My first plex server (probably Hetzner)

[Josh B.]

Hi guys,

first off all I'm happy to be here. This seems to be a great and friendly community.

You probably won't believe it but I learned of PGBlitz just yesterday. So it's still a lot for me to process.

I'm basically planning to setup a plex server for me and family/friends and I think there will be max 10-15 people if at all.
I originally planned to go the Hetzner auctions route for something like the SB29 (i7-3770, 2x 3TB, 16GB RAM) but it seems that the more popular choice/recommendation here is the EX range (f.i. EX42-NVME).

I pretty quickly learned that drive space isn't that important here because you guys use Gdrive anyway.
Most of the stuff I download would be via usenet or several filehosts but I also want to use the server as a seedbox on some private trackers also because I like the whole p2p community feeling and giving back to people - because we all know: sharing is caring.

So long story short here are a few questions and I'm sure there will be much more the next days:

• what's the difference between gdrive and tdrive? I read in the wiki that tdrive has no daily 750GB upload limit - so I know that. But what is it exactly? And how would someone create a tdrive account instead of a g suite business account?
• is the EX42-NVME overkill for my usecase? I'm not sure if 10-15 users are many or little...
• One very important thing: me and at least 1-2 of the other users would like to play 4k content (with direct play/direct steam capable devices only of course). Will this be possible without any problems or will I run into buffering issues? I'm just wondering because if I understand correctly the server will basically have no local files because all content is on google drive. So it has to be "streamed" to the server first and then to the end user. All of the users are in Germany btw.
• I do watch a lot of my series and movies in English but in 95% of the cases I at least use English subtitles to be able to read some words in case I didn't understand them because of a slang or something like that. Subtitles and Plex seems to be a bit of a problem. Will I at least be able to use SRT subtitles with clients like Kodi (via PlexKodiConnect) or even idx/sub (PGS) subtitles with Kodi without Plex starting to Transcode?

I'm sure I forgot a lot of questions and there will be more but that's it for now.

Thank you in advance!
Cheers

 

[dinklegeta]

Hello and welcome

Q1. what's the difference between gdrive and tdrive?

A. tdrive is essentially what google calls Team Drives, these can be used in conjunction with your regular G Suite businesses GDrive account for sharing your unlimited data to specific team drive. You won't have to create a tdrive account, it is just a feature of regular G Suite Business.

Q2. is the EX42-NVME overkill for my usecase?

A. This entirely depends on your use-case, if you have a lot of users and they will be playing 4K remuxes then I would say yes. Further more I would say buffering/stuttering depends mainly on your users rather than the server, they need to have good enough download speeds as remuxes in particular can have massive bitrates.

Q3. Subs and Kodi?

A. The offical kodi plex addon will direct play just about everything and subtitles have never been a problem for me using that combination.

Feel free to ask any further questions.

 

[Josh B.]

Thank you!

By the official Kodi Plex addon you mean PlexKodiConnect or is this something different?
Regarding the users: Besides one exception all of them have really good download speeds and also wired devices, so that should be fine.

But I guess I'll have to see how the mix between direct play/stream and transcoding streams will be.
Should I still be fine with the EX42 if let's say 50% of the streams/users would be transcoding.
Or is there already an upgrade to the EX52 needed?

To be honest I still have no clue how to size the server correctly in terms of the CPU.

Cheers

 

[dinklegeta]

Thank you!

By the official Kodi Plex addon you mean PlexKodiConnect or is this something different?
Regarding the users: Besides one exception all of them have really good download speeds and also wired devices, so that should be fine.

But I guess I'll have to see how the mix between direct play/stream and transcoding streams will be.
Should I still be fine with the EX42 if let's say 50% of the streams/users would be transcoding.
Or is there already an upgrade to the EX52 needed?

To be honest I still have no clue how to size the server correctly in terms of the CPU.

Cheers

I was referring to the Plex add-on that is already available to download/install on the default Kodi repository. When you got to video add-ons within Kodi you should be able to just find an add-on called 'Plex', it's developed by Plex and follows a pretty similar design language to the native apps. PlexKodiConnect should work as well but I generally stick with the regular Plex add-on.

I recommend you enable HW transcoding through the iGPU on the EX42, it will use the integrated GPU for transcoding video which is a lighter load than CPU transcoding, it will look worse quality wise but then again transcoding in itself is not exactly what you would want if you are going for quality as a user. I think the EX42 will probably be more than enough for your needs, people tend to exaggerate their requirements but it's good to have overhead in performance and spec.