SSDNodes Plex Transcoding Issues

[Elevarion]

Alright, before I go and just blame SSDNodes, I would like to check with others and see if anyone else is having issues or is using a similar setup.

I have a X-Large SSDNodes KVM, 2 Cores 16GB Ram and 8TB Transfer. Getting around 150 Mb Speed test, but only about 10Mb upload to GDrive with a Usenet download of 15Mb on average. Not bad, but not great. Still something I can live with however.

So my issue. Everything is setup and working at this point but I am having serious issues with playback quality. No matter what I am playing it will randomly stutter or stop playing while it buffers. I do seem to get better performance when I manually force the quality setting to original. Which suggest to me that the issue is with a CPU bottleneck on the transcoding. I am working to streamline my settings for this now to see if it helps.

I would of thought this server should have more then enough power for transcoding a few streams, but I am not seeing it.

Any thoughts?

 

[Datamonkeh]

Net data showing high IO wait times? Are you transcoding to disk or RAM?

 

[Elevarion]

Net data showing high IO wait times? Are you transcoding to disk or RAM?

Transcoding with Defaults to SSD disk.

As for a High IO, not that I have seen. I am adding Prometheus to my setup right now so that I can get some logs over time.

 

[Qlogic]

I have the same VPS, it is complete garbage, there servers are over sold and they will tend to throttle you very quickly. You are probably getting throttled, once you start to trans-code something it usually triggers automatic throttling and you have to wait 24 hours for it to come off, or you can email support but it will just trigger again. Right now i only use the server for OMBI and Jackett because that all it seem it can do, upload speeds are horrible so you can't even use it for sonarr and radarr because it takes forever to upload to google drive

 

[Admin9705]

I have the same VPS, it is complete garbage, there servers are over sold and they will tend to throttle you very quickly. You are probably getting throttled, once you start to trans-code something it usually triggers automatic throttling and you have to wait 24 hours for it to come off, or you can email support but it will just trigger again. Right now i only use the server for OMBI and Jackett because that all it seem it can do, upload speeds are horrible so you can't even use it for sonarr and radarr because it takes forever to upload to google drive

Thanks for this. I suspect it was also because I do not have this problem.

 

[Elevarion]

That is what I figured based on the Steal CPU Metric, Almost 50% of the CPu. Just hoped it was not the case.

Got a good deal on this KVM, going to be hard to find something similar at anything close to the same price, especially in the US.

Going to see what I can do for the next few days. Still within the 14 Day cancellation period.

Thanks for confirming what I suspected though.

 

[zippy]

That is what I figured based on the Steal CPU Metric, Almost 50% of the CPu. Just hoped it was not the case.

Got a good deal on this KVM, going to be hard to find something similar at anything close to the same price, especially in the US.

Going to see what I can do for the next few days. Still within the 14 Day cancellation period.

Thanks for confirming what I suspected though.

Go to lowendbox or lowendtalk and just browse it once a day in hopes of scoring a decent KVM server. You might not find a cheap one in the US, but Canada usually has some cheap prices, and they are close.

 

[Admin9705]

That is what I figured based on the Steal CPU Metric, Almost 50% of the CPu. Just hoped it was not the case.

Got a good deal on this KVM, going to be hard to find something similar at anything close to the same price, especially in the US.

Going to see what I can do for the next few days. Still within the 14 Day cancellation period.

Thanks for confirming what I suspected though.

Thanks for dropping by. Will start building an avoid server list and they'll be first on the list

 

[Biny]

Thanks for dropping by. Will start building an avoid server list and they'll be first on the list

Ha. Wish I had known this prior to my 14 day trial being up as well :\ Running into the same issues with transcoding. Signed up for a 1 year KVM 2x large. Original playback is great.

Not having any issues with upload/download speed however, seeing 100/100 speeds.

 

[Elevarion]

Ha. Wish I had known this prior to my 14 day trial being up as well :\ Running into the same issues with transcoding. Signed up for a 1 year KVM 2x large. Original playback is great.

Not having any issues with upload/download speed however, seeing 100/100 speeds.

Least you are only stuck for a year. 3 Years for me.

Download speeds are hovering at 50Mb now. Trans-coding still has issues though.

Trying to see if I can live with it or not still.
Let me know if you find a decent server is the US though.

 

[Admin9705]

I’ll make sure to put a warning on the install page.

 

[Biny]

Least you are only stuck for a year. 3 Years for me.

Download speeds are hovering at 50Mb now. Trans-coding still has issues though.

Trying to see if I can live with it or not still.
Let me know if you find a decent server is the US though.

I just got a reply from their support:


I don't think it is necessary to get into a detailed discussion about how the throttling works because the basic issue here is that your VPS is almost continuously trying to use more CPU than is permitted.
I see you are running Plex, and I'm guessing you might be trying to transcode video.
These issues were discussed recently in a thread in the rclone forums, which I contributed to. You can read that thread and my comments here: https://forum.rclone.org/t/vps-plex-server-with-cache-not-performing-well/5353/64?u=daniel-ssdnodes
The short answer is you have purchased a shared CPU service and you are expecting it to be a dedicated CPU service. We don't provide dedicated CPU services but you can purchase that from various providers - there is a suggestion in the rclone thread (which I haven't checked out). Vultr have an offering at $120/month.
People running Plex on our system causes us so much difficulty that we recently completely banned it for new clients (although that took effect after you signed up so doesn't apply to you).
Daniel.

 

[Biny]

Alright, before I go and just blame SSDNodes, I would like to check with others and see if anyone else is having issues or is using a similar setup.

I have a X-Large SSDNodes KVM, 2 Cores 16GB Ram and 8TB Transfer. Getting around 150 Mb Speed test, but only about 10Mb upload to GDrive with a Usenet download of 15Mb on average. Not bad, but not great. Still something I can live with however.

So my issue. Everything is setup and working at this point but I am having serious issues with playback quality. No matter what I am playing it will randomly stutter or stop playing while it buffers. I do seem to get better performance when I manually force the quality setting to original. Which suggest to me that the issue is with a CPU bottleneck on the transcoding. I am working to streamline my settings for this now to see if it helps.

I would of thought this server should have more then enough power for transcoding a few streams, but I am not seeing it.

Any thoughts?

Hey Elvarion -- I complained on their ticketing about it, then told them I was going to cancel.

Proceeded by cancelling (account was 2 months old) and they credited me back to my CC the remainder of my yearly fee. I would suggest trying that.

Also, I got a server over at SoYouStart for relatively cheap ($38/mo).

 

[barryclamsworth]

Could you just replace your playback device so it direct plays all the time? Could work out cheaper and easier.

(I use NVidia Shield)

 

[Admin9705]

ya a vps is not the way to go. the best test is to run a vm in your house or a dedicated server and compare the difference of the two. A vps is a strain. since the resources are not fully dedicated to you, that's where most of the problem is coming from.

 

[cloud07]

Same, i wish i had not signed up. See they have a warning up now in the install.