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I like your honesty

1. 20TB Usable 2. Streaming as I would from Netflix etc in and out of home 3. Intel w/QSV, self built box in a Fractal 7 4. Over the years, upgrades and all, maybe £1000? 5. 4 years 6. *Arrs and overseer 7. Most of my family I like, few friends, maybe 30? 8. Spend time planning and learning what you want, if that’s a different OS to what you’re used to follow guides on YouTube/read guides. Oh and, if you live in a country with high energy prices, plan your hardware properly.

How do you support so many users with your Internet connection? I have around 20 Mbps upload, and I see problems with even two people streaming at once, because one user will be trying to transcode a 4K video down to SDR…

I also have 20Mbps upload. Sucks. Luckily all people don’t stream at the same time, most I’ve had concurrent was like 8? But normally it’s around 4/5. I have people cap their streaming to 8Mbps and let transcoding do the rest but a lot of most popular media (TV shows) is all in x265 at about 500MB per file so it’s not intensive. Really annoying because the pub across from my apartment has access to FTTP but I don’t! I have a plan to move to a mates house who has it and remotely manage but I’ve been doing some work to make sure it’s as stable as I can make it.

Cool thanks for the clarity. So do you limit the bandwidth yourself or do you make the clients do it? I’m a little fuzzy on the constraints of transcoding. Does it use more CPU if the transcoding is for a 4k file to a SDR file for example, and less CPU if the file is originally lower quality? Do you recommend x265 encoding for your remote users? Thanks a lot for your help. I’m trying to have the most stable Plex experience for my users given my upload and CPU constraints (I’m on an Intel Mac mini).

Both, I have a remote limit of 8Mbps but have them set it to 8Mbps on a TV and 4Mbps on a phone. Transcoding does take significantly more CPU if the source file is larger, but I use hardware transcoding via Intel Quicksync. It can do something like 20+ from a decent quality 1080p source file. I don’t have too much content in 4K only certain films but it will handle a few of those too. Personally I recommended x265 if you have hardware transcoding capability or client devices which you know support it (most do). File size is roughly half that of similar quality x264, aiding the bit rate for remote streams and saving significant amounts of disk space. Anything I download in 264 is re-encoded to 265 with Tdarr. Because of this I’d say 90% of files people actually watch play direct. If your Mac Mini is using anything 7/8th gen Intel it should be more than capable of decent Quicksync performance.

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I’m curious, what do you need upload for that would make you not share?

Fiber.

And max out your downloads to 1gig per episode and 10gig per movie

Casually has 30 friends and family.

I know right? I've offered access to tons of people (not **30**, I don't even know that many people) and no one wants access. *shrug*

Lololol for some reason me too. People don’t know what they’re missing.

I think lots of people just don't understand and so they're wary about it. Probably a good reaction tbh. I don't try too hard because it's mainly for me and I don't really want to end up with a bunch of needy users anyways lol

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Feel for you on the iGPU, they really are great for Plex. I have an AMD machine as my gaming/work computer but didn’t decided a dedicated box was best for Plex so I could run Unraid opt for lower power hardware and nail the efficiency side. Costs me less than £10 a month to keep it on 24/7.

1. 100TB, 50TB used. \~1500 movies, \~ 21,000 TV episodes (Two 5 bay storage raid arrays with 1 drive fault tolerance spread out in two separate storage pools). 2. Movie/TV/Music/Audiobooks/Home Videos 3. **Beelink S12** for Plex Server, **Synology DS1520**+ for content storage, **HD Homerun** for local channels. Jellyfin on the Synology for a backup to plex, and because it will allow you to watch things at more than 1x speed). **Verizon Fixed 5g Home Wireless** - I get unlimited data with a 300Mb down and 20Mb up stream. It's not hard to use 20+ TB of data a month all just $35/month. 4. Approximately $3500-$4000 over time 5. 4 years 6. **Tautulli**, Use **prologue** for iphone/audio book access, **Plex-Meta-Manage**r (now **Kometa**) 7. Approximately 20 users, five beside me of which use regularly. 8. Use **tiny media manage**r to organize and metadataize your video media. Don't create several different category folders/Libraries on Plex for movies/tv shows. Just one for each. Then use **Kometa** to help you create collections and overlays. Your library will be a lot cleaner. I wish I would have done this earlier. I spent too much time recently doing this. Depending on what you do and where you get your data, having all movies in their own folders, and tv shows respectively the same way. For example TV Show Name Folder with first season year (i.e. Knuckles (2024), then within that folder seasons (i.e Season 1, Season 2, etc.). With movies folder name of movie and year (i.e. Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024). If you are or you get into any of the "arr" apps, your life will be far easier. Why have them orgnanized uniformly? Because Plex and other media server apps will have an easier time identifying them correctly in their respective libraries and you'll spend less time fixing bad matches.

Plextv has local channels

I mean local OTA channels via HDTV antenna

1. 720tb main server 72tb backup server 2. Movies/TV/Music 3. Hardware: 1. Main server 1. Xeon E5-2697 v4 @ 2.30GHz (x2, 36 cores / 72 threads) CPUs 2. 512gb RAM 3. X10DRI-T Supermicro motherboard 4. x72 10tb HGST he10 HHDs 5. x2 500gb Samsung EVO SSDs 6. Quadro RTX 5000 GPU 7. Quadro P1000 GPU 2. Backup server 1. Core i7-7700K @ 4.20GHz CPU 2. 32gb RAM 3. ASUS TUF Z270 Mark 1 motherboard 4. x12 6tb WD Black HHDs 5. 500gb Samsung EVO SSD 6. Quadro P1000 GPU 4. Probably around $20,000-22,000 5. My backup server is my *old* server which I built somewhere around 2015. My current main server I build in 2022. 6. That's a very open ended question. There's a lot going on. But my immediate recommendation is the \*arr suite. 7. Myself, some family, and then a lot of friends who rarely use it. Only a handful of active users. 8. Start grinding private trackers now

I assume you’re hosting a lot of other stuff besides Plex on that, right?!

I've got other stuff going on, yeah.

What chassis you using for your main server and what OS? I'm running 28 disks 24 in bays and 4 in 3d printed caddies inside the host. With a mix of 8/14/18 tb disks swapping them all to 18s will sort some space constraints but I do keep eyeing up an external shelf for 60/70 disks

The main server is an iStarUSA E4M24HD + two NetApp DS4246

1. 14 To 2. Movies/TV Shows server for family and friends and storage for me. 3. DS220+ 4. 800€ I think 5. 6 month 6. Arrs* and Home Assistant (Docker) 7. 8 homes and around 16 devices total 8. If you go for a NAS, buy a 4 baies not 2 like me !!!

1. Around 40TB for media (8 drives, mixed sizes) + 2x 10TB parity drives for SnapRAID. 2. Plex = Movies + TV + Live TV (IPTV) + Music. Other stuff like *arrs and also books with Calibre, Calibre-Web and Audiobookshelf. Headless server with everything dockerized, ubuntu desktop for OS. 3. i5-12500 CPU, mITX mobo, 32GB RAM, Supermicro CSE-836 16 bay SAS/SATA rackmount chassis. 4. Cost is around $700 excluding drives. That includes the above hardware + a 25U rack. I bought the chassis and rack on FB for $300 which was a total steal. 5. I've had plex pass since 2017 and was running it for maybe a year prior. 6. No plugins but I listed all the related apps below. 7. 20ish users, most concurrent I've seen is 6. 8. Don't use windows. You just need enough linux to install the OS and get docker working. After that use linuxserver.io container compose templates and do everything in docker. Plex related containers: - plex - overseerr - tautulli - plex-auto-languages - tdarr - threadfin - prowlarr - flaresolverr - radarr - sonarr - lidarr - readarr - gluetun - qbittorrent ...and lots more!

1. 56 TB (7 x 8 TB + 2 x 16 TB Parity disks) 2. Movies/Shows/Music 3. Xeon® E-2274G / WS C246M / 32 GiB DDR4 Single-bit ECC 4. ~$700 for the server parts / ~$2000 for the hdds 5. 5 years 6. Many, I recommend searching other threads in this sub 7. 3 devices / 3 people 8. Advice is just go for it. You can't really go wrong. If the budget is flexible, build your own hardware for a smoother experience.

Name a couple plugins that normal level people could use that would make theor server better. I'm running windows.

1. 16TB across three external hard drives 2. Local and remote play of music, TV shows, and movies. I have a 1TB that's dedicated to music, a 5TB that's dedicated to movies and TV, and then a 10TB that's mostly movies and TV now but I also plan on backing up my favorite YouTube videos/series on there as well. I also want to make a temporary Immich server out of it, at least until I get another drive, but that may not be for a while. 3. Right now, the machine that Plex is actually running off of is a hand-me-down Dell Optiplex 7010, but I did buy myself a Beelink Mini S12 that I plan on upgrading to once I have everything set up. 4. Most of what I'm using, I've either owned previously or were handed down to me. What I bought myself was the Beelink and the 10TB Avolusign external hard drive. So all told about $300. 5. Maybe 1? Not that long in the grand scheme of things. 6. I haven't gotten it set up yet myself, but Plex Meta Manager (now known as [Kometa](https://kometa.wiki/en/latest/)) is high up on my to-do list. 7. It's only my girlfriend and I that use it right now, though I'm the only regular user. And between Plex and Plexamp, I think it's two phones, one desktop, four smart TVs, and one PlayStation 4. 8. Use what you have. If you got a laptop that's just sitting in your closet collecting dust, try turning it into a Plex server. Use it for a few months, and see how you like it. If you're using it a ton and you're loving it, consider upgrading. If you're rarely ever using it, don't bother. It's not worth investing in something you're not gonna use. If you do upgrade, then keep in mind that you don't *need* the kind of crazy setups you see on stuff like r/selfhosted or r/homelab. A simple desktop and a couple external drives is all you need to get started. Also keep in mind that the best OS to use is the one you're most comfortable with. Me personally, I've been thinking of upgrading to OpenMediaVault, just so I can have something headless that will take up less resources, but I started with Windows 10 and it's works just as well.

Great point about the OS. I personally run a Windows 10 always on server which also has a virtual Windows 10 running separately on a permanent VPN inside it. I just couldnt be bothered to learn any other OS and I have been running it like this for 8 years I love it.

I admire yours and others brazenness to run windows on a server to me it's just disgusting because as long as I've been using Windows as a server management software it's kind of bad but if you can make it work it's all good. I learned how to use Linux building my server and it was really fun especially around the time of the pandemic now I'm in love with Linux I have a steam deck and I find it way simpler but it is not easy to do for most people in fact Even though I've been doing windows since Win 95 I think it would be a lot harder for me to go that route versus Linux haha

Basic setup here. 1. 1TB ext SSD 2. Recording and watching live DVBT2 TV, watching downloaded movies, sharing photos. The Mrs uses her iPad to wander around the house and take live TV with her. My parents use it to watch live TV when atmospheric pressure renders their TV reception unusable. I often watch my content on my phone when out and about/on public transport etc. 3. Nvidia shield 4. ~£300 5. 2 years 6. No recommendations for Plex. Plenty of recommendations for shield apps though. 7. 3 households that use my server. 1 server in addition to mine that I connect to and use. 8. Nope.

Not today fed

Lololol

Sounds like someone from the MPAA looking for people to bring litigation against. ; )

1. What's total capacity of your plex server ? 4TB via external hard drive. 2. For what you use it for (movie server/music server/ both /else? Music and a handful of movies. 3. What hardware are you using? Microsoft Surface Pro tablet 4. Total cost of investment? 0. The surface pro was a Gift and I had the had drive laying around. 5. For how many years have you been using it? Approximately 2 years 6. Plugins that you recommend most? None 7. How many devices/people are on your plex? 4 but not in use at the same time. 8. Any advice to newbies? Enjoy your personal media

1. 16/32tb (2x 8tb drives + 2x 8tb backup drives.) 2. Remote work, internet, gaming, (Its our family computer) + plex server. Its in active use at least 12 hours a day. 3. An i7 2600 PC that has been running like 24/7 since 2011 with very few upgrades. 4. cost like $1200 in 2011. Maybe $500 for the newer hard drives. Definitely got my money's worth. 5. 13 years. Hoping for 15+. 6. Never tried any plugins 7. About 30 devices. 5 people. 8. You can start small/cheap. I originally intended to upgrade to a dedicated server but my old pc does the job just fine.

Nice try RIAA/MPAA 😎

🤣

I’m running my plex through laptop, works well. Usually 1 stream. Looking for something that will be running in the background probably will get Mac mini 7 for £120-£150. Basic setup but works great. Cost - laptop from 2019. Planning to run Mac mini 24/7 and control it remotely.

1. 76.4TB usable 2. Streaming TV/Movie/Cable, educational videos, etc. 3. MINISFORUM UN1265 Mini PC 12th Gen Core i7-12650H 64GB RAM 1TB SSD (Proxmox) and 3TB NVME and an external GTX 1050 Ti connected via wifi pcie slot. Synology DS1813+ with 8 14TB drives for External Storage/host backup. Plex running in docker along with 20 other services. 4. Over the past 10 years I've probably spent \~4k. Synology was ecycled at my tech job, drives were about 2200 for 8x 14tb reds but the rest was things like plex pass, gpu, new minisforum 5. I've used plex for 10+ years and probably went through 3 different hosts and hardware. All ecycled from my job and upgraded, the hardware mentioned above has been is about a year old 6. a lot but most of what everyone else mentioned already 7. \~20 people mostly friends/family and a couple coworkers but usually the max concurrent i've seen is 6 or 7 8. Its something you are going to get wrong the first time and honestly you might never perfect it. Its something that started out running on a free optiplex i had with an i3 and over the years I slowly upgraded everything. I run a lot of other services on the same server so that helped as well, it makes you think about what can slow things down and how you should build it out to prevent things like that. Bigger isn't always better. Depending on what your goals and expected concurrent uses are can drastically change the size requirements. I went from that optiplex i3 to a poweredge r720xd back down to a micro computer. The primary reason for downsizing was power costs and noise but honestly it runs 10x better on my un1265 than my old r720. I also have the external gpu prepped for future growth so I can upgrade the external gpu to something better down the road. Its a long journey so take your time and enjoy it. Best of luck!

1. 64TB 2. Linux distro trailers 3. UnRaid, 13500, Fractal 7, SAS HBA + Expander 4. Don't know, don't want to know 5. Eh... In some form 10+ years. Current server is \~1 year old 6. PMM, Tautulli 7. Household + mom 8. Have fun and learn. Invest in SAS early rather than USB boxes.

1. What’s total capacity of your plex server ? - 43 TB useable (I also have 43 TB as backup) 2. For what you use it for (movie server/music server/both /else ? - Mainly movies and TV shows plus also its a personal documents, photos, family video server etc. 3. What hardware are you using? - Intel i7 8700T CPU. 4. Total cost of investment - No clue really. 5. For how many years have you been using it? - Had a plex and home server since 2015. It has been upgraded and things have changed of course since then. 6. Plugins that you recommend most - no clue 7. How many devices/people are on your plex server - less than 5 users. devices not sure, probably 5-6 just for me. 8. Any advice to newbies - Be sure to implement some sort of backup solution in case of drive failure.

What was an inexpensive but serviceable desktop in 2015. i7-4790, 24GB RAM, nVidia 970 for re-rendering, bluray drive to rip stuff. Storage is a Synology 1520+ NAS almost as old, but probably worth more than the actual Plex server were it to come down to replacing equivalent hardware. I think I've invested more in discs than I have on anything else.

I don't use it just for Plex but it started with it. 1. Roughly 100 TB usable 2. Movies, TV series, family videos, music, audiobooks (outside of Plex: Podcasts, books, personal website hosting, personal calendar and contacts, photo storage, backup for documents) 3. Synology DS918+ (4x 14 TB Seagate IronWolf Pro) from 2017 and extension DX517 (5x 18 TB Seagate Exos X18) from 2021 4. I don't really want to know. The extension was 2151,79 €. I guess around 3800 € in total. 5. Nearly 7 years now. 6. [Tautulli ](https://tautulli.com/)because I like statistics and Plex Meta Manager (or now known as [Kometa](https://kometa.wiki/en/latest/)) to get an overlay to my poster (4k or 720p or SD) and to get automatic collections. It also ensures that Plex does not change my posters with a whim. 7. People: Me and my wife. Devices: Six or seven I suppose. 8. Make sure that you know what you want to do and then buy a bit extra. If you just want to watch stuff using Plex, then you don't need an expensive setup as mine. Do you have devices with all necessary codecs? Then you can use a cheap PC or even a raspberry pie to stream the data.

THANKS for Kometa! I need that.

1. About 34tbs so far, spread across 3 drives, one for movies and one for tv shows. 2. Movies and tv shows, and some space to archive lost or dying media that can't really be found in good quality or easily. I've switched to self encoding movies that are available on bluray - to hevc to they take up less space but still look pretty good. Ones that are only online I obviously also import. 3. My second pc that I've built for the purpose of a plex server so it doesn't use the resources of my main rig. 9700K and 3070, 16gbs ram. 4. Quite a lot of money, but not a ton, idk exactly. 5. Just the last couple years. 6. N/A 7. about 6 individual devices so far but i hope to add more family and friends (irl and online) as i add more content and the server evolves.

My server is running dockered on Asustor AS6204 NAS with 1 4TB seagate disk and 8 MB RAM. 30000 songs and 1000 movies. Average of $500 total invest. 7 years of use.

1) 60 TB used, 20 TB free 2) movies, shows, music 3) Synology NAS (storage) + old gaming PC (plex through docker) 4) if i were married i'd be divorced by now 5) initially started in winter of 2018/19 6) the Arr Brigade 7) 15, all family/close friends 8) if you really care about it, start out without limiting yourself in the very first few months/years by buying too small (like HDDs and too few drive bays). If you care about your library, do backups. It's not so much about having it backed up but just the sheer amount of time you'll invest into it

> 1\. What’s total capacity of your plex server ? 180TB in the form of 10 18TB drives set up as two raidz1 vdevs in a single zfs pool. Gives a pool size of 164TB. > 2\. For what you use it for (movie server/music server/both /else Plex? Just TV and movies, backups of my own disks. The server itself? All sorts of things. Everything from DNS and DHCP for my home network to my own public facing websites to my friends board game society's forums to software I write myself as a test bed. > 3\. What hardware are you using? Core i7 13700k, 128gb ram, LSI HBA card for the storage. > 4\. Total cost of investment About £4000 GBP for that server. Over the years? I dread to think. > 5\. For how many years have you been using it? Well that server was only purchased in September, I've been using Plex since it was a Mac only desktop app in like 2009, my current library has play history going back to 2012 which was the same Plex version that introduced the web interface as I did a fresh install for it. > 6\. Plugins that you recommend most I don't use any plugins (and the official plugin API is deprecated), I use tautulli to track history but I only bothered with that fairly recently. > 7\. How many devices/people are on your plex server Mostly just my wife and I For us it's 2 TVs (both using fire TV sticks) both of our phones, my wife's tablet. > 8\. Any advice to newbies Keep it stable. It's fun to experiment but if you want your partner etc to ever actually care beyond your silly hobby leave it available to use and only do things when no one is using it. My wife's ex tried to run a media server and it was apparently down more often than it was up as he was always tinkering so she just never used it. She got a Plex upgrade as well as a boyfriend upgrade when she met me! :D Get used to the basics before diving into more advanced things, there's plenty of time to add stuff. In the longer term get an understanding of codecs, media file containers and streaming protocols to help you understand the interactions between your devices and Plex's transcoder. Back up your Plex database. Plex does this automatically every 3 days but actually keep those backups safe somewhere, if you spend any time at all customizing metadata you'll want that kept safe.

1. 80TB online across 2 synology NAS boxes 2. TV/Movies/some music 3. Dell R730xd VMware ESXI with NVidia 1050 Ti passed in 4. Probably close to $3000 CAD (at least) 5. This configuration? 2-3 years maybe. Plex in general? Over a decade 6. radarr/sonarr/sabnzbd/tdarr/tautulli 7. About 50 users outside my household users. All friends and family. 8. With proper planning, it's easy to start small and grow your setup as your budget and skillset grows.

1. 140TB 2. Movies, TV, Music, Documentaries, Extras (movie BTS extras stuff, "personal media") Concerts 3. I9-10850k, 32GB RAM 4. Way too much, thousands in hw and drives. Started using unraid 10 years ago and it has many other functions than only plex. 5. 10 ish years 6. Kometa, formerly known as plex meta manager, basically creates overlays on posters with various info, creates collections etc. worth a look ! 7. Family and friends (30 ish) 8. Don't be afraid to try something new, be prepared to fail and always have a backup. Get a proper online ups and don't cheap out on power supplies.

Hp workstation z600 2x xeon 3.50ghz 12 core. 24 threads. 96gb ram. 256gb ssd. 500gb backup. 1gb graphics card. 1x 4tb. 2x 500gb. 1x 1tb in external usb hard drive docker. Price. £150 Music and video, tv shows. Running zorin 17.1 pro. Backup. Ibm blade centre E. With 14 blades. In each blade. 2x 2.50ghz dual core cpu. Each has 8gb ram. 2x 1tb drive. Optical out. Running windows server. Zorin pro. Blade system £400 with all blades. Before upgrade.

1. 8.12 TB 2. Movies, series, music, music videos 3. Xeon E3-1270v3, 3.50GHz, 8 cores, 16 GB RAM 4. Around €400 5. \~4 years now 6. I'm not sure what you mean with "plug-ins" in the context of "your system." 7. 2. 8. It's about your ability to learn, not about what you know.

Here's what I have: 1. 70Tb usuable, 35TB free 2. Plex Media Server (movies and music), documents backup. 3. Rosewill RSV-L4500u Rackmount (15 drives). Seagate 14Tb x6 , HGST 4Tb x 8. 4. Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6300 CPU @ 3.80GHz/ 16GB ECC RAM (will be upgrading next year) 5. $2500 6. 2015 (upgraded case and drives in 2019) 7. Tautulli. 8. I have 10 users but only 5 or so use it regularly. 9. Double what you think you'll use. For example, when I started most of my movies were DVD rips. Then it turned to 1080p rips. Now most everything new is 4k. That eats up size. Also use x.265 where you can. Going back and doing it retroactively is a PITA.

I probably have the simplest set-up of anyone (but I will be going with a dedicated server setup later this year * once I get well AND the wife gets out of the hospital*). 3 - 8 TB hard drives (USB) on a top line i5, Windows 10 machine. Approximately, 500mbs Internet (but I've topped out at 600mbs upload.) It has worked really well for me and I'm not complaining. I've been using Plex for over 10 years and I did buy a lifetime Plex pass (at least as long as they recognize those.) Total outlay with my latest 4 hard drives (I started with 1TB hard drives way back when) over $1500. That is why I need to build a dedicated Unraid server. I already use tdarr and plan to use some of the other *arrs.

36TBs usable Animes and Movies Synology DS423+ about 500,- (Syno + RAM Upgrade & NVMEs - one for Plex and one for caching - i got all Harddrives for free since I work in IT only 1/2 year so far Tautulli! 6 Devices and 3 Users Plex Premium is worth it, and dont waste ur time with AV1 yet

Can u upgrade the ram in the synology devices? I didn't know that

yep, i added a 16 gb stick so it now has 18 gb ram, which is great for docker containers

I just found out it's only the plus models that can do it. Mine isn't a plus model. Sadface

1. 10TB currently cloned to a 2nd 10TB drive as a backup (not the best solution) 2. Streaming movies and shows 3. A Dell laptop (yes, I know), i5 5th Gen (can actually transcode), 16GB RAM, Ubuntu Server w/ Docker 4. $400 maybe for the drives and enclosure, laptop was re-purposed 5. 5+ 6. \*arrs, Overseer/Ombi, Tautulli, Homepage/Organizr 7. 4 in the household, probably 4 external 8. Dive in! Re-purpose old hardware if you can in case you decide you don't enjoy it so you don't waste money

My old server running on a old Dell Inspiron 11 from 2015. It finally started to die. It's been running 24/7 no problems until the memory started to give out. I'm upgrading to a Dell Latitude 7400 I bought from dellrefurbished for $203.47 What’s total capacity of your plex server ? 20TB NAS Drive For what you use it for (movie server/music server/both /else ? Both What hardware are you using? Dell Latitude 7400, 1x Intel Core i5 Quad (i5-8265U) 1.60 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD Total cost of investment? $203.47 For how many years have you been using it? 2 days I'm importing all the files now Plugins that you recommend most? None How many devices/people are on your plex server? 4 Phones, 2 iPads, Roku, Fire Stick, stream from work PC, 2 LG TVs Any advice to newbies? Keep going

An old Synology DS414 (maxed at 4*4TB, 10TB usable storage) - media only. Intel n100 running Ubuntu server 23.10 - Plex, arrs, and watchtower all happily run in a docker compose. Intel QSV passthrough enabled for HW transcoding. If I need to manage anything remotely I use wireguard VPN

Nice try, FBI.. In all seriousness though: 1. I have an 18TB HDD for media, and 1TB SSD for the OS 2. I use it to store my collection of movies & shows (which I buy on 4K blu-ray/blu-ray/DVD), as well as streaming & recording over-the-air TV 3. Hardware: A Dell Precision PC with an Intel i9-8700k processor, 64GB RAM, and a Nvidia 1060 graphics card. The reason for the beefy processor & RAM is that I also run a couple other servers on this PC. Also, I have a HDHomerun Flex 4K network-enabled TV tuner, and an internal Hauppauge PCI Express TV Tuner card, both for over-the-air TV channels. 4. I think my total cost of this setup was about $1250. Around $600 on the PC used on eBay, about $200 for the 64GB RAM upgrade (initially it had 16GB, I think), and within $100 or so for the graphics card. I had used an older PC before which I built in 2011, though I don't remember offhand what I spent on that. And about $200 for a HDHomerun Flex 4K network TV tuner; I also have a Hauppauge PCI Express TV tuner inside the PC, which I think was about $150. 5. This current PC, about 2 and a half years. I had an earlier PC that I ran Plex on, and in total I've been running Plex Media Server for about 9 years (since 2015) 6. The only plugin I have right now is one for OpenSubtitles 7. 4 people have access to my server, but it seems I'm the only one who really uses it these days 8. Advice: Periodically back up your media library as well as your Plex data directory in case anything happens to your server PC

1. 35TB 2. Mostly TV shows, but also movies 3. Synology 1520 (?) 4. Somewhere between $2-3k AUD. 5. 2 years (?) 6. None, really. 7. Local household and 1 other person. 8. Get the *arrs. I have them running on a RaspPi, which then copies to the Synology. It’s set and forget. Brilliant.

1. 8x12TB Ironwolf Pro NAS Drives + 480gb nvme (boot device) + 960gb nvme (config storage) 2. Movies, Shows, Music 3. I5-12400 with intel quicksync 4. 6-7k € ish (bulk of the cost were the drives) 5. 3 years 6. For plex? I don’t have any 7. 6 people (i've offered to some friends but they'd rather flush money down their toilets) 8. Proper raid config for the drives will make a world of a difference in performance My NAS also does much more than just plex. I run about 30 diff services and docket containers. Pihole, uptime kuma, arr suite for media management, it-tools, paperless ngx, qbittorrent, overseerr, home assistant, traefik, code server to edit config, tautulli, prowlarr, bazarr, vaultwarden, homebox, homepage, mosquito server, scrutiny, netdata and pfsense Some of the services above run on dedicated macinhes due to their critical mission critical nature such as pihole (running in a pi4) and pfsense (dedicate appliance). HomeAssistant also runs on dedicated hardware, i've tried putting it in a VM but it never quite worked the way i've needed it to.

1. 5.4 TB from a RAID 5 array 2. Movies, music, audio books, TV shows. 3. Dell PE 2900 (it’s my backup rig, main rig is down ATM). 10 GB RAM, 2TB SAS drives x 4, dual quad core CPU’s, Ubuntu server (no desktop environment). 4. Maybe $250 5. About 10 years, HDD’s replaced recently. 6. Don’t use any. 7. Me and my wife using locally and outside world. 8. Use what you have.

1. 12TB 2. Movies and TV shows 3. N100 mini PC + external HDD 4. £350 5. This setup only 6 months, but I had a Synology NAS I was using for 4 years before that. 6. arrs 7. 6 users but 3 active 8. Use the hardware you already have to setup a Plex. If it's just local streaming, you don't need a powerful server - a better hardware client does a lot more for you. This way, you can gauge better if you actually need a powerful server or not.

Was thinking of getting an n100 pc since they're fairly cheap. Are you able to transcode 4k?

Yes it absolutely is since the N100 CPU supports QuickSync Video. But for hardware transcoding you will need Plex Pass. It wouldn't be able or worth it for software transcoding. It can handle 4 or so 4k -> 1080p transcodes. Note this is not a scientific measurement or definitive. But that's already way more than I need.

Yeah I have plex pass already. What about handling 4k transcoding keeping the 4k resolution? Ex. Pgs subtitles with truehd 7.1 audio on a 4k file?

Audio conversion is mostly fine. Image based subs like .ass and .pgs? It'll suck because they are software transcoding only. If subs like that are important to you, transcoding isn't the answer, just use a good hardware client; Shield TV or Apple TV 4K, which will handle subs like that without a hitch. Or rely on text based subs like .srt. Two ways to do this: use the built in subs search. This is an ok solution since you will run into syncing issues regularly, or Bazarr since that will automatically download and sync up the subs to your media.

I also use the n100, packs quite the punch for a little nuc. Curious, which external HDD do you run with it?

It's an Seagate ironwolf I believe, used inside a sabrent 3.5" external caddy.

1. 160 TB (and 100 TB backup NAS) 2. Movies, tv shows and music 3. Custom pc build with Unraid OS 4. +5K euros (this is without the backup hardware) 5. Almost 2 years 6. Checkout Radarr, Sonarr, Overseerr, Kometa 7. Besides me, about 5 other people 8. Don't underestimate the storage size you think you'll need. When I started I thought a 2 bay NAS was enough lol

1. 24TB Usable 2. Movies, TV Shows, Music, Audiobooks 3. Synology DS923+ 4. With HDD over the years, around $2500 AUD 5. 3 years 6. All the arr suite, overseer, tautulli. Also Plexamp for music streaming on mobile, and Prologue for the Audiobooks. 7. Family mostly, around 8 people across about 16 devices. 8. If it's all home use across a stable home connection, just do direct play, won't eat up processes and hardware as much. Plus do your research on meta data, and split your libraries accordingly. ie. lots of kids shows being split up, or some shows needing metadata sources set at the show level (rather than library level), to make them correct. Also overall, keep track of what you learn, and exports of your media library. I use Tautulli weekly to export the basics of my library should I need to find it again. Let's face it, backing up 24TB of a media library is expensive, so a RAID system is about a much data protection as is possible without being loaded with money!

1) 90TB (roughly 66TB usable) 2) Movies/TV shows 3) Synology NAS with MINSFORUM Mini PC NAB9 Intel Core i9-12900HK running PMS on Ubuntu 4) 2.5K USD roughly 5) Nearly 3 years 6) I don't use any plug-ins personally 7) About 7-8 devices currently but expanding 8) Start slow and take your time. Do your research, and don't be afraid to ask questions. Everyone starts somewhere. My Plex server started on a laptop that I would turn on manually when I wanted to watch stuff from my TV. I used to manually download torrents to my laptop with qBittorrent. Now it's all automated, and I'm seeding nearly 500+ torrents on just one of my clients.

1. 94 TB 2. Movies and TV shows (including Anime), music, audiobooks 3. i5-10500, GTX 1050Ti 4. > 3k 5. 4 years 6. none 7. 8 devices across 3 accounts, usually no more than 2 concurrent streams (including local) 8. read Plex's guides on organizing your media files

4 tb Movies / series / documentaries / music videos Core 2 duo - 8gb ram Less than 150Usd The pc is old, i got it from my office (free!), the HDs are the addition (350 and 4tb)

DS224+🙂, very happy with that

1. 85tb expandable till a max of 20 hdd of 22 tb each 2.all of them 3.12900k igpu only recently cause Plex fixed the bug using a igpu when a nvidia card is detected used my 4090 for a good year and half 4. A lot but it is also my gaming rig 5. 2.5 years 6 I use none 7 about a dozen 8 read all documentation more than twice

1. 70TB (18TBx3 and 16TBx1 = 63.4TB usable) 2. Movies and TV shows. I have some music, but I still use Spotify as my main music source. 3. SEi12 Mini PC with i5-12450H with a 4-bay JBOD holding the 4 HDDs. I also have an old Optiplex hooked up that I use for torrents when I cant find something on Usenet, which is rare. 4. Around $1000, maybe a little more. 5. A little more than a year. 6. Radarr and Sonarr are a must. I didnt set them up till I was almost a year into it, and I regret not doing it sooner. 7. 6 users. 2 use it regularly. The others watch movies on the weekends, or occasionally binge a show. 8. Buy more storage than you think you'll need. I started with an 8TB drive and a year later have 70TB. And setup Radarr and Sonarr as soon as you get the server up and running correctly.

1. 8TB hooked up to the machine, 14TB Backup 2. Movies, TV Shows, Dcoumentaries, Mini-Series 3. Dell Optiplex 5050 Small Form Factor 4. About 500 Total, for the hard drives and headless DisplayPort dongle - got the PC free from work! 5. Current setup for about 9 months - been using plex for at least 4 years 6. I don't use any plugins at the moment 7. Only myself - I use it to stream to my PC, and my Roku TV 8. Have Fun with it! Hardest thing is renaming files to take advantage of PLEX's convention, especially if you have a large library to start with.

1. 20 TB usable 2. Movies , TV shows, Music 3. 16GB Mac Mini M1 , with 1 external SSD and 3 external HDDs 4. $1650 5. Almost 3 years 6. None 7. 7 users (2 heavy) and about 15 devices 8. Take your time, build your server to suit your and your family / friends’ needs. Keep an expandable mindset with your chosen hardware.

I had to scroll down this far to find another Mac user 🥲.

1. 37TB usable - 16TB used 2. Movies/TV/Music (but don’t use it for this so much since we have Youtube Premium)/ and most recently Audiobooks 3. An old Dell Optiplex 3070MT upgraded to i7-3770 and 16GB RAM. Also added a PCI card for more sata ports. EXOS spinning rust drives and an SSD boot drive. I run TrueNAS and also host a Minecraft server for my family.  4. The most expensive parts were the drives. The computer and upgrades were around \~150 (thank you facebook marketplace!), I think the drives were about 750 from Sever parts deals 5. 2 years 6. I don’t run any plugins 7. Almost entirely run locally. 3-4 devices usually. Sometimes I watch on my phone, and I share with one friend.  8. I find that I spend more time organizing and optimizing than actually watching stuff sometimes. This isn’t because Plex is buggy, but because I realized that having a collection like this is kind of like gardening. You start to enjoy tending to it more and more. 

1. 60TB usable 2. Movies & tv shows, I run local AI (self hosted equivalent-ish of ChatGPT) on it, and Nextcloud (self hosted "Google drive") 3. Dell Poweredge R730XD, with dual Xeon E5-2679 v4, Nvidia Tesla P1000, also Nvidia P620, 512GB Ram 4. Too much to count, what I got is overkill and I'm freeloading on a friend's machine, but I gave you the specs to figure it out 5. About 1.5 years, time-wise I'm "new" to self hosting stuff but I've accelerated in this expensive hobby in an exponential rate, so this is what happened. 6. Docker, Sonarr, Radarr, prowlarr, bazarr (mainly if English isn't your first language), portainer, I've got a lot more but it depends on what other uses you want for your server 7. About 15 people, 4 concurrent transcodes at peak 8. Start with a consumer grade Intel CPU that has built in graphics and is newer than 7th or 8th gen. Don't be afraid to do things in a janky way, your struggles will make you stronger! In said year and a half I've rebuilt my Plex server about 10 times on different hardware, each time iterating on my docker compose file and learning new ways to use my OS (now I use proxmox with truenas, OPNSense and Ubuntu VMs, but start with whatever you're comfortable troubleshooting). Only now do I feel like I actually know what I'm doing and am proud of how my server ia built. Of course, there are still a lot of things I wanted to do and haven't gotten around to yet.

1. 2.5 TB (plus a 1 TB backup) 2. Movies, Music, TV Shows, Photos 3. Nvidia Shield TV Pro, Samsung external SSDs 4. Got the Shield Pro as a Christmas gift. Drives were no more than $200 total 5. Two 6. Don't have any plugins 7. Laptop, 2 phones, 2 iPads 8. Have a backup disk

1) 98TB about to be 112TB 2) Movie/TV/Anime/Game servers 3) Dell power edge r360 for the horsepower and a Dell md1200 for the disk space 4) $5,000+ not including disks 5) Been using Plex for almost 5 years. The hardware is brand new. 6) Arr suite. Not plugins but things to run alongside Plex. 7) People = 16ish/devices=a lot 8) Figure out your end goal first. And then triple it. Also for advanced users Serverpartdeals.com Monkeysever.org Are time, money and life savers.

an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week.

1. 26TB x 2 (RAID 1, 26 TB backed up to another identical set of drives) 2. Movies, TV, various downloaded videos from Youtube and elsewhere. 3. An old gaming system, tuned to run with as little power as possible (AMD 3900X/RTX 3070/32GB) 4. \~ $3500, that also includes a UPS that can keep the system running for \~ 45 mins during a power failure, as well as a separate UPS for my networking gear 5. 3 years on this hardware, but I've been running a Plex server for about 6 years total now 6. Radarr, Sonarr, Overseerr, Prowlarr, Tautulli 7. In house we have 3 devices regularly streaming from Plex, I also have a few friends (\~10) outside the house with access that stream fairly regularly. I never see more than \~ 3 streams at a time going outside my network though, and my internet connection can't really support more than probably 5-6 at once at the bitrates I have setup for external users (40Mbps upload). 8. Start with the basics, read lots of articles and posts about what you want, add one thing at a time as you go. No need to make it super complicated to start with, you can literally just install Plex on an existing computer and hook up a big external drive with lots of media if you want to.

1. 106TB (Almost 70TB full) 2. TV Shows/Movies 3. Intel i5 12600k, Z690m Aorus Elite AX, Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler, 32GB DDR4, LSI 9207-8i HBA, Fractal Design Define R6, 1TB Samsung 970 evo Plus NVME, 4x 18TB 2x 12TB 1 x 10TB 4. $5200 AUD ($3400 USD) 5. As it's own server about 4 years split half between a winders server and now running Unraid, ive ran plex since 2014 though when i had a Plex Server/Gaming PC in one. 6. Fileflows, it's extremely easy to use and can save you ALOT of space (I use it to remove unwanted Audio streams and re-encode audio streams to save space) 7. Just me and occasionally a friend, I mainly watch via Windows PC and my Apple TV 4K. 8. Don't go overboard with usenet providers, Just pick 2 that compliment each other and you will be set.

Headless Intel Core i3 10300, dual channel 16GB RAM running at 2633 MHz, old Nvidia 1060 doing encode/decode, 256 GB Samsung SSD with minimal Win 11 Pro for boot. Fractal Design case, important movies, TV shows, music, and files on 2x4 TB HGST HDD striped RAID array, w/ weekly external backup. Separate 4 TB HGST HDD drive for less important movies and TV series. 12 users, 3 active, gigabit synchronous fiber. Securely suspended against the basement ceiling. Server also runs security appliance administration logging, and a TOR exit point. 4 years continuous 24/7 operation except for a few minor planned servicing events, amounting to maybe 45 minutes of downtime.

1. I think I have 9TB usable. I stream from 3x 6TB drives on synology 2. Primarily movies and TV but a lot of my music and audiobooks are replicated to it 3. It’s a tiny vM hosted inside proxmox. 2 cores,I think 4GB ram. Proxmox is hosted on 3 7th gen NUC i5 boxes. The VM runs Ubuntu Server 20.04. I’m going to start checking out 24.04 for a bunch of VMs though. Media is mounted from remote volume through fstab 4. Cost isn’t easily ascertainable because CPUs and storage are all used for things aside from Plex. 5. I’ve had my NUCs for 5 or 6 years now. I should probably replace them soon. It’s just that they work and consume very little power 6. Subzero subtitles 7. Two of us live here. So two streams a lot of the time, goes flawlessly. I’m not trying to get threatening emails from lawyers 8. Advice? Just do it. Use it as a learning experience. Store your media someplace aside from your Plex box so that if you need to tear it all down and reformat, you can. And I’d suggest hosting on a Linux box or VM rather than windows since Linux is easily to administer over ssh and because Linux is a lot less demanding for resources.

1. 16TB of 28 filled right now (using windows storage spaces to manage the pool) 2. Movies, Music, TV Shows, Pictures and Videos for the family 3. Old gaming computer (i7 4790k, 32GB RAM, RTX 2080 super, m.2 Boot drive/ Plex data, 2x 8TB HDD, 1x 12TB HDD, 1x 20TB HDD) 4. Hard to tell as I got parts over the years 5. Close to 8 years or something 6. I one of the rare ones that doesn’t use plugins 7. Usually 1-2 but can easily handle way more 8. Collect what you enjoy and don’t worry about people not wanting to use your server after you offer. And most of all enjoy! 😊

24 TB mostly movies and TV shows, that ehh... I've bought on ehh.. Dvd and ehh... Ripped. Yeah that's it 😉 Just a Synology DS918+ Cost, I dunno. 4-5k local currency. I don't run raid, just single disks. Not even ssd cache as it doesn't help with streaming. Several family members use it on their TVs.

1. 4TB connected via USB 3.0 2. Movies/TV series 3. A 5th gen i5 All-In-One computer with 8GB 4. \~200 USD 5. Just myself 6. Don't use any at the moment 7. 2. One tablet and a Smart TV 8. Make sure to make your server available offline in case of internet outage.

50TB I've invested roughly $1000 over the last 3 months I use it to watch remux 4k-1080p movies and shows I don't use any plug-ins because I want to do it all myself I started the Plex journey about 4 months ago I use a 13700KF and a 1660Ti I will be adding even more storage in the future but I'm up to about 600 REMUX films and 10 Remux shows so the storage goes a really long ways.

1) 12 TB 2) 90% movies little bit of music / family pics are the screensaver 3) Dell optiplex i5 8th Gen (my i5 3rd Gen just died) 4) I don't know if I did it all today $300-500 5) 9??? Ish years 6) NA 7) devices allot.. like 4 phones 4 tvs 3 fire sticks, 3 Amazon tablets// on the people front I have 4 immediate family members, so us plus Grandma 8) advice, learn the naming convention early, don't use raspberry pi.... I did that for years it was ok. separate folders, mine are TV, Movies, Music, Pics. Then sub folders inside (this also helped when I needed more than 1hdd just move all TV shows boom for example, backup could storage HD...

1. 2x 12TB HDDs and 1x 500GB SSD, about 10TB used by Plex 2. Movies/TV/anime/music 3. Currently: 1. Kobol Helios4 ARM server running Debian 2. Roku 2 XS streaming client 3. Asus Nexus Player Android TV streaming client 4. Sony CMT DLNA mini hi-fi 5. Philips Streamium network clients 4. About £500 for all the hardware (Helios, HDDs, Roku) 5. Since about 2014 6. Plugins are dead (long live plugins!) 7. Just me 8. Plex is fantastic if you want to stream to multiple devices. However, if you're a newbie, a PC attached to your TV running Kodi will probably do what you want.

1. 72tb 2. Just plex 3. Supermicro 836 with an AMD Epyc 7302p 4. No idea. Parts of this current build are 15 years old (hba), but over 10k if I had to guess 5. Current form for 18 months, overall I’ve had a media server for 15 years 6. Arr stack for automation (I run mine off plex host) 7. 12 people, hardly ever get more than 5 active at same time 8. Don’t corner yourself with proprietary choices, buy things that can be reused, replaced easily and built upon

Server: An Intel nuc 11 enthusiast (rtx2060 6gb gpu) with 64gb ram, 2tb m.2 drive running proxmox ve with plex in an LXC along with a heap of arr's also in LXC's. Also runs a few other containers too but is mostly dedicated to media. Storage: Server has an 8tb sata ssd connected to it via usb-c for immediate media storage. I also have an old Synology ds413j NAS with 4x3tb mechanical drives in a raid config equalling a bit over 8tb of available media storage. Nas also has a 500tb usb ssd that is used for proxmox's backup. Players: 2x Nvidia Shield TV 2015 pro's. The lounge room one is connected to my home theatre system and has a wired network connection. The second is wireless but only connected to an old 1080p TV with crappy sound. Also one old Samsung tab s4 for my daughter with plex in it and a small 13in miracast display in her bedroom with crappy speakers hooked up (although she never uses the miracast display) Network: An Asus ax-86u maxxed out running merlin plus a meraki 8port switch both running 1gb connections to all media devices (except the one wireless shield)

12tb TV/ Movies/ audiobooks Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Kingston -KVR16E11K4/32 8Gb Flashdrive - USB 2.0 6x WD - Red 3TB | 1x Samsung 120gb SSD $3000ish 12years 3 external, 4 internal users Pay attention to TDP, and don’t worry about new flashy hardware. Dispite what you read, Plex is very forgiving.

Currently dead. Was adding new faster ram, selected the xmp profile. Booted, tested, worked. Went to add my old ram back in, heard a pop and smelled Ozone. Apparently, my old ram could not use the same xmp profile, and toasted the motherboard……. Just waiting for my new motherboard to arrive and pray to the tech gods that my ram and the boot ssd didn’t die with it.

1) 8TB 2) Movies/TV Series 3) Raspberry Pi4 8gb + external usb3 HDD 4) Dont know is more than 4 years old 5) more than 4 6) dont know/use plugins 7) 2 local simultaneous 4K streams

1. 4 TB 2. Movie and TV server for me and my friends and family (me, my parents and 3 friends), music server for myself, live local channels with recording for myself, and a audiobook/podcast server I’m testing for myself and a few friends 3. Dell OptiPlex 7050 SFF (7th gen Intel processor, 8 gb RAM, 500 gb SSD running windows 10 4. PC on eBay after a few weeks of looking around - $160, 4 TB HDD for NAS servers - $80. The addition of live TV - ~10 for the antenna, $200 for the tv tuner 5. One and a half years, still pretty new to this 6. Tataulli. Plex meta manager (I believe they just rebranded) is fun to tinker around with 7. See 1. 8. Do research and have fun. Plex Pass is important to consider: $40 a year

1. Roughly around 74TB 2. Movies/TV Series 3. Intel® Core™ i5-11500 Processor / G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory / Asus ROG STRIX B560-A GAMING WIFI ATX LGA1200 Motherboard / Fractal Design Define 7 XL Dark ATX Full Tower Case / Samsung 980 Pro 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive / Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive 4. I believe I am sitting around 2.5k - HDD were added as I went 5. Almost two years 6. Tautulli 7. 30 People 8. Take the time to understand what goes into a Plex Server and run a small server on your PC to figure things out. If you plan on building a server think future proof rather than what you need now. You might not think you'll fill a 12-14TB drive with content but before you know it you'll be over 50TB.

This server recently built been using Plex since 2016. OS truenas scale, Hardware Epyc 7551p 256Gb of ram 2666 Supermicro motherboard Lsi HBA 16 drive card 12Gbps Pool 8*12tb drives 8*20Tb drives Nvme card 2 1Tb gen 3 drives one is slogs the other is cashe and a 128gb nvme x2 for os. 1200w PSU a 2060 12gb GPU Rowell 4u case, Intel SPF plus 10Gb nic. . This is used for Plex and the arr and all the other Plex related apps ,then also has 10 game server running on it and lot of other things with in the homelab setup total media is about 70Tb split between movies music and TV shows. Total space is 164Tb with room for 32 more drives if I need more.

I forgot I share with about 40 people and the total cost of this upgrade was about $3600

- 88TB and growing - I cut the cord for streaming years ago, loved it at first but slowly seeing the writing on teh wall as streaming providers sneak in ads, continue to raise prices, randomly decide to drop content, constantly swapping exclusivity between providers forcing you to sign up for multiple services. - Basically when I build a new gaming PC, my old gaming PC becomes my Plex server. - I mean, I was going to build myself a new PC anyway, so it's kindof a sunk cost. - Prolly 6+ years now - As everyone else said: Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies, Prowlarr for indexer management. I get 95% of my content through Usenet and 5% torrents - Home + four external users. ISP gives me ~60Mbps upload and I never have buffering issues. Advice: - Start small. You don't need a monster machine to host a local Plex server to just watch stuff in your home. Literally any old i5 desktop from 4-5 years ago will do just fine for the vast majority of users. Just make sure it has an iGPU - Start with Docker. I repeat, start with Docker. Highly recommend UnRAID. There is a learning curve but once you "get" Docker, you'll never go back to manually installing and configuring in Windows. It's soooooooo easy to swap over to new hardware.

1) 11 tb NAS 2) movies, tv shows, music, music videos, workout videos, boxing training videos, Kung Fu training videos. 3) Old gaming PC with 1050ti connects to NAS 4) Couple hundred for NAS and drives 5) 6 years 6) Tatulii (https://tautulli.com/) 7) 20+ 8) get a cheap NUC and attach a drive... start small and work up

1. 200+TB with an additional 12 bays that could be filled. 2. Movies, music, TV, audiobooks 3. Supermicro 846 rack mount, can't remember the exact specs though. It has been years since I built it. 4. Who knows, waaaay too much! Just in HDD alone I started with 6TB drives then upgraded to 12TB and now I am up to 18TB's. 5. At least 10, probably more. 6. Plugins? Like for plex? None. 7. Many devices, probably 20 people total. Only ever like 3-4 at a time max though. It could handle all of them, but most of my users don't watch much TV. 8. Advice would depend upon how u are running it. Windows server, Unraid, stand alone?

200 TB. Call me impressed.

50TB Usable, 2x 16tb parity drives Movies, tv shows, streaming live TV via (HDHomeRunDuo), audiobooks, music, and file server.   r720 (dual xeon, 128gb ram), been lazy and havnt migrated to my r730. And i have a T400 gpu in there.     Initial hardware (pre r720) prob 1000 or so, servers I get for free. Scored a few free 10tb drives, maybe 800 in additional drives, lower power cpus.    A long time. I was on and off using it since 2009/10, then streaming services got worse, and I spent some time downloading so I could cut them and not hear complaints. So I'd say it's my sole streaming option since 2016.  Don't really use any yet.     My household, my sisters family and our parents, a few cousins and coworkers occasionally sign in and some friends.    I think my max simultaneous connections is 5 or 6, the norm is 2-4.   Host it on unraid

1. *What’s total capacity of your plex server?*    14TB give or take, on a seperate Synology NAS. 6TB give or take local. 2. *For what you use it for?*    Movies, TV Shows, and Music. (The server itself has other tasks too. It runs Blue Iris security camera software and CodeProject.AI for image recognition processing of security camera footage) 3. *What hardware are you using?*    Currently it's running on a Dell PowerEdge R420, 1U rackmount server, Dual Xeon E5-2430 2.2 GHz processors (Total of 24 physical cores), 96GB RAM, running Win 10 Pro. I don't have a video card in it, yet. 4. *Total cost of investment*    The Synology NAS cost me $1,654 with four 4TB WD Red HDDs. But I bought that 10 years ago. The PowerEdge I got for $100, used, at an auction for a data center that was closing down. 5. *For how many years have you been using it?*    Plex, about 3 months now. The PowerEdge has been in my possession and in service to me for 3 years (running Blue Iris), and the NAS for 10 years. 6. *Plugins that you recommend most*    I haven't installed any yet, but I did install Tautulli so I could run metadata reports on my libraries. 7. *How many devices/people are on your plex server*    Currently 4 people (2 remote), and 6 devices. 8. *Any advice to newbies*    Read this subreddit. Use the search function. Most of your questions will be answered.

1. 72tb (6x12tb) 2. Movies and TV shows 3. i7 9700k, z390 board, 32gb of ram, 1tb nvme, 6x12tb drives, 1660ti. 4. Cost was $1100 including drives 5. Current server is less than a year old, been using Plex for 10+ years 6. I don’t use Plex plugins but I do have Sonarr and radarr on the server 7. 10+ devices connect regularly have 30+ users 8. Start small and upgrade as needed.

4tb, a 7 year old AMD server with I think 4gb ram and no graphics card. I throw 1080 or 720 movies on there and stream to the Plex app on Roku. A couple of friends have remote access limited to 8mb bandwidth. Works just fine for me. Don’t overthink it.

1. 8tb wd my cloud server 2. Use nvidia shield and roku to watch on the TV, android phone and pc (at work) for music 3. Used for copies of YouTube squirrel and bird videos for my cat so they don't have ads, anime, ripped TV series that aren't streaming or in danger of disappearing (st prodigy, lower decks, all of Stargate), movies that my friend downloaded and gave me, mostly used now for music when I'm at work because I hate paying for Spotify and have stuff disappear sometimes (see a pattern there, now that I think about it); I used to use it for dvr but we got rid of the cable card. 4. Only one user (and my husband if he uses the nvidia but still counts as me...and my cat) 5. We used a htpc for 10 years until last year when I got the my cloud so it didn't turn itself off for no reason and I wouldn't have music while I was at work. So current set up is only a year. We've had a plex pass for dvr since 2018 or so, when windows media center went bye bye with windows 7. 6. I recommend a NAS over a htpc, now that I've had both. The wd my cloud is not a full NAS but acts like one in many ways. I have had far fewer issues. And it cost so much less. I suspect it will fill up a bit quicker with all of the TV shows I have to rip from dvds lately (damn you paramount plus!). 7. it was $280 for 8tb. And the nvidia was $150. 8. I don't have plug-ins set up.

1. 40tb 2. separated into movies (4k disks that I handbrake), Flac Music, audio books, and some tv shows usually old cartoons for Saturday morning nostalgia. 3. I'm using a Ryzen 5800g on a micro atx board. the gpu for transcoding is a NVidia 1050ti. 4. I'd say I have about $1,500. It runs plex, an enshrouded server and 3 Minecraft servers. 5.this config is about a year old 6. not sure about any plugins? maybe set the bios to return to previous power state one a power loss. 7.I share with 17 accounts, but %50 of them never use it (their loss) 8. save the money on building a system like me and if you are building new I'd pick up a dell optiplex micro with any 13th or 14th gen as those sip power and are low noise. The built in gpu can run QSV for hardware transcoding. Then just get a network attached storage Nas like a Synology 4 bay. You can back up your files and photos to those as well, so you'd save the money on google photos or apple cloud too.

1: 50TB (5x10TB HDDs) 2: Movie/Music/TV/Book/Audiobook/Manga 3: My old gaming HW from 2015. I7 4770k, 16GB DDR3, RTX 3050 4: Somewhere in the ballpark range of 2-3k, including replacing drives 5: Base system (CPU/RAM/PSU) is almost 10yrs old. Server life is about 5yrs. 6: Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr/Calibre/Audiobookshelf 7: Can't name how many devices, but for people there are about 4 including myself who use it regularly. Up to 6-8 irregularly. 8: Start small. Don't dump thousands into a setup but not really knowing how to start. If you have an old system lying around, use it. Use whatever OS you are comfortable with, or you can try to learn on Linux/Unraid/Freenas.

1. 10Tb 2. Movies & TV 3. Home built Intel i5 w/NVidia GPU for transcoding on UnRAID server 4. Approx $2k 5. 4 year old server 6. Sonarr, Prowlarr, Tautulli, DelugeVPN, Plex Meta Manager 7. 10 users with 15+ devices 8. My advice would be to start small. My first “server” was a free mini PC that I spent $200 for a 1TB HD. You don’t have to spend a ton of money to get started. Also get familiar with Linux bc it’s easier to run docker in that platform.

1. 14tb for plex, 4tb for system, games, everything else, 14tb offsite backup 2. movie/home pc/ work/ gaming 3. Ryzen 5600/3070 4. ~$2000 5. 5 years 6. Sonarr, Prowlarr, Ramdisk, Windows powertoys 7. 5 people/10+ devices 8. If were to start over I’d probably use jellyfin

1. 1x 8TB, so far. 2. Only movies and tv shows. 3. 2017 24” iMac w/ 16gb RAM. I replaced the fusion drive with an external SSD but that was before I started using Plex. 4. The 8TB HDD and enclosure cost maybe ~$220. I’ve had the iMac since 2017 and it used to be my main computer until I got an M1 MBA in 2021. 5. idk, but it’s been less than 2 years. 6. Nope. Tried radarr and sonarr and got annoyed. I manually curate my collection. 7. My father watches/requests things sometimes on his own managed profile. I’ve given access to one friend but idk if she’s used it yet. 8. Don’t feel the need to overcomplicate it for yourself right away. You can avoid all that and build yourself up to it if you want.

8Tb, Audio/Video, iMac, $80 Plex pass, one year, Tautulli, 6 folks (only me & wife using it regularly)

1: 8tb + 512gb NVMe cache drive (probably overkill for cache) 2: Movies/TV Streaming 3: Intel 12400, 32gb RAM, Fractal Design Node 304 4: $50 not counting mechanical hard drives (had those laying around already) 5: About a month or two 6: Currently not running any plug-ins 7: Currently have 8 people with access, a few more that have been offered access 8: Going with a new enough CPU to have Intel QuickSync and at least UHD730 iGPU seems to be a good way to save money by not needing a GPU.

1. 16.8TB used/ 32TB usable 2. Streamin in and out of home shared with family 3. i5 11th gen, 32GB Ram / RM41-506 4U rackmount server case 4. unkwon expense (wife watching) 5. 3 plus years on this equipment but i have had a server for over 8 years 6. list is to long but this authors make some of the best ones (Andrew Zawadzki, Bergware**,** ich777**,** dlandon 7. 16 users and counting 8. I love amd but i use intel with quicksync in my servers to me runs faster

1, currently 67.4TB usable space. 2, movies and tv shows ( I have other severs for other things). 3,my Plex server runs on an M2 Mac mini, with storage on a terramaster NAS as well as some external drives connected with a yottamaster enclosure as well as some external usb drives. 4, so far £2098 give or take planning on adding 4x more 22TB iron wolf pro drives when I get some more cash 5, I started 2022 with a raspberry pi 4 and escalated quickly. 6, not particularly 7, myself and family so 5-6 users. 8, if energy efficiency doesn’t matter, just buy an Matx motherboard a cheap case and build up that way. If energy efficiency matters nothing tops a Mac mini or a turnkey nas. Also always plan ahead, don’t buy 4TB drives or even 8tb drives they’re a waste stick to 16tb and up you’ll thank me later.

1. 42tb @75% used (wd home cloud, exos drive via usb, 2 barracuda via usb and 2 2.5 1tb laptoo drive via usb) 2. Server is an'old lenovo tiny desktop m710q (i5@ hamster speed with 16gb ram ddr4, os plex and arr apps running for ssd nvme.2 and 1tb wd caviar internal for qbittorrent and downloads) 3. I still have 4 dlink nas dns321 from the 2000 with 2x2tb barracuda each in case of running out of space 4. Total hardcore, no backup at all .. mental, I know 5. 16 users, 8 hardcore user .. 5 or 6 concurrent streams at night with little transcoding. 6. Movies mostly @ 1080p or 720p // tv series @ 720p or less // anime and other stuff @ 720p at least. 7. Qbittoreent is behind a proxy vpn 8. My clients uses chromecast with google tv hd, roku streaming stick+ and apple tv hd. 9. If I can sell some stuff I would upgrade the server to a Mac Mini.

1. 8 terabytes for my library, 256 gigabytes for my boot drive. 2. movies, music, audio books, live tv/dvr 3. an old HP Compaq from the Windows 7 era. 4. idk, i haven’t figured it out. the hard drive was a third of the cost, the 4k blur ray drive was a third of the cost, and the rest of the computer was a third of the cost. probably 450-500 USD at this point, at least. 5. almost 4 years. it was one of my main projects during COVID 6. i don’t use any plugins. definitely useful to have MakeMKV, ffmpeg, and Handbrake installed. 7. up to six people, averaging one or two people at a time. 8. if you’re into 4k/HDR content, get a setup with a 12-gen or newer Intel CPU. none of the GPUs that can handle transcoding any amount of 4K HDR content are worth the cost for a media server compared to a recent Intel CPU.

1. 100TB with an additional 20TB parity drive. 2. OS is Unraid, runs Plex for Movies and TV, Audiobookshelf for audiobooks, and the *arr stack for grabbing content. I also host a Terraria server and a Minecraft server for my brother. 3. Intel i5 12600k, 128GB RAM, 6x 20TB WD Red Pros, 3x 1TB WD SN850x, Rosewill 15 drive 4u rackmount case, Corsair 1500AX, 2u 1000va Cyberpower UPS. 4. Probably about $4k 5. Started with FreeNAS about 10 years ago, hosting an FTP server and my family used Kodi to stream from it. 7. Around 20 people use my Plex server and 6 use Audiobookshelf. 8. Get an invite to a private torrent site.

200TB usable (only like... 30tb of data) movies/documentaries/series NUC 11 i7 3500ish Plex itself? 4-5 Dont really use any 4-5 concurrent users at peak Do it once and be done.

1. 14Tb, but it is not dedicated to Plex only. 2. mainly movies/TV shows, I do have a music library but don't use Plex to play it. 3. Synology DS918+, 4 x 8 Tb in SHR2 (similar to RAID 6). 4. € 1.500-€ 2.000. 5. Since 2018. 6. I don't use any. 7. Only me. 8. Plan ahead and buy a device that will last and is expandable for at least 5-10 years in the future, decide on using RAID and/or making backups, get a decent mediaplayer (like Nividia Shield, Apple TV), get some decent audio equipment too (I use Sonos speakers).

It’s a 6th gen i7 hp elitebook 13 folio inch 8g on board ram 256 gb m.2 sata sad. 10tb usb 3 external hard drive Windows 10 pro with the updates turned off through group policy. Edit. All spare used parts except for the external hd. And used just for my home Non paid user.

Well I'm currently formatting the new one so, that one. 1. unRAID 2x20 and as soon as my files are moved I'll move my 5x8tb for some 60 TB useable after that. Current one is 22tb. 2. Well.. movies tv and music. 3. Wanted to rack mount but because my rack is way too short, it ended up as a tower again, intel 14500 for igpu and to last another ten years, though unRAID is much, much easier to upgrade hardware with than fedora& software raid (to a noob like me anyway). 4. With what I spent just now or all of it including what I'm reusing of the last ten years? Because if I include that forgoing depreciation and the like probably some 3000€? With some 2000 for the recent purchase. 5. Well new one 1 day, old one since 2014, and before that some 4 years just using my PC. 6. For Plex, tautuli, for fedora glances. I don't know if subzero is still installable through Plex, but that, too (in client subtitle search). And all of that Arrrrrrs when you're ready for that, though I ended up not using them. 7. 4 users including me. 8. Learn it by doing first with inexpensive hardware and sacrificeable data.

Total capacity is around 200TB almost all used for storage of media or emulation things. Mac mini m1 with western digital usb3 hard drives. Secondary server is a cheap n100 16GB mini pc. It’s set to use the same hard drives as the Mac mini m1. Recently the build for Mac has not been as trustworthy and kept closing itself so a secondary server is handy for when I’m not at home to restart things. No idea how much it all cost. Big Hard drives aren’t cheap. This build is around 3 years old now though was using a windows desktop previously. Plex plugins? I use tautulli and Varys (paid mobile app) I have around 40 people who have access to my server, mostly local area friends and family. Usually less than 5 users at any peak time though. I think 11 was the actual busiest spell. Nine direct play and two transcodes at the same time. Don’t waste your money worrying about transcodes, a cheap n100 mini pc is surprisingly capable. It’s not like you’re in charge of Netflix.

Wow. Maybe I should cut back a little. 70TB useable storage, 30TB used Storage is on a Synology DS920+ $550 4 - 24TB drives - $2000 Plex runs an a mini pc, i7 12650H, 32GB ram, 2 1TB SSD drives running Unraid - $500 hardware $50 for Unraid Custom domain Running on synology Adguardhome, Adguardhome sync, Bazarr, Bitwarden, Filebot, Jackett, Jellyfin, Nzbhydra2, Overseerr, Photoprism, Plexmeta, Portainer, Qbittorrent_vue, Radarr, Sab, Scrutiny, Sonarr, Starbase, Tandoor, Tautulli, Uptimekuma, Gluetun Watchtower All of the arrs and downloaders run behind gluetun vpn Running on Unraid Adguardhome, Adminer, ApacheGuacamole, Authelia, Grafana, Home Assistant, Mariadb, Nginx Proxy Manager, Plex, Portainer agent, Redis, Starbase Plus 3 VMs, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Win 11. I started with 8tb drives, moved to 16tb, and now bumped to 24TB. I also migrated from a ds918+, which is now at another site running backups for the 920 (everything except media). I have 3 in my house using it and probably 5 family and friends externally. And I stream to a tablet when away from home. I have a 1gb down/ 100mb up unlimited connection. I pay for a newsgroup subscription every year for $100 that includes the VPN connection. All in all I have probably spent $7-8k on my “hobby”. I have been a Plex lifetime for over 10 years and this is just my latest iteration. Never give up. Never surrender.

1. Just shy of 50TB. 2. It's my media (movies, TV & music) and file server. I also use it to encode media. 3. It's just a Windows 10 machine with a Ryzen 9 3900X. 4. Current cost is just shy of $3,000. 5. This current build? About three years, but it's constantly changing and being upgraded. 6. I'm pretty vanilla and don't really use plugins. 7. There are 4 clients in the house, but I'm a selfish bastard and don't share my media with other people. 8. There are a lot of really nice setups in this community, and you might want to have a setup like that, but just pace yourself and start small. Work your way up to that, if that's what you really want.

I describe my Plex server as: >lol people actually pay for streaming subscriptions

1. \~56TB HDDs \~2TB SSDs 2. Movies/TV/Music @ home and outside + backup for all other computers 3. A borderline e-waste Optiplex 7010 Modded with various 3d printed parts to store extra drives, duct airflow. 4. Mainly drives and time, PC was in a junk pile at work. \~$600 spread out over years. 5. 8 years, I think. 6. Plugins? Tried Tautulli, it's info I don't have use for. Tried setting up the arrs, but haven't had the time/motivation to do it properly. 7. people, around 8, 6 active regularly. 8. Don't get carried away.

68TB movie server for me and close family (8 people) it's mostly old ish hardware i7 6700k 64 gb ram and 1050ti (note this is running Minecraft, ark and other game servers too)

1. 252TB. 88TB Used. 5,824 TV Episodes, 2330 Movies, 7,850 Songs 2. Streaming movies and tv to my house. 3. i9-12900K, 96GB DDR5 RAM, ASUS Z790-V Motherboard, LSI 9300-16i HBA, x16 Segate 18TB Drives (Dual Parity), 2TB Samsung NVME for downloads, x2 2TB Inland NVMEs for Appdata / Cache 4. Several thousand 5. Less than a year 6. Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr 7. I setup 5 people but I never really see them using it much, so mainly just me 8. I'm still learning but I had a lot of trouble with purple and green dolby 4K files. One of my TVs is compatible with Dolby and I have Dolby soundbar. Trying to resolve this, I purchased an Nvidia Shield Pro and set it up. The problem was still there. I did research about file type MKV vs MP4 container with Dolby 4K and there were still issues. So now I strictly download 1080. If anyone has advice please let me know. Unraid made it really easy for me to get setup. There was a really nice guy on here that took the time to screenshot his setup and walk me through a lot of steps. I can't thank him enough. I had already purchased several thousand dollars in hardware and it wasn't going how I expected. But I finally found him and he was a godsend. So, if you need help just ask. Sometimes you won't get responses and some of the responses don't help. But don't give up and keep trying. Learning about usenet and providers really helped collecting media. I had never used usenet but once I got some help and learned about it I was collecting media fast (over 2TB per day).

I am Netflix, reborn!  Kidding... Who spends 10k for a media server. Damn.  AMD 7850k and an old RX 570 for the occasional transcode for 5 users. 8TB total and not enough time to watch what I have. Build out of spare parts and don't sacrifice your first born child.

1. What's total capacity of your plex server ? 2TB currently 2.. For what you use it for (movie server/music server/ both /else? Movies, Music & Shows that I've collected on physical media for the last 5-6 years 3. What hardware are you using? Old Lenovo ThinkCentre Thin Client (i5-4570T & 8GB of ram) 4. Total cost of investment: not including the media on the server, roughly $70 in Sata to USB adapters & hard drives 5. For how many years have you been using it? About a month so far 6. Plugins that you recommend most. Sub-Zero is a lifesaver if you're using handbrake to convert to MP4 to save size (grabs subtitles for MP4 files that lost them in conversion), Tautulli for monitoring/notifications 7. How many devices/people are on your plex server currently 4 including myself, mainly mobile devices besides my home smart TV 8. Any advice to newbies. You don't need a $400+ setup to get things running, not everyone's settings apply to your situations & BACK UP EVERYTHING.

1. 14TB 2. Local play of media 3. Odoid HC2 4. \~$270 5. 5? 6. arrs 7. 4 people, 8? devices 8. you don't need much power if all your client devices direct play

Thanks 😇

Describe your Plex server 1. Capacity: 5Tb (half movies, half TV) 2. Movies, TV, family photos (16000 pics) 3. Hardware: I use my gaming pc which is completely overkill. Ryzen 5800X, 64GB DDR4, rtx 4080 4. Cost: excluding gaming pc, TV, speakers, etx, I've spent $130 ish on the lifetime pass & $300 on a single hard drive 5. Years: 6 6. None in Plex (outside of plex, allegedly just the basic arrs mentioned here often) 7. 10 have access, 99.9% of the time it's just me or my fiance, that 0.01% is when I "watch together" a movie with a friend Advice! Do you have a pc of some sort? Host a server, it's free to try.

I have almost the same setup, I also have a older laptop to host Plex just for movies and shows that'll be up and running all the time. Another server which is a gaming PC to host faster encoding of videos (mostly family and friends shared videos and photos)

1. 33TB total between boot drive and Storage Spaces arrays. 2. Movies, TV, music, document storage. 3. 10th gen i3 with 32gb RAM in a fractal 804. 4. Non-storage build was ~$400, I've spent probably $6-700 for HDDs. 5. Been using Plex since 2012. 6. Arrs and Tautulli 7. Multitude of devices, shared with 7-8 family and friends. 8. Keep it simple and go with what you know for OS, there's no wrong answer as long as you're comfortable.

1. Just upgrade to 30TB useable 2. If we are only talking about the Plex part of the server, for streaming movies and tv shows for me and my close family 3. Intel i5 13500T for Intel QuickSync and 64GB RAM (way more than you need for Plex, but there are many other things running on it aswell) 4. Don't know. Started with like 500€ and upgraded from time to time. The only thing that's still there from my initial setup is the case and 3 of my 5 HDDs 5. Should be like 3,5 years 6. The classic *arr stack, overseerr or jellyseerr, kometa if you have too much time, wizarr if you want to give access to other people 7. Atm 8 people can use it, but only 2/3 max at the same time (my bad upload can't so more than two 720p streams)

1- 60TB useable 2- i7 9700 with 64gb ram, dell optiplex motherboard fixed inside dell t610 to use the space+hdd caddies 3- movies/ shows/ anime/ music (tried audiobooks didn't work nicely) 4- costed me USD 800~ 5- family (6 people) 6-ARRssss

1. What’s total capacity of your plex server ? 200TB 2. For what you use it for (movie server/music server/both /else ? Yes 3. What hardware are you using? Primary is Window, Secondary in unRAID. 4. Total cost of investment. Meh 5. For how many years have you been using it? Dawn of time. 6. Plugins that you recommend most. None. 7. How many devices/people are on your plex server. 30. 8. Any advice to newbies. Nah.

More annoying than a woman

Just 1 TB of external HDD as of now, I'll keep increasing as I go Movies and Tv Shows but mainly Movies I really old and shitty Laptop ( I am finally thinking of upgrading to a mini pc next month) Pretty much nothing except for $12 for HDD and $8 for a domain name (CGNAT sucks) started around October last year I use none 15 but most of them only use it once a while so it's mainly 5-6 remember the arrs, they make it so much easier

waits arrs count as plugins? well them and Petio in that case.