Raspberry pi Upgrade
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Sep 14, 2016, 10:26 AM
Hello,
I've turned my raspberry in a pretty cool media server. However I feel I have reached the rpi's ceiling. I would like to get started with something a bit more powerful.
If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
Thanks
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Sep 14, 2016, 10:43 AM
(Sep 14, 2016, 10:26 AM)Gompy Wrote: Hello,
I've turned my raspberry in a pretty cool media server. However I feel I have reached the rpi's ceiling. I would like to get started with something a bit more powerful.
If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
Thanks
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Hi Gompy,
Raspberry Pi is an amazing device, but it does have many limitations.
I'm glad to help you, just let me know what actually you want to achieve, and what are the limits of Pi you are facing? Then we can go into the proper direction to build you a more powerful homes server. Luckily, there are many great alternatives available today, and they come at reasonable price and very low power consumption.
I suggest you to put together a list of limitations you have with Pi, and a list what things you would like to do on the new server, then we will be able to narrow down the requirements of the new home server.
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Sep 14, 2016, 10:50 AM
Well basically, there are a few annoyances right now:
Plex struggles serving media swiftly (I eliminated transcoding by using a script to convert any incompatible media after download) so I'd say I need more CPU power and RAM. If the new server would be powerful enough to transcode that'd be great. It just being able to direct stream compatible would be fine as well.
Slowish data transfer from/to external disk (so upgrade from USB2.0 to 3.0 or sata).
Ps the server is headless.
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Sep 14, 2016, 11:45 AM
If you use/need transcoding, then you definitely need something more powerful. Emby Server will probably bring OMX-based hardware transcoding to Pi in future, it is a work in progress, but there are still many limitations (ffmpeg supports OMX based hw transocding, but far from perfect). Anyway, you will most likely not see that in Plex for a very long time.
Slowish data transfer is the weakest point of Pi.
I personally use a self built rig based on ASRock N3150-DC board, with 8GB of RAM. The N3150 SoC (Braswell) by Intel is a very powerful and great way to go, it is an excellent balance of performance/power consumption. ASRock offers this board with very advanced features, like 4 x SATA ports integrated, 2 x SODIMM slots, built-in PSU with an external adapter supplied, Gigabit LAN port, you can add an m2 WIFI card (I don't recommend wifi at all) and you even get a PCIe x1 slot (DVB card, extra SATA ports, etc). You have USB 3 ports too.
How comfortable are you with putting together a rig on your own? I mean to install the RAM to motherboard, add SSD system drive, HDD for storage, and put it to a case?
Do you prefer to use storage as external over USB 3, or would like to use internal 2.5" or 3.5" drive(s)? I prefer the internal solution.
I don't really use transcoding (Plex or Emby). I did some testing some time ago, it can easily transcode two 1080p streams at once. However, I need to check it again. How many streams you need at once for transcoding?
You could use Ubuntu Server or Debian, and you can build a great and powerful home server capable of amazing things. And you can use the Pi as a media player with LibreElec, that is simply amazing (or an Odroid 2 if you need HEVC).
We will put together a rig that suits best to your needs.
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Sep 14, 2016, 02:19 PM
I'm very comfortable building my own rig. I do this on a daily basis as I'm a datacenter technician
I have a powerful desktop PC but the reason I went with the raspberry is its low power consumption and low cost. I don't want my PC running 24/7
I would like to invest in something more capable, but don't want to spend a lot of money on it. And it should have a low energy footprint.
I know this is vague but if you could give some insight in to some options I'd appreciate it
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Sep 15, 2016, 01:32 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 15, 2016, 01:41 PM by drake.)
Great, then you will certainly not have any difficulties to build your own rig
It is definitely a good idea to keep power consumption as low as possible. While the Pi is really great in this, you will easily hit limits of the hw if you need anything more demanding (it is still a remarkable device).
Based on your requirements, I would strongly recommend you to consider building the rig I recommended. The Intel SoC solutions are really great, and they do bring you the best performance/power for a small, yet very capable home server.
If you want, you can take the ASRock Beebox or Gigabyte Brix way. These are really amazing little devices, yet very powerful. Especially the Brix. Make sure you get the N3150 or the new J3160. Don't get the N3050 or the N3700. The former is less powerful, still same price, the later is more expensive, still minimal to no performance impact for a server (if the price is good, you can go with 3700).
+ great price, great performance
+ very compact
+ Brix: 4 USB 3 ports (there is a version with USB3.1 too)
- only one SATA port (or m2SATA), 2.5" size HDD or SSD
You can use a dedicated NAS device over LAN (go with Gigabit LAN, or you can use your external HDD over USB3, but internal drives are the way to go).
The other route is (which I always prefer), if you need more internal storage:
ASRock N3150DC or J3160DC-ITX board
4GB or 8GB DDR3 SODIMM Ram (make sure you get low power version, 1.35V, and possible low profile)
30-60GB SSD for system (get the cheapest reliable drive, even 30GB size is fine)
Add 3.5" or 2,5" HDD drives to your liking (3 drives max, or 4 if you put system on one of them). Try to get low-power drives. I don't trust any of them, and always get the cheapest drive with the highest warranty available (I don't even look at the brand). In my opinion, they are all very unreliable (WD, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, doesn't matter). Go for the one that has the lowest energy consumption, speed is basically not an issue. But you probably know this And as always: backup, backup, backup. I trust cloud and off-site backups only, and I don't care about the drives as they are so unreliable for valuable information.
Choose an ITX case that you like and has place for the number of drives you need. Thermaltake Core V1 is great (I have one), small, still plenty of space for even 4 x 3.5" HDD, good ventilation, very good price.
Basically this is all you need. You can get professional dedicated ITX NAS Chassis at reasonable price, they are really great, but cost more then the Core V1. Like the CFI-A7879 4-Bay NAS Chassis (4x External HDD, 1x Internal HDD Bay) with USB 3.0, this is THE chassis for a home server (the downside is that they come with a PSU that we don't need at all, so not the best option). I didn't test any of these yet, would be nice to have one and see if the PSU can be bypassed completely.
There is the Fractal Design Node 304 with 6 drive bays (but I still find the V1 better if you compare the price). And you have many more great options.
This would not cost you so much, in return, you get very reliable home media server, gigabit connection, up to 4 HDD drives, very low power consumption (it uses a laptop charger!), excellent CPU speed, plenty of RAM (8GB is more then enough for this).
You put your favorite linux distro, and there you go. Did I mention that N3150 has excellent support from Kodi (Kodi 17 Krypton, now in beta1 stage), with high quality EGL VAAPI support? Still, I would advise to use it as a dedicated server only, and use a Pi2/3 or Odroid C2 as a media player (or other options if you need full Netflix support).
The noise from 2-4 HDDs are quite annoying in the living room, so just put the server anywhere (where you can get power and a single UTP cable) and there you go.
If you need more power (only reason you would, if you o really heavy transcoding and multiple transcodings), then you need to go with Skylake CPU, the idle power consumption would be still great, but you need a more powerful picoPSU then, or a small ATX PSU, you will certainly consume much more power then the SoC solution).
Word of advice: don't go the AMD route ever on Linux, They are quite good now in terms of drivers, but they were awful, awful not so long ago, until they realized the potential of supporting Linux too. However, the Linux community will (never) forgive this to AMD, many devs still simply ignore AMD hw for this reason. On Linux, Intel and nVidia is the way to go (no need for nVidia at all now).
Let us know how you decide and if you have any questions, I will try to help you.
EDIT: you can configure RAID as well, or snapRAID too. Personally, I stopped using RAID. I don't even have a NAS now. I use Crashplan for backup, they are so great! Runs on headless Linux server, very good price for unlimited data backup. We will soon have a guide for Crashplan too! I make sure my important data (like home videos, digital pictures, documents have immediate backup). OK, RAID would be fine, as with Crashplan you are still "unprotected" for some time, until newly added stuff is uploaded. I use their cloud and an external USB 3 drive for backup. You can go with Amazon S3 or MS, etc backup too, rsync is great.
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Sep 15, 2016, 06:16 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 16, 2016, 07:42 AM by Gompy.)
Hi Drake,
Thank you for the info, it looks very promising. Im looking in to it right now.
Apart from the option to add more internal storage the diy route offers, I assume there isnt any significant performance gain if I were to go that way(?). Looks like it'll be quite a bit more expensive than the brix or beebox option.
From what I found, these are the main differences between the brix and the beebox:
Brix (N3150): (€135)
+ Cheaper (€40)
+ 4x USB3.0 (though I probably won't use 4)
Beebox (J3160): (€175)
+ mSATA
+ 2x SODIMM slot
I think the biggest drawback on both would be the 2,5in bay (vs cheaper 3,5)
The extra memory slot on the beebox probably won't add much (unless dual channel speeds up things much) But the msata makes it interesting, assuming I can use regular SATA simultaneously. If so, it might be worth the extra €40.
I haven't really looked in to building my own (went to explore the seemingly cheaper options first) but I will. More freedom is always better if the price is right.
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Sep 16, 2016, 12:12 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 16, 2016, 12:50 PM by drake.)
Brix is a great choice. The single SODIMM doesn't matter at all for server in our case, get a 8GB low power module and you are fine.
You get more USB 3 ports with the Brix. You should know how much storage you need. I really don't like the external USB storage (eSATA is great), but external should work fine too.
In terms of internal 2,5" drive: they are really great now, you can get 2TB for a reasonable price, and then you have low power & noise & heat drive.
Probably you will need to put the system on that drive, which is not the best solution, but works fine (much easier to maintain backups, restores, drive replacements when you have system on a single dedicated drive, separated from data storage). No need for SSD, I just recommend a very small SSD for system as they are really cheap now, low power, fast and no noise at all (30GB is enough, although you will most likely find only 60GB models now the smallest, probably close to the 128GB price tag).
There are other pre-build NUC-like options too, but I think Brix is the best in terms of what you get for your money.
Take a look at the custom build, it shouldn't be so much more. You need RAM and HDD for both versions, the mainboard + case (if you choose the Core V1) is not that expensive.
However, if you feel comfortable with a single SATA port + one internal 2,5" drive + USB3.0 storage, Brix is really great. Compact, small, virtually noiseless. Btw, it has a PCIe M.2 slot, occupied by a WiFi/Bluetooth card, which you probably won't need at all for your server, but I'm not sure if it accepts an m2 SSD. The specifications say it is A-E key slot, and for SSD a B is required.
EDIT: for completeness, I must mention the Supermicro boards and complete configurations. They are really really great, whit lots of advanced features, and basically built for server purposes. They have a great ITX size products, and I think I even saw products with Intel Active Management Technology (not that we can not manage a headless server without AMT, but it is great to have), ECC memory support, hw RAID, etc.The downsize is obviously the price, Supermicro products come with a decent price-tag.
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Sep 16, 2016, 04:43 PM
It would be nice if the m2 "wifi" slot accepts an SSD. Having the OS and storage on the same physical disk is a no-go for me.
So if the brix doesn't support an SSD in the m2 slot, that would mean I'd go for a small internal SATA SSD and keep all storage on the external (3.0 3TB, which I already own, so probably will be reusing anyway) HDD. The prices of ~32GB SATA SSD and m2 or mSATA SSD's are pretty much equal, so that doesn't push me to either of the boxes in particular.
So: The difference here would be, assuming the brix doesn't accept an SSD in the m2 slot:
With the Beebox: The option to go internal only (I'd have to buy a 2,5" high capacity HDD)
With the brix: Save money but not having the option to go internal storage only.
The Beebox with 8GB DDR3L (Crucial CT102464BF160B) and mSATA 30GB SSD (Kingston SSDNow mS200 30GB) would come to a total of € 233,89 add another 100 if i were to go internal.
The Brix with 8GB DDR3L (Crucial CT102464BF160B) and SATA 32GB SSD (Transcend SSD370 (Premium) 32GB) would come to a total of € 195,43.
Still have to find the time to look in to the self-built option. Looking at the above I'd probably go for the brix. The Supermicro boards are great but out of price range for a "hobby" server.
I just want something that can handle the job my current Pi is doing (Download/Organize/Serve) a lot faster and, more important, more reliable. I feel stepping away from the ARM architecture will help a lot; not using buggy x86 to ARM ports (correct me if I'm wrong). And then some headroom for future tinkering.
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Sep 16, 2016, 05:04 PM
I am not at home now, but take a look at the Asus VivoMini UN45H dual storage devices too. Look at the Asus page what versions they offer with dual storage, and N3150 SoC. They support an m2 ssd (some have already built in I think) and you can add a 2.5" drive internal, still have usb3 ports. Asus says the 2.5" drive is supported up to 1TB, but we should check if 2TB drive can still work.
The move to x64 would make things a lot better, just make sure you choose a build that you know you will be good for a longer time, storage and connectivity wise. Check the price for these Asus mini boxes!
For the own built rig you just need to check the price for motherboard and case. The good about the mini prebuilt solutions is that they are small. However, if you can put the Core V1 case, you have the option to freely upgrade mainboard and internal drives too.
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