Plex, QTier, SSD Cache, SSD Volume, NEWBIE, Confused :(

[yking90]

Right! So if I'm creating a storage pool, should my Volume creation be 100%?

[Trexx]

I personally always leave some space on the volume allocation initially (it’s easy to expand as needed). So if you don’t need 100% of the pool for your media, start smaller and expand as needed.


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[Neilo]

This is very good info, Has anyone done a comparison between using a storage pool vs static volume? QNAP states a static volume is 20% faster. I do like the flexibility that Paul has mentioned in using a storage pool, with Thick volume. In my tvs-473 I had simple raid 5, static volume. I didn't try SSD caching though as i used the M.2 slots for ISCSI targets.. I now have ts-877 and more flexibility with the added 2 SSD slots. I'm also thinking of moving my plex on the NAS a well but i don't care about moving the OS over to SSD, its fast enough for me in that aspect. although I'm going to play around with SSD caching for Write mode. Would be interesting to see if anyone has some experience and thoughts on performance between the 2 types?

Thanks

[Trexx]

For storing the media, static vs. pool won't matter. You aren't pushing the NAS (assuming decent NAS rated HDDs) either way in terms of throughput so HDDs are fine. Remember even 4k video <100MB/s throughput rate. In terms of Plex DB/Transcoding functions, moving that to SSD from HDD will have the biggest impact. Storage Pool vs. Static then is minor differences. If you go from say 30 seconds to 5... (hdd to ssd) is 5 vs. 4 (pool vs. static) really a big deal at that point??

[Neilo]

Ah good point! i didn't think of that. I currently run my Plex on my workstation with SSD and use HW transcoding via Nvidia GPU. With 10gb connection between NAS and WS works like a charm... My main usage is of the NAS is large backups from Multiple VM hosts along with personal files and photos and large 4k movies. I have some ISCSI targets as well from the Vm hosts but usually on the SSD's for speed. I'm getting more into the container as well. I'll have to give the storage pool type a shot. I'm a Little e reluctant to move the plex over cause it just simply works the way i have it now. Never have any issues with it..

Thanks.

[Trexx]

You could most likely just move your Nvidia GPU over to QNAP TS-877 and run Plex natively from there fine. I have mine that way. No real issues (other than plex code ones) running that way.

Current 1.17.x beta won't run there with HW transcoding as it needs a newer version of Nvidia drivers than QNAP has (Plex already has an engineering request over to QNAP to get them updated). 1.16.x works just fine though on it. You would likely want to recreate your Plex library if you did that, as the pathing would change in the DB migration so may not be worth the headache.

[Neilo]

Yes, i read that on the Plex forum https://forums.plex.tv/t/ts-877-plex-se ... /226397/15. I see they are doing it a few different ways to achieve the same goal. I'm against installing the QTS on the SSD and like you pointed out " This is a different configuration than QTier. One word of caution for this configuration is that CACHEDEV1 is your “main” volume and not all QPackages/functions can be mapped over to CACHEDEV2 your HDD’s. So if your run out of space on CACHEDEV1, you can become dead in the water" I'm i reading that correct? you installed the Plex QPKG on the SSD but your QTS is on HDD?

I also played around with SSD caching but didn't notice any improvement. I assume that because my Files are large sequential writes. I'll have to try the Qtier with my SSD'd in Raid 1. see how that works out.