RAID set up for media streaming

[jonnyb]

Thanks guys,

I'm after compressed 4K, Amazon, Netflix that sort of thing.

I suppose why I'm worried about disk failure is that it's the disk that actually holds the data. I'm thinking if the NAS goes down but the disks are ok, swap the NAS for the same type, slot the disks in and away you go! Or is that far too simple?

As for running RAID 0, 1 6TB disk backing up another 6TB disk is actually quite an expensive solution, especially if one goes down.

RAID 10 looks interesting though. Maybe that's the way to go.

Any other things to think about?

[anonymous-user]

Not sure where you are getting the content to stream locally? Amazon or Netflix don't make their content available for local storage i.e. stream from their cloud only. You could buy UHD 4k blu-ray discs but these at the current time cannot be ripped as the encryption is not broken and this isn't likely to happen soon either.

[anonymous-user]

Assuming you own a PC, you could do the same as me: all content is ripped to MKV on the PC and is stored on an external 4TB hard drive connected via USB3.0. I also have a 4TB NAS (single drive so no redundancy). To give me redundancy I set up a robocopy scheduled task that runs a couple of times per week. Takes seconds to run if there aren't any changes and copies in background so you don't even notice it running. Same for music. I also back up all photos and documents on my PC to ICloud. Great thing about Kodi is you can set up a screen saver to play photos so I've got it to access my iCloud library which syncs with the HTPC. It means it shows all the photos taken with my phone good or bad. Can lead to most amusing conversations when we have friends or family round for dinner and it plays in the background. One day it started playing all my kid's baby photos including the ones of them sitting in the bath etc. Teenage son was not amused!

Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 16th January 19:29

[Mr_Yogi]

tankplanker said:

Assuming you aren't recording and processing your own high end 4k video you don't need high speed RAID like 0 or 2. Only if you are editing 4k video do you need a high performance array. As long as the array can meet the highest performance for Ultra HD, which is 128Mbps, you'll be fine.

In fact you should be more concerned that your end to end network is capable of meeting that speed as it is slightly higher than the theoretical limit of 1Gb Ethernet, which is 125Mbps. You should be looking at a NAS and network switch that allows for proper network trunking across multiple adapters if you have multiple source clients, although this is pointless if you only ever stream from one device.

RAID 5 is fine for small arrays with a low number of disks that are not heavily used. Just buy an extra disk and make sure your NAS can use it as a hot standby spare. You only need a more robust RAID type if you are running a large number of disks as greater chance of more than one disk failing at a time, which would be awful for RAID 5 and the rebuild times could be horrific. As you are streaming read performance is more important than write performance RAID 5 is fine.

I assume the OP is wanting this for watching 4K video, where are you gonna find any content that required 128MBytes/s? That's 450GB of storage for an hour of video. Gigabit ethernet is absolutely fine for 4K streaming, as would be any single HD. Even the cheapest 7200rpm HD can maintain 40+MB/s (320Mbps).

[jonnyb]

gottans said:

Not sure where you are getting the content to stream locally? Amazon or Netflix don't make their content available for local storage i.e. stream from their cloud only. You could buy UHD 4k blu-ray discs but these at the current time cannot be ripped as the encryption is not broken and this isn't likely to happen soon either.

This is the case now, but give it 12-24 months and I think things could be very different, also 4K movie files are very large.

This is where the future proofing comes in.

wormus said:

Assuming you own a PC, you could do the same as me: all content is ripped to MKV on the PC and is stored on an external 4TB hard drive connected via USB3.0. I also have a 4TB NAS (single drive so no redundancy). To give me redundancy I set up a robocopy scheduled task that runs a couple of times per week. Takes seconds to run if there aren't any changes and copies in background so you don't even notice it running. Same for music. I also back up all photos and documents on my PC to ICloud. Great thing about Kodi is you can set up a screen saver to play photos so I've got it to access my iCloud library which syncs with the HTPC. It means it shows all the photos taken with my phone good or bad. Can lead to most amusing conversations when we have friends or family round for dinner and it plays in the background. One day it started playing all my kid's baby photos including the ones of them sitting in the bath etc. Teenage son was not amused

I actually run a MacBook Pro (2015). Which is part of the problem, it currently streams all my media from an external drive, bit of a bugger for the rest of the house when I take it to work!

I, too, currently back up all absolutely essential documents and all photos to iCloud, it's my movie collection I'm worried about now. About 2TB worth!

Hence the NAS set-up.

Edited by jonnyb on Monday 16th January 21:37

[SteveJL]

As a previous poster mentioned I also use UnRaid, it might suit your usage?

https://lime-technology.com

Since they have added docker it's become a very rounded piece of software.

I have 22tb of available storage over 7 disks, downloading,streaming you name it seems to be able to do it.

[onlynik]

alock said:

Disks fail, so do power supplies, CPUs and RAM. I've had more RAM and power supply failures over the last 25 years than disk failures. We have a stack of old PCs in the office, all with dead power supplies but working disks. We never buy disks to replace broken disks.

Do you recommend a solution with redundancy for all hardware? Why are disks special? Trying to recover a RAID onto brand new hardware is a pain. I've tried twice when power supplies have gone pop and taken RAID cards with them and failed both times. A restore of the previous backup is easier.

RAID has its place. Being used as a poor backup for a small home NAS is not one of them.

Not for PCs no.

But for infrastructure, yes, dual PSU, dual cpu, plenty RAM (which is also hot swappable) NICs set to fail over, which are then connected to redundant switches and redundant firewalls. I can't remember the last time I've had a PSU go on a server, granted the go sooner on bog standard PCs but the OP didn't ask about a PC, it was for a NAS, and if the PSU on his NAS goes, he can just send it back under warranty and plug the disks back in, no issues. I too have recovered a RAID after a failed array card, and to be honest it was quite simple, just entered the RAID configuration utility and had the disks write their config back to the controller. Took minutes. But this was enterprise class kit (and about 10 years ago)

OP didn't ask about backups, as RAID is not a backup, it is protection against a disk failure.

[anonymous-user]

These later posts remind me of when people used to cable their houses with CAT5 and keep servers under their stairs ! The world has moved on. 5 mins of googling turned up this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/734180-synology-ds216-2-bay-...

Does everything the OP wants?

[onlynik]

wormus said:

These later posts remind me of when people used to cable their houses with CAT5 and keep servers under their stairs ! The world has moved on. 5 mins of googling turned up this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/734180-synology-ds216-2-bay-...

Does everything the OP wants?

OP was looking at a DS416PLAY with 3X3TB toshiba p300 disks, 7200rpm.

Which is fine.

FWIW I keep my NAS under the stairs

[tankplanker]

Mr_Yogi said:

I assume the OP is wanting this for watching 4K video, where are you gonna find any content that required 128MBytes/s? That's 450GB of storage for an hour of video. Gigabit ethernet is absolutely fine for 4K streaming, as would be any single HD. Even the cheapest 7200rpm HD can maintain 40+MB/s (320Mbps).

Until last night the OP never mentioned what the source content was. The 128mbit is straight from the Ultra HD specs as the max, as I mentioned. The theoretical max for 1Gb Ethernet is 125Mbit, this does not allow for losses along the way and certainly does not allow for multiple streams at once from a high quality source file.

Assuming the OP would want to rip Ultra HD BLu Rays (when its possible as it currently isn't) you would want to future proof your NAS against this other wise you've wasted cash. Ripping your own Blu Rays is going to be the closest you are going to get to legal sources of mass produced 4k that would need a NAS to store it on.

Your average HEVC rip from the likes of the piratebay will be nowhere near this sort of bitrate, but then it'll be nowhere near the quality either.

[budgie smuggler]

tankplanker said:

ntil last night the OP never mentioned what the source content was. The 128mbit is straight from the Ultra HD specs as the max, as I mentioned. The theoretical max for 1Gb Ethernet is 125Mbit, this does not allow for losses along the way and certainly does not allow for multiple streams at once from a high quality source file.

You mean 125 megabytes/sec not megabits for gigabit ethernet, so multiple streams would be no problem, even if they were at maximum bit rate.

[jonnyb]

Thanks everyone!

Much to think about

[anonymous-user]

jonnyb said:

gottans said:

Not sure where you are getting the content to stream locally? Amazon or Netflix don't make their content available for local storage i.e. stream from their cloud only. You could buy UHD 4k blu-ray discs but these at the current time cannot be ripped as the encryption is not broken and this isn't likely to happen soon either.

This is the case now, but give it 12-24 months and I think things could be very different, also 4K movie files are very large.

This is where the future proofing comes in.

I have a suspicion that the situation won't change as commercial companies are not trying to crack the encryption on UHD as they did on blu-ray, I think they have looked at the risk v reward and decided it isn't worth it.

Don't get me wrong I would love to be able to rip and stream 4k video locally but I just don't think it will happen.

[scovette]

gottans said:

Not sure where you are getting the content to stream locally? Amazon or Netflix don't make their content available for local storage i.e. stream from their cloud only. You could buy UHD 4k blu-ray discs but these at the current time cannot be ripped as the encryption is not broken and this isn't likely to happen soon either.

Basically everything is available to pirate - Netflix and Amazon in 1:1 quality, and 80gb+ 4k bluray 10bit h264 captures.

[jonnyb]

scovette said:

gottans said:

Not sure where you are getting the content to stream locally? Amazon or Netflix don't make their content available for local storage i.e. stream from their cloud only. You could buy UHD 4k blu-ray discs but these at the current time cannot be ripped as the encryption is not broken and this isn't likely to happen soon either.

Basically everything is available to pirate - Netflix and Amazon in 1:1 quality, and 80gb+ 4k bluray 10bit h264 captures.

Interestingly, there's already a 4K torrent on a certain bay website.