Truenas and Plex the right way

[Fleshmauler]

@Uloid

I have watch a ton of youtube video some say use a large SSD as cache to speed up read.

I’d argue it would be of no use:

When to use a NVMe cache

You should only use synchronous writes for zVolumes, iSCSI, databases. Because synchronous writes have such a large performance impact, everything else should be asynchronous unless you have a very specific issue about losing the last 5 secs of data. SLOG is NOT a cache, and is only beneficial for synchronous writes, and only if the SLOG device is much faster than the data devices - and even then it only reduces significantly the performance impact of synchronous writes rather than eliminating …

The 1TB boot drive is a waste; use something cheaper. Your boot drive is for the OS exclusively.

Consider an SSD (or two) for apps (Plex), because who knows? Maybe you’ll want more apps or even VMs in the future.

You might not be able to get a GPU, but maybe you’ll be able to use the onboard igpu for transcoding.

There can be arguable optimization of using a different motherboard & ECC ram, but for a media server, I’d argue you’re fine. Don’t forget to test RAM, stress test the CPU & cooling, burn in the hard drives, and then enjoy.

Uhh, what else? Don’t forget to confirm firmware of the HBA is up to date & flashed to IT mode. Also slap a fan ontop of it - those things expect server level airflow & without direct cooling, you may get some odd issues.

@Uloid

This system is mostly a media server and Issues the Nvidia shields states the connection to the nas is not fast enough to run 1080P and 4K streams

This part is weird because even a 1gig connection should be more than enough bandwidth for even 4k streams. Is this using direct play, or are you transcoding? What is the CPU usage looking like when you’re trying to play something back on your shield? Is Plex showing this a direct playback or remote playback (also… is the shield actually on the same network or is it remote)?

I remember when I first installed Plex I had to tweak a setting or two to treat all playback from the same WAN IP as ‘local’, and also to disable Plex Relays - otherwise I’d get awful performance.