DS1815+ and will most likely look to get 6TB drives - possible 4 to start with.

That should give me heaps of space that will see me through and leave 3 slots free for further expansion in the next couple of years.

Good choice

I've been running my DS1813+ for three years without any problems, currently with 8 x 6TB WD Red HDDs.

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JimmyH

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#1587322 6-Jul-2016 21:35

Excellent choice.

Storage needs always only seem to grow, and speccing a system with plenty of room for future expansion is probably the most cost-effective and easiest option in the long run.