YANB (Yet Another NAS Build) - this thread is not like the others, I hope!

[destrekor]

Sorry, too many similar threads going on. Second link:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38021487&postcount=2

Yeah, I've seen that one, Anandtech wasn't too fond of it, and while it is rather striking for a self-assembled NAS, I think I might rather the Silverstone DS380 if I was to restrain myself to an mITX case.

Neither that or the UNAS case support mATX.

However, you do bring up a good point: it would be better to get the opinion of those roaming the Cases & Cooling forum.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you're willing to do a rackmount but want it to be cheap, it's more a matter of aggressive shopping - there's a LOT more gently used server hardware out there than there is a market for it. Find somebody who's desperate to get rid of it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chenbro-2U-...S-SATA-HOTSWAP-RM21508-400W-PSU-/171851483820

 

[destrekor]

If you're willing to do a rackmount but want it to be cheap, it's more a matter of aggressive shopping - there's a LOT more gently used server hardware out there than there is a market for it. Find somebody who's desperate to get rid of it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chenbro-2U-...S-SATA-HOTSWAP-RM21508-400W-PSU-/171851483820

I am always forgetting about the second hand market. This time I just need a simple part - I'm usually wary/against purchasing used electronics, but a case? As long as it isn't covered in some gooey material I cannot ID (or worse, can ID D, and it can hold itself together, that should serve the purpose.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I am always forgetting about the second hand market. This time I just need a simple part - I'm usually wary/against purchasing used electronics, but a case? As long as it isn't covered in some gooey material I cannot ID (or worse, can ID D, and it can hold itself together, that should serve the purpose.

Exactly. I wouldn't want to buy one of Oyeve's servers, but a hunk of metal? No problem.

The only issue with the really old cases is finding drive brackets and bezels and stuff. But if they're still being sold new? Not a problem.

 

[XavierMace]

I've got one of these I need to sell off, let me know if you're interested.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/823/SC823TQ-653LP.cfm

You really should consider the used market when you're talking about buying servers. It's not like your talking about a cell phone or laptop that god knows what some kid's done to it. 99% of the servers on eBay sat in a rack or on a shelf for 5 years until it was replaced and now it's sitting on a shelf until it's sold.

 

[destrekor]

I've got one of these I need to sell off, let me know if you're interested.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/823/SC823TQ-653LP.cfm

You really should consider the used market when you're talking about buying servers. It's not like your talking about a cell phone or laptop that god knows what some kid's done to it. 99% of the servers on eBay sat in a rack or on a shelf for 5 years until it was replaced and now it's sitting on a shelf until it's sold.

I know servers almost always have better custodians, but at the same time, there is still internal hardware that has unknown lifespans with, at that point, no manufacturer warranties. Save a lot of money up front, but there's simply too many what ifs.

If this was a server dedicated entirely to simply being a lab system, where I'm just goofing off and testing different things just to get my hands wet, then sure, I wouldn't care, I'd love to get something cheap.

But while I don't necessarily need absolutely top-end server reliability, I do want to maximize the lifespan on my equipment and minimize the chance of failure of even the smallest thing.
Be it the PSU, fans, motherboard or CPU, RAM, etc. These parts in a server should have a very long lifespan, but outside of the warranty it's all a crapshoot. Some parts will last many many years, but sometimes hardware just fails.

I'd like peace of mind by having good manufacturer warranties to fall back on for the first handful of years.

As for that chassis, not quite what I'm looking for, but thanks for the offer! I only expect to use 4-6 drives at first to help my budget, but I'd like to have capability to have 8 or 10. That, and I'll need some internal mounting for a couple SSDs for write and read caching, along with mirrored boot volumes.

Some of the motherboards have 1 or 2 SuperDOM SATA ports, as well as M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x. I'll have to investigate OS installation size, might be able to get away with two SuperDOM cards (if there are two on the motherboard) mirrored as the boot volume, which would be neat.

 

[XavierMace]

I know servers almost always have better custodians, but at the same time, there is still internal hardware that has unknown lifespans with, at that point, no manufacturer warranties. Save a lot of money up front, but there's simply too many what ifs.

It's not just better custodians, it's better parts. But I completely understand the desire for warranties, etc.

 

[smitbret]

No really, I promise, I'm special.

So I'm kicking around the idea of building a NAS instead of selecting a pre-built one. If I were to slowly set aside money for one, it'd be something like the QNAP TVS-471-i3, but I'm curious if I can create a custom FreeNAS build for right around the same price. Obviously the storage will add to the cost, so for the purposes of this post, that is not the main focus.

Purposes intended for this NAS? Plex server, for one, with full high-bitrate 1080p support. Capable of transcoding Blu-ray rips if the need arises. Most often it would be to just add in subtitles but there could be mobile viewing mixed in.

Based on this list, it would seem the equivalent of an Intel i3 or Pentium G3250 would be necessary, but if there are functional equivalents equally as capable, by all means, suggest away!

The main intended function would be to serve the recording engine for the HDHomeRun DVR. However, that is of course dependent upon Silicon Dust creating a functional DVR engine that can handle and serve up copy-protected content. And I think this post-Windows Media Center era is helping get other companies, slowly, interested in filling the void for copy-protected DVR content. Better late than never, eh?

So the main focus is obviously DVR and media server capability. What should be cake is the handling actual backup, which is a big reason for the NAS but otherwise should play second fiddle when it comes to processor priority.

Ideally, said NAS would also serve up minor virtualization for routing and firewall capabilities, should I endeavor to follow that interest.

But in the end, the main goal is to achieve all of that with the lowest power consumption possible, or at least, as best as I can afford for the hardware up front.

The pre-built NAS units I am considering can all handle 4 or 6 disks while keeping active power consumption around or below 50w. I'd very much like to achieve that in a custom build if at all possible. And ideally, I'd love for a hot-swap capability.

FreeNAS interests me greatly for the ZFS/Z-RAID capability, which seems to have greater data integrity/security than old RAID, especially for today's high-capacity HDDs. But if my best route ends up being a strong QNAP product, I'd likely choose that route. Everything I want my NAS to achieve can be had with both QNAP and Synology's OS, and I believe it is even possible to use an unofficial Synology OS build on custom NAS builds if that makes for greater compatibility for the software packages I would intend to run. It sounds like the HDHR DVR can be ran on FreeNAS, with a little tinkering. I'm not against said tinkering if it can be done once and is stable from then on out. I don't want to have to fight and constantly manage the software/services I choose to run, so I want to be careful in selecting the right base OS/system to serve up what I want.

So, with all that said... suggestions?

#1 - What's your budget?
#2 - Are you ready to invest in equipment that is ECC capable so that you can actually take advantage of ZFS?
#3 - Double check your Plex transcoding path. I wouldn't use an i3 or G3250 if I was intending to transcode a full BD Rip to a high bitrate 1080p destination. There is a huge difference between transcoding that and a digital HD download to 720p. Note how some of the higher end NAS units say "May struggle with some high bitrate 1080p media" and none of them simply say "Transcoding of high bitrate 1080p supported". If you need that much juice then an i5-2500k should be your starting point (really a 7000+ Passmark score is best). My FX-6100 and Phenom II x4 955 BE could never top 20fps when transcoding BD to 1080p. You will need a minimum of 29-30fps for any good experience.

Check some Passmark scores here and go from there if you decide to build your own and if you go ZFS, you really need to keep #2 in mind which limits you to server grade hardware or an AMD FX CPU with an Asus motherboard.

 

[destrekor]

#1 - What's your budget?
#2 - Are you ready to invest in equipment that is ECC capable so that you can actually take advantage of ZFS?
#3 - Double check your Plex transcoding path. I wouldn't use an i3 or G3250 if I was intending to transcode a full BD Rip to a high bitrate 1080p destination. There is a huge difference between transcoding that and a digital HD download to 720p. Note how some of the higher end NAS units say "May struggle with some high bitrate 1080p media" and none of them simply say "Transcoding of high bitrate 1080p supported". If you need that much juice then an i5-2500k should be your starting point (really a 7000+ Passmark score is best). My FX-6100 and Phenom II x4 955 BE could never top 20fps when transcoding BD to 1080p. You will need a minimum of 29-30fps for any good experience.

Check some Passmark scores here and go from there if you decide to build your own and if you go ZFS, you really need to keep #2 in mind which limits you to server grade hardware or an AMD FX CPU with an Asus motherboard.

$1000-1500, preferably with some storage, likely just all storage except for the actual storage array disks (so, some small SSDs for ZIL and L2ARC, and some for the OS volumes).

Yes, I am prepared for ECC hardware.

In relation to that, it's a native feature for the Xeon D-1500 SoC boards.
A Xeon D-1528, for example, is a 6 core, 12 thread Xeon integrated SoC. Here's a quick taste of what the Xeon D-1500 platform offers:
http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x10sdv-tln4f-review-platform/
That is for the D-1540, an 8c/16t chip that was one of two chips (the other 4c/8t) in the "first wave" of the D-1500 series.

The platform is incredibly impressive. So much compute capability and a host of peripheral technology, all on a 45w TDP (or lower) package. The one I'm eyeing, either the D-1528 or the D-1537 (8c/16t) are both 35w. A tradeoff, depending on core count, is a lack of turbo.

But with that you get on-SoC dual 10GbE connections, a plethora of PCIe lanes, 6 onboard SATA3 connections, and a host of other features. Some of the models have networking-focused features for virtualization, others have advanced storage features... these are generally geared toward data centers and virtualization. All of which means it offers plenty of compute power and memory for ZFS and high-bitrate transcode.

There's a price premium to have all of that in one product, but there's just so much good that comes out of that. It only needs minimal airflow and doesn't drink up electricity, so in-chassis temperatures should be easily managed which helps keep other components healthy.

 

[destrekor]

Another question on my mind:

I had a plan to install ESXi and the VMs to a RAID1 mirror of two SSDs. And get an LSI HBA to passthrough to FreeNAS to handle the storage array.

But ESXi doesn't support soft-raid, right? How else would I actually mirror two SSDs for the ESXi boot volume? I'm not going to need TWO LSI controllers, am I? Because that is definitely upping the complexity and cost factors. :hmm:

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Another question on my mind:

I had a plan to install ESXi and the VMs to a RAID1 mirror of two SSDs. And get an LSI HBA to passthrough to FreeNAS to handle the storage array.

But ESXi doesn't support soft-raid, right? How else would I actually mirror two SSDs for the ESXi boot volume? I'm not going to need TWO LSI controllers, am I? Because that is definitely upping the complexity and cost factors. :hmm:

You would need a RAID controller for the local disk.

You don't need to RAID-1 those drives - you could just use a single one. But mirrored boot drives for a server is pretty commonplace.

It depends on your hardware. A lot of motherboards have an integrated RAID or SoftRAID controller, which would be what you'd want to use to configure a boot mirror. If your motherboard doesn't have that, then yeah, you'd need a second controller.

 

[destrekor]

You would need a RAID controller for the local disk.

You don't need to RAID-1 those drives - you could just use a single one. But mirrored boot drives for a server is pretty commonplace.

It depends on your hardware. A lot of motherboards have an integrated RAID or SoftRAID controller, which would be what you'd want to use to configure a boot mirror. If your motherboard doesn't have that, then yeah, you'd need a second controller.

Yeah that's the thing, the common approach is softRAID, and from what I can gather, that is not supported with ESXi.

Could be a reason to give ProxMox a try. Setup a light host with ProxMox, create a ZFS Mirror for the boot volume with VMs on it, and run FreeNAS that way, which should result in the same end result for FreeNAS. I'm reading more into ProxMox to see if it is truly a viable alternative.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah that's the thing, the common approach is softRAID, and from what I can gather, that is not supported with ESXi.

Could be a reason to give ProxMox a try. Setup a light host with ProxMox, create a ZFS Mirror for the boot volume with VMs on it, and run FreeNAS that way, which should result in the same end result for FreeNAS. I'm reading more into ProxMox to see if it is truly a viable alternative.

ProxMox looks interesting.

If you do decide you want ESX, cheap RAID controllers are totally out there, though.

www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-R71...oller-with-Battery-Cables-T954J-/311503652613

Also, there's any number of tutorials on how to slipstream drivers into the ESX ISO - usually just for unsupported NICs but drivers are also available for Intel motherboard RAID.

 

[destrekor]

ProxMox looks interesting.

If you do decide you want ESX, cheap RAID controllers are totally out there, though.

www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-R710-PERC-6i-RAID-Card-Controller-with-Battery-Cables-T954J-/311503652613

Also, there's any number of tutorials on how to slipstream drivers into the ESX ISO - usually just for unsupported NICs but drivers are also available for Intel motherboard RAID.

The only issue is, if I choose a mITX board, I only get one add-in controller board. And if that board doesn't already have an LSI controller to passthrough, then I'd have to add a controller chiefly for the storage array. Thus, no ability to add one strictly for the host.

SuperMicro's offerings have been the best for the Xeon D platform, and the only board they have with an LSI RAID/HBA is a FlexATX board. And I'd love to get that board, but I'd preferably like to have a small server, and there appears to be virtually no cases/chassis NAS-oriented that are anything but mITX.

 

[XavierMace]

Don't waste a HD or SSD to boot ESXi. Just run ESXi off a thumb drive.

 

[destrekor]

Don't waste a HD or SSD to boot ESXi. Just run ESXi off a thumb drive.

Even FreeNAS is starting to recommend using internal disks, especially SuperDOM modules, as opposed to thumb drives, chiefly due to reliability concerns. I can't say I disagree with that assertion.

I figured a decent size SSD, something like 32-64GB, is plenty of sufficient for the task, ensures it is super fast compared to all but the most expensive thumb drives, and gives me room to add and remove VM datastores.

Just gotta find a way to regularly backup the VM storage and ESXi.


Can anyone tell if me vSphere Essentials Kit includes SR-IOV support?
It doesn't say what APIs are enabled in ESXi for the Essentials packages. But I fear it is not as SR-IOV isn't even available in the vSphere Standard license, it becomes enabled in the vSphere Enterprise Plus license. They breakout which features are enabled for each version of the classic license scheme, but for the two Essentials packages which support at most 3 hosts with 2 CPUs each, they don't describe at all what features are enabled.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Even FreeNAS is starting to recommend using internal disks, especially SuperDOM modules, as opposed to thumb drives, chiefly due to reliability concerns. I can't say I disagree with that assertion.

I figured a decent size SSD, something like 32-64GB, is plenty of sufficient for the task, ensures it is super fast compared to all but the most expensive thumb drives, and gives me room to add and remove VM datastores.

Just gotta find a way to regularly backup the VM storage and ESXi.

You don't need to back up ESXi itself - the OS is replaceable, and the only configuration specific to the box (as opposed to the VMs) is basically the networking configuration and a list of known datastores. Reinstalling involves typing an IP and clicking "refresh/import" a few times.

To back up any VMs on that datastore, you'd just need to occasionally copy the vm folder somewhere else. All the ways I can think of to automate that involve paid-license features (powerCLI scripting, vCenter, etc.), but it's basically two clicks in vSphere if you do it manually.

FreeNAS is actually similar, inasmuch as you don't need to back up the whole system, just the settings file.

Can anyone tell if me vSphere Essentials Kit includes SR-IOV support?
It doesn't say what APIs are enabled in ESXi for the Essentials packages. But I fear it is not as SR-IOV isn't even available in the vSphere Standard license, it becomes enabled in the vSphere Enterprise Plus license. They breakout which features are enabled for each version of the classic license scheme, but for the two Essentials packages which support at most 3 hosts with 2 CPUs each, they don't describe at all what features are enabled.

Not without installing it and checking again. The features grid doesn't call out SR-IOV in particular... but why are you concerned about that feature? Honestly, it's pretty esoteric. Simple PCI-passthrough (which you'll need for that freenas vm) is supported in the free version.

 

[frowertr]

It's VMware best practice to use a USB drive to boot. ESXi literally copies everything to RAM when booting is completed. I've yet to ever have a thumb drive fail when using it as an ESXi boot device. If youre paranoid just grab another thumb drive, clone the first one after you've completed your initial setup, and then keep the second one in a drawer ready to go if your first one ever dies.

You don't want your ESXi boot device to be the same as what you keep datastores on. It will make upgrading to newer versions of ESXi problematic.

I'll be honest with ya, unless you have time/cash to burn on this project you will have a lot less headaches by just purchasing a Synology and being done with it. They make some nice high end systems used in production environments all over the world. I've done what you have done over the years and my days of whiteboxing servers like this are over.

Or purchase a Supermicro JBOD server, install a *nix distro and setup SAMBA for file sharing and MDRAID for your RAID. Easy peasy. At least then you know all your hardware will play nice together.

Just my $.02 anyway. Good luck though. Never hurts to keep learning.

 

[destrekor]

You don't need to back up ESXi itself - the OS is replaceable, and the only configuration specific to the box (as opposed to the VMs) is basically the networking configuration and a list of known datastores. Reinstalling involves typing an IP and clicking "refresh/import" a few times.

To back up any VMs on that datastore, you'd just need to occasionally copy the vm folder somewhere else. All the ways I can think of to automate that involve paid-license features (powerCLI scripting, vCenter, etc.), but it's basically two clicks in vSphere if you do it manually.

FreeNAS is actually similar, inasmuch as you don't need to back up the whole system, just the settings file.

Can you backup the VMs without the special APIs involved? I guess that's only if you want to utilize snapshot solutions and not for general, manual backups? I'd be fine with manual backups from time to time.

Not without installing it and checking again. The features grid doesn't call out SR-IOV in particular... but why are you concerned about that feature? Honestly, it's pretty esoteric. Simple PCI-passthrough (which you'll need for that freenas vm) is supported in the free version.

True, it was just going to be something nice to play with, as SR-IOV is enabled in the second wave of Xeon D packages. It was mostly going to be something to play around with for the NICs, as it can offer better virtual network performance than the standard approaches used in hypervisors.

It's VMware best practice to use a USB drive to boot. ESXi literally copies everything to RAM when booting is completed. I've yet to ever have a thumb drive fail when using it as an ESXi boot device. If youre paranoid just grab another thumb drive, clone the first one after you've completed your initial setup, and then keep the second one in a drawer ready to go if your first one ever dies.

You don't want your ESXi boot device to be the same as what you keep datastores on. It will make upgrading to newer versions of ESXi problematic.

Ah, I understand. It's just interesting as that is the exact same procedure for FreeNAS, it's all loaded into RAM and it used to be best practice to just use a thumb drive. But now they recommend an internal disk.
I suppose I could just do that for ESXi: use a USB and create a backup from time to time to another USB.
Is the configuration stored on the USB or on the volume with data stores? Because really it sounds like I just need to backup the configuration files.

I think I'll just go with a thumb drive for ESXi, and then an internal SSD for datastores.

I'll be honest with ya, unless you have time/cash to burn on this project you will have a lot less headaches by just purchasing a Synology and being done with it. They make some nice high end systems used in production environments all over the world. I've done what you have done over the years and my days of whiteboxing servers like this are over.

Or purchase a Supermicro JBOD server, install a *nix distro and setup SAMBA for file sharing and MDRAID for your RAID. Easy peasy. At least then you know all your hardware will play nice together.

Just my $.02 anyway. Good luck though. Never hurts to keep learning.

My very first impulse was to go with a QNAP or Synology - but by time you get a system capable of performing full HD transcodes of Blu-ray quality (which will be what I will store on the NAS... and to get subtitles you have to transcode in Plex, which is frankly extremely annoying but whatever), you end up having a system that is very expensive compared to their other NAS offerings. And with that, you get locked into a very specific system, but after digging into what is needed to build a DIY NAS, that idea took over for me, and then ESXi came into the picture and I haven't looked back.

Yes it would be easier to get a standard NAS for the main storage application, but I'd love to get my hands on ESXi and have more fine control and experiment with things.

 

[frowertr]

Ah, I understand. It's just interesting as that is the exact same procedure for FreeNAS, it's all loaded into RAM and it used to be best practice to just use a thumb drive. But now they recommend an internal disk.
I suppose I could just do that for ESXi: use a USB and create a backup from time to time to another USB.
Is the configuration stored on the USB or on the volume with data stores? Because really it sounds like I just need to backup the configuration files.

I think I'll just go with a thumb drive for ESXi, and then an internal SSD for datastores.

I know nothing about FreeNAS. Perhaps other things are going on "under the hood" on the boot device during boot than what ESXi is doing. ESXi just keeps networking configuration, log settings, scratch settings, etc... on the boot device. Pretty minimal stuff to be honest.

VM information is stored on the datastores where the VMs are located. So if you do lose the USB boot device, you don't lose any of your VM configs or their associated VMDKs.

 

[XavierMace]

Ah, I understand. It's just interesting as that is the exact same procedure for FreeNAS, it's all loaded into RAM and it used to be best practice to just use a thumb drive. But now they recommend an internal disk.
I suppose I could just do that for ESXi: use a USB and create a backup from time to time to another USB.
Is the configuration stored on the USB or on the volume with data stores? Because really it sounds like I just need to backup the configuration files.

VMWare is enterprise software used by countless major corporations worldwide. FreeNAS is consumer level software pretending it's enterprise. Don't get me wrong, I like FreeNAS, but I'd take VMWare's recommendations over theirs any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I've yet to have an ESXi boot thumb drive fail on me. Configure the SysLog to be saved on your first datastore and that thumb drive is basically serving as a boot CD. I've got 3 of these chugging away internally in my three hosts at home for a few years now plus a handful more for other purposes.

Just buy a good drive and if you're really concerned about it keep a spare ready just in case. If you've already got ESXi installed on the spare drive, it literally takes 3 minutes to get back up and running. There's no "from time to time" backups needed unless you're constantly futzing with your network config.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I've yet to have an ESXi boot thumb drive fail on me.

Funny story. Had some vmware hosts set up to boot from SAN (the same SAN that hosted datastores, etc. The SAN took an unexpectedly long nap during a software update, and there were glitches - all the CentOS VMs went into read-only mode, for instance.

Anyway, call it bad sysadmin-ing if you'd like - I should have noticed sooner. But it wasn't until a couple months later that I was doing other maintenance/auditing and found that three of the hosts didn't have boot LUNs connected.

So even if your boot drive does fail... :thumbsup:

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Can you backup the VMs without the special APIs involved? I guess that's only if you want to utilize snapshot solutions and not for general, manual backups? I'd be fine with manual backups from time to time.

Well... yes, I suppose. Now that I think about it.

You could leave SSH enabled on the host (vmware recommends not doing this, which is why I didn't think of it at first, but you don't have a security auditor looking over your shoulder, so, no biggie), then scp or rsync them off.

Yes it would be easier to get a standard NAS for the main storage application, but I'd love to get my hands on ESXi and have more fine control and experiment with things.

Your budget would probably allow this - have you considered an ESX whitebox for your serving and transcoding needs, and relying on a COTS NAS for storage instead? Sure, it's two boxes, but any ol' ARM-powered NAS will work fine, no chicken/egg problems bootstrapping your storage, no need for extra HBAs or RAID cards, etc. Start with something modest like a TS-451 in a RAID5, and when you want to upgrade/expand your storage, add a second NAS instead.

 

[destrekor]

Well... yes, I suppose. Now that I think about it.

You could leave SSH enabled on the host (vmware recommends not doing this, which is why I didn't think of it at first, but you don't have a security auditor looking over your shoulder, so, no biggie), then scp or rsync them off.



Your budget would probably allow this - have you considered an ESX whitebox for your serving and transcoding needs, and relying on a COTS NAS for storage instead? Sure, it's two boxes, but any ol' ARM-powered NAS will work fine, no chicken/egg problems bootstrapping your storage, no need for extra HBAs or RAID cards, etc. Start with something modest like a TS-451 in a RAID5, and when you want to upgrade/expand your storage, add a second NAS instead.

In regards to backups, it does sound like GhettoVCB could be a rather nice solution, though it is all CLI, and sounds like it goes against best practices by carrying the suggestion to enable SSH for better speeds. Trilead VM Explorer offers the same capability but with GUI, but it sounds like it might offer a little less than GhettoVCB.

As to the multi-system approach: I hadn't considered that, but it proposes other issues meant to be addressed by this system.

A) if it's the same budget, it'll cost me more in the end as I'm trying to keep power use as low as possible. Double the servers, especially with a cheap ESXi box, will more than double average wattage.

B) half the reason for a powerful NAS is not only Plex, but also hosting the recording engine for the HDHomeRun DVR. You could technically host it on one machine and have it record to network storage, but it seems far more efficient to use the NAS as intended as it's local storage. Either way, that goes back to the first point, as the cheaper the ESXi whitebox that can perform transcoding on Blu-ray quality video and audio, the higher wattage it will consume.

 

[XavierMace]

A) if it's the same budget, it'll cost me more in the end as I'm trying to keep power use as low as possible. Double the servers, especially with a cheap ESXi box, will more than double average wattage.

B) half the reason for a powerful NAS is not only Plex, but also hosting the recording engine for the HDHomeRun DVR. You could technically host it on one machine and have it record to network storage, but it seems far more efficient to use the NAS as intended as it's local storage. Either way, that goes back to the first point, as the cheaper the ESXi whitebox that can perform transcoding on Blu-ray quality video and audio, the higher wattage it will consume.

Not necessarily.

Option A: DVR/Transcoding on the NAS.
Option B: DVR/Transcoding on a VM using the NAS as storage.

While option A may seem more efficient, that may not be the case. Yes, the throughput will be limited by the network connection. If you're running a single GbE off the NAS, it's going to be a noticeable choke point. If you're running 10GbE of the NAS, it's not going to be.

However, your host was going to have a beefy CPU regardless. If you want the NAS to do the heavy listing for the media, it needs a beefy CPU (and therefore more power usage) as well and now your host is probably mostly sitting around doing nothing. Therefore I'd argue option B would actually be the more efficient option.

While the network storage option does mean two boxes, it does mean you have more flexibility with the case for your host. We are talking about such an low level of power consumption either way, personally, I wouldn't consider that a factor in running two boxes.

Also, I'll again recommend Veeam for your VM backups. You're hard pressed to beat it IMO.