Which NAS for Jellyfin?

[mishmash]

Hi all, not sure if this is in the right forum, but I wanted to ask about potentially getting a prebuilt NAS, primarily it would be used for Jellyfin, and I could see down the line as photo/cloud storage as I become comfortable with how it works. I had in mind $300, not including the cost of the drive(s).

I've been looking at 2 bay Synology NAS, they seem like nice little units that have a spot on my desk. The prices seem to vary quite a bit, so I'm not really sure what I should be looking at for my needs. Like I mentioned, it would be primarily be for streaming from Jellyfin, and kind of serve as another form of backup in addition to the external drives I already use for that purpose.

I dont have any 4k video. All the video I have is what I ripped from dvd's or blurays myself, it currently sits at about 1.25tb. Most movies and shows from the DVD's are 480p, and generally the blu rays I encode at 720p to save on space. The only videos I have kept at 1080p are usually the BBC David Attenborough nature series, and just a few of my wife and I's favorite movies, otherwise most of the blu rays I made into 720p .mkv files, I aim for a size of about 1gb to 1.5gb per movie, then of course there are exceptions for some films that are very long.

Currently, I have a raspberry pi with LibreElec plugged into the tv. Its been working great actually, but I was thinking it would be nice to stream media outside of my home network, and also I think Jellyfin would make it easier for my wife to stream from her phone or tablet while at home.

I haven actually set up Jellyfin yet though, I guess that would be a good first step to see how it like it, I was thinking of using a laptop of mine temporary to see how it could function in general.

If any had recommendations for a Synology NAS, that would be appreciated, or even another brand, I'm just in uncharted territory here.

Any recommendations are very much appreciated! And please do ask if I left any info out.

[TheDreadPirate]

As long as you use the NAS as just a NAS, they're all about the same. We strongly recommend you do not run Jellyfin on a NAS. The hardware is underpowered, the hardware is not upgradable, and the software is restricting and tends to lag a bit too far behind (the version of the Linux kernel they use, specifically).

NASes, in general, are only really necessary if you have a bunch of servers accessing data stored in the same place. A computer with a bunch of hard drives is just fine (this is what I do) if Jellyfin is the only thing you have running.

Depending on where you live, surplus office PCs can be had for very cheap and are fairly capable as long as they have Intel 8th gen and newer CPUs.

[_Mayhem_]

While I understand that running it on a NAS isn't recommended, I have been running JF in a Docker container with Portainer on my TerraMaster F2-221 for over a year without any real issues. I maxed out the RAM and have two 2TB Samsung 870 QVO SSDs running in a Raid-1. I initially had it set up to be accessible outside of my network via Dynu and really didn't notice any performance issues.

[TheDreadPirate]

Sure. For a lot of people it is fine. But, IMO, NASes are over-recommended and their capabilities for non-storage related tasks is overstated. I'm not talking about you or other people on this forum. There are a lot of blogs and tech-tubers that over-recommend them.

[mishmash]

As long as you use the NAS as just a NAS, they're all about the same.  We strongly recommend you do not run Jellyfin on a NAS.  The hardware is underpowered, the hardware is not upgradable, and the software is restricting and tends to lag a bit too far behind (the version of the Linux kernel they use, specifically).

NASes, in general, are only really necessary if you have a bunch of servers accessing data stored in the same place.  A computer with a bunch of hard drives is just fine (this is what I do) if Jellyfin is the only thing you have running.

Depending on where you live, surplus office PCs can be had for very cheap and are fairly capable as long as they have Intel 8th gen and newer CPUs.

This reply is very helpful actually. Just to be frank, I find networking very difficult to understand, hardware is much easier to me to comprehend. I dont think I understood and still dont really comprehend what a nas really is and how powerful a can be. So this really did make me rethink how I could do this.

Currently I have a raspberry pi with libreelec, running kodi of course. I have 2 thumb drives in the back of it that have all the media, and I prefer the media being local instead of streaming for the tv. The problem with the pi is that I really cant expand the storage with a 3.5" hdd, not without that being connected to external power, it just seems so messy. So I started to look more into mini pc's after your recommendation on an optiplex.

I found something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B41XLZJP/?co...dp_it&th=1
or this
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY4ZM18N/?co...dp_it&th=1

The size in important to me actually. I have some spare parts for a pc, but even a mini itx case is a little bigger then I want. I was thinking by getting a mini pc, installing a 2.5" hdd inside, I could replace the pi entirely and have a machine to stream jellyfin.

My idea is that I would just leave Kodi open at all times, just like on my pi currently, but in the backround, jelly fin could also run. Is this feasiable? I feel like I'm more on the right track here, this seems like it would suit my needs more then a nas.

Would there be any issue with the video directory being the same for both Kodi and Jellyfin?

Any recommendations for a mini pc with expandable storage? I feel like I'm on to something here, but want to be really sure before I purchase something.

I did install Jellyfin on a laptop I have, with a ryzen 5 4000 series cpu and gtx 1650, its actually really nice, and my wife seems to be enjoying it for streaming to her devices, so thats a plus. Any recommendations are very welcome.

[TheDreadPirate]

Stick with Intel CPUs if you aren't putting in a dedicated GPU (obviously can't do with these mini PCs). Intel Quick Sync is muuuuuuuch better for transcoding.

AFAIK, Kodi doesn't "look up" metadata so it should get along with Jellyfin running on the same machine.

[34626]

I would recommend you to buy a computer, it could be an Intel NUC N5105 which can do a lot, i use that with external drives connected, currently having one internal SSD and three external, but i would also mention that the reason for my setup is that there isnt much space and i have some other hardware on same closet, but else just a desktop with Intel CPU (The newer the better). As OS you can use Proxmox i belive it's called or TrueNAS.. Personally i use Debian and SSH into it and do things from console, but i am aware many people prefer a webinterface, but this way you wont have restrictions, bad OS updates that conflits with Jellyfin and ability to use the default Jellyfin release with docker..

I have also used a commerical NAS, but its not worth it.

[mishmash]

Just a bit of an update. After doing some searching around and generally looking into mini pc's, I decided to go for this one here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XBV...UTF8&psc=1

I was looking to have a small footprint, that could have a 2.5" added to it, and hopefully wont be power hungry. I've had the pi running for 4 1/2 years now, hopefully I can get similar time with this.

I think at this point, my concern is with windows 11 itself being a resource hog on the machine. Maybe down the line I could look into linux, though not sure which distro, but we'll see. Hoping I made the right choice of mini pc!

[TheDreadPirate]

Windows Defender, specifically, is a resource hog. If you switch to Linux, stick with a debian based distro. Ubuntu includes a lot more drivers by default and is my go-to.

[C2gl]

hello everyone ,
to come onto the nas being a bad option, i have to agree sadly, i have a synology DS 1019, (as a nas it is absolutely amazing)
and first i was running it as a comunity package, but recently i have been ripping new movies like the openheimer bluray, and yeah, it struggles with conversion (too big of a file to send over the internet xd) so i have myself been looking into a minisforum for computational stuff

so id keep the synology as nas and for my media folder, but the minisforum for jellyfin, a dns server, adguard, homeasistant and a self hosted website, annyone any experience on minisforum ?

i was thinking on running unraid on it, anny recomendations ?