Jump to content
XPEnology Community

New User Need Advice


powerplyer

Recommended Posts

First of all, this is a great port. I am currently running a 8 drive unRAID and happy but do not want to fork out another $119 for a base product. For the past few days I have been fiddling around with Nas4Free, Ubuntu, SnapRAID, FreeNAS etc... and none of them were very easy to set-up or user-friendly.

 

The new system I started to build:

-- SMC X10SLM motherboard

-- Xeon CPU V3.

-- 16GB Memory

-- 12X 4TB drives

-- 2x Kingston 120GB SSD

-- 16GB Sony USB for XPEnology.

-- 3U server case

-- 2x HBA controller

 

Purpose:

1) Have two public folders for family

2) Serve 4 XBMC boxes

3) Fast transfer speeds read/writes.

4) Have a private folder for my data.

5) Data Protection

 

Here are my questions:

-- What "Apps" should I install to serve the XBMC?

-- I have a TV which support Plex Media Server, what app should I install?

-- The current transfer speed over a 1G network is ~60MB/s. Are there any tweaks to make it go faster?

-- How do I set up the SSD for Caching. (I am a tech savvy so a link is fine)

-- Any other "must have" of "fun"apps.

-- Is there new user wiki or forum I should be searching?

-- What is nanoboot and gnoBoot, do I need any of these. My system is up and running. I

 

Current Status:

Using a USB for system (boot) volume.

I have the system up and running with the latest Beta 8 with 4x 4TB drives and 1 SSD. Looking to dig deeper/optimize...

 

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

** New User so please excuse me of any errors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

HI there

 

-- What "Apps" should I install to serve the XBMC?

probably mysql, php and the xbmc package (if it exists)... but i would not recommend that.

-- I have a TV which support Plex Media Server, what app should I install?

I would recommend Plex as it is "click and use" on synology

-- The current transfer speed over a 1G network is ~60MB/s. Are there any tweaks to make it go faster?

Are your disks full? If they are empty you can expext the speed to decrease a lot later...

Use the raid for security AND speed. Then digg into network card aggregation (if routeur compatible). But dont expect to be above 150 all time ehhehe

-- How do I set up the SSD for Caching. (I am a tech savvy so a link is fine)

No idea.

-- Any other "must have" of "fun"apps.

Calibre, VisualStation, DS File, Cloud

-- Is there new user wiki or forum I should be searching?

The official one : http://ukdl.synology.com/ftp/ds/usergui ... _Paper.pdf :grin:

-- What is nanoboot and gnoBoot, do I need any of these. My system is up and running.

I dont know if you already have data on your drives but if not, I would recommend running tests... speed of HD, link aggregation, WOL, Hibernation...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, your hardware is way over-spec'd for XPE.

 

Depending on your requirements you can run ESXi wih an XPE vm and still have lots to spare.

Or, if you have critical data (familiy photos, work data whatever) on it then consider ZFS based tech again (is that ECC RAM?).

 

Those are not *so* complicated to setup except maybe the apps as those are possibly not drag&drop style but its not really rocket science either.

 

I am running FreeNas with an XPE VM on top currently for example.

 

---- Some antswers nevertheless;)

 

-- What "Apps" should I install to serve the XBMC?

-- I have a TV which support Plex Media Server, what app should I install?

 

I guess you should decide between Plex and XMBC, are'nt they providing the same service - Server video/audio?

 

-- The current transfer speed over a 1G network is ~60MB/s. Are there any tweaks to make it go faster?

This sounds very slow - but not sure how to tweak XPE beyond mtu. Whats you'r array's read/write rate (dd)?

 

-- How do I set up the SSD for Caching. (I am a tech savvy so a link is fine)

Not sure thats available in 4.3

 

-- Any other "must have" of "fun"apps.

 

Totally depends on your needs;)

 

-- Is there new user wiki or forum I should be searching?

no idea

 

-- What is nanoboot and gnoBoot, do I need any of these. My system is up and running. I

Different boot helpers for DSM5. Is Beta 8 on v5 already or is it still 4.3 based as i believe? If so try upgrading to get SSD caching (overrated in XPE) and maybe more speed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wow, swatting flies with a sledge hammer. That a lot of fire power to commit a SYN. 70MB/s xfer across wired GIGe LAN. my limiting factor is the crap router. Intel ATOM D510 with 2GB ram and 6x2TB HDD is base build. But have fum storming the castle!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All thank you very much for the help. The memory is Kingston KVR16E11K4 DDR3-1600 16 GB(1Gx72 ECC CL11 Server Memory Kit.

 

"Are your disks full? If they are empty you can expext the speed to decrease a lot later..."

-- the drives are completely empty. It is cerious that the speed will be slower later because I assumed this is some kind of RAID5 setup.

"speed of HD, link aggregation, WOL, Hibernation..."

I will try this out I do not think the SMC MB sever MB supports hibernation. It would nice to see if the drives spin down.

"This sounds very slow - but not sure how to tweak XPE beyond mtu. Whats you'r array's read/write rate (dd)?

-- do you know the dd command I can run from SSH to try? I have always stayed away from dd command due to erasing all the data.

"Not sure that's (SSD Caching) available in 4.3"

-- I see the option, hence wanted to try.

"Is Beta 8 on v5 already or is it still 4.3 based as i believe? "

-- No Beta8 is on 4.3.

 

"But have fum storming the castle!"

-- I wanted to beef up the system so if could do transcoding if needed.

 

 

Again thanks for the insight.

 

 

 

"I guess you should decide between Plex and XMBC, are'nt they providing the same service - Server video/audio?"

-- My main purpose is to serve up XBMC data, only one of my TV's has Plex built in.

 

 

 

"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man, your hardware probably was designed for ZFS but i just wanna say to you that it's a useless usage of resources for XPenology. I also had ZFS on FreeNAS, nas4free, and all those NASes that apparently are highly efficient.

Sell thee hardware on ebay, buy an I3 Haswell or a J1900 quad core with 2-4GB RAM and a sixpack of beer (or more) as these procs provide a massive decrease on your energy bill :smile:

 

I have a trendnet switch and a SSD on my primary computer. My speed varies from 100 to 120MB/s but i do have "Write Cache active"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

>What "Apps" should I install to serve the XBMC?

 

I think you're asking the wrong question. XBMC is a client that (typically) runs over file shares. Syno doesn't need an app to share files and folders.

 

Plex is a client/server solution that provides almost zero config (so no folders need to be shared) and transcoding. But it has nothing to do with XBMC and you cannot (normally) use XBMC to access it. Plex Server is available in Syno's package manager, but it is reccommended you install the SPK from the plex website instead.

 

The are native Plex client apps for most platforms - what do your clients look like? And to further complicate the issue there is a Plex plugin for XBMC that allows it to use a Plex server - but in most cases this won't bring anything more than installing Plex natively.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"But have fum storming the castle!"

-- I wanted to beef up the system so if could do transcoding if needed.

 

"

 

 

I'm using the native Syno apps on Android and iOS and the package Synology Video Station and i can play movies on the fly on an AMD E350 dual core, with no impact on cpu usage :smile:

You don't need a Xeon!

 

My suggestion is to prepare with Xpenology an old computer and do a productive test before you start anything large

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why use Plex over the Syno's native Media Server DLNA package?

 

Because of the rich native client support and availability - including smart TVs. DLNA may be just as available, but the UX in Plex is pretty impressive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because of the rich native client support and availability - including smart TVs. DLNA may be just as available, but the UX in Plex is pretty impressive.

 

I have a UE46ES7000 and i'm completely satisfied. DLNA by default is working on it. Dunno why people run after Plex when anyhow they don't use more than the basic features :smile:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well if it helps I didn't really understand the benefits of Plex over DNLA till I trashed the latter either. It would probably take you 30 mins to try if you were genuniely curious in understanding what the fuss was about. But yes, there's no reason for you to be impressed by it if DNLA works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well if it helps I didn't really understand the benefits of Plex over DNLA till I trashed the latter either. It would probably take you 30 mins to try if you were genuniely curious in understanding what the fuss was about. But yes, there's no reason for you to be impressed by it if DNLA works.

 

I tried and and trashed it after didn't finished indexing in 48h. And my collection was rather small at that time :smile:

 

Nevertheless, let's stop whining and check what this man has to say about our proposals :smile:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all thanks for all your input and apologize for the late input.

 

My primary purpose is the serve up 4 XBMC clients. It looks like I do not need to add any plugins. I may do the PHP (MySQL), to have a central.

 

For the one Plex capable TV, I may install the Plex plug-in.

 

DLNA seems good to have as well as the (torrents, couchpatato etc...). I am running VPN thru my server.

 

I upgraded to NanoBoot to be able to get the 5.x DSM, recognizes my 4TB HDD.

 

I understand the HW is way overkill and I do not see my CPU get above 0%. Thanks again for all the feedback.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well if it helps I didn't really understand the benefits of Plex over DNLA till I trashed the latter either. It would probably take you 30 mins to try if you were genuniely curious in understanding what the fuss was about. But yes, there's no reason for you to be impressed by it if DNLA works.

 

I tried and and trashed it after didn't finished indexing in 48h. And my collection was rather small at that time :smile:

 

Nevertheless, let's stop whining and check what this man has to say about our proposals :smile:

 

If you have "Generate media index files during scans" enabled it will take a long time (probably more then 48 hours depending on the type of machine you have. This is different then a regular library scan which downloads the movie info and cover art. The media index actually goes through each video and generates thumbnails at various times so on players that support it you will see the "pop up" thumbnail when you are fast forwarding. Depending on your system this can take 30 minutes or more per movie.

 

One of the awesome features of Plex is it's ability to transcode on the fly (if you have the hardware power to do it), this is what separates it from DLNA (and XBMC), also the simplicity of sharing your server (just make a free Plex account). For example besides me being able to watch my media on my TV when I'm at home (like you can with DLNA, XBMC), if I'm away from home but have an internet connection I can continue to watch my media on my tablet, phone, web browser as the Plex server will transcode on the fly whatever you're watching so it can stream smoothly over the internet.

 

Now the sharing of Servers takes this even further. I have friends and relatives that created free plex accounts, I just add there names to my friends list and now they can also stream media from my server. You have a Samsung Smart TV... my brother who lives in another city has a Samsung Smart TV with Plex app, he just sets it up with his free plex account and now he can stream movies over the internet from my server as if they were local, you can't do that with DLNA. Plex is quite powerful for sharing media.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

+1

I also share my plex server with friends and relatives. And use a lot the start seeing something in a device like samsung smart tv and continue in the ipad or android mobile because kids or wife take control of the TV :smile:

 

Enviado desde mi GT-N7000 usando Tapatalk 2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

>One of the awesome features of Plex is it's ability to transcode on the fly (if you have the hardware power to do it), this is what separates it from DLNA (and XBMC)

 

In DNLA's defense, DNLA should be able to do this too. When it works. I guess having the client and servers from the same place helps with the config/compatibility issues people often see with DNLA.

 

But yes, zero config, sharing, centralised users, prograss saving/continuation across devices. It's impressive stuff. Those in the UK can even build a Plex client for £10 with a NowTV box.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...