Help in Plex media server
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:31 pm
Hey guys,
I am building a Media server, which will be primarily used as a Plex server and transcoding hub (Both live transcoding and trancoding the media library). There are some alternate uses, but performance is not integral to the proces for these tasks. This might be a bit overkill, but the server will be hosting roughly 6-10 concurrent users, and consumes a lot of data as the various users will skip between movies, shows, music etc. This is also one of my questions in terms of PrimoCache, I will most like be using this as read Only Cache, as write operations in my Raid setup will be mostly maxed anyway. But I am unable to verify how often Primocache will swap data into the L1+L2 Cache, because as far as I understand it waits for idle operations. Does this mean that it will not load full movies into the cache before the system idles? This might just be my limited understanding, but an essential part of my caching scenario is that data is dumped into the cache, so buffering and fast forward or searching operations are performed quickly, same thing goes for trancoding a 40GB file into a 2GB file.
The system will be set up as:
CPU: Ryzen 5 3700x
GFX: Nvidia Quadro P400
Memory: 32GB DDR4 Memory
Boot Drive: 256GB NVME SSD
Storage: 8 x 10TB HDD 7.200 RPM in Raid 5 (63TB of usable space, 24TB occupied)
L2 Cache: NVME, Size ????
First off: I would really like a recommendation on L2 Cache size, I have a really hard time figuring out whether a large cache will benefit me. Media files can be up to 10gb in size, and I want to utilize the L1+L2 cache for speeding up buffering and in-video skipping, as this can be extremely slow on regular HDD. In terms of budget Anything from 256GB-1TB is in my budget range, but I would prefer saving the 3x cost of 1 TB if it will not yield any gains.
Additionally, I have 32 GB of memory, but will not use more than 16 GB, will 16GB L1 cache be sufficient.
Lastly: Any guidance on block sizes or special tricks for a setup like this would be appreciated.
I am building a Media server, which will be primarily used as a Plex server and transcoding hub (Both live transcoding and trancoding the media library). There are some alternate uses, but performance is not integral to the proces for these tasks. This might be a bit overkill, but the server will be hosting roughly 6-10 concurrent users, and consumes a lot of data as the various users will skip between movies, shows, music etc. This is also one of my questions in terms of PrimoCache, I will most like be using this as read Only Cache, as write operations in my Raid setup will be mostly maxed anyway. But I am unable to verify how often Primocache will swap data into the L1+L2 Cache, because as far as I understand it waits for idle operations. Does this mean that it will not load full movies into the cache before the system idles? This might just be my limited understanding, but an essential part of my caching scenario is that data is dumped into the cache, so buffering and fast forward or searching operations are performed quickly, same thing goes for trancoding a 40GB file into a 2GB file.
The system will be set up as:
CPU: Ryzen 5 3700x
GFX: Nvidia Quadro P400
Memory: 32GB DDR4 Memory
Boot Drive: 256GB NVME SSD
Storage: 8 x 10TB HDD 7.200 RPM in Raid 5 (63TB of usable space, 24TB occupied)
L2 Cache: NVME, Size ????
First off: I would really like a recommendation on L2 Cache size, I have a really hard time figuring out whether a large cache will benefit me. Media files can be up to 10gb in size, and I want to utilize the L1+L2 cache for speeding up buffering and in-video skipping, as this can be extremely slow on regular HDD. In terms of budget Anything from 256GB-1TB is in my budget range, but I would prefer saving the 3x cost of 1 TB if it will not yield any gains.
Additionally, I have 32 GB of memory, but will not use more than 16 GB, will 16GB L1 cache be sufficient.
Lastly: Any guidance on block sizes or special tricks for a setup like this would be appreciated.