r/PlexServers

Hello everyone. I'm afraid I have reached the end of my technical capabilities and need help.

My Plex Server - Intel i7 7700, 16GB Memory, GTX 1080, SSD OS Drive, 1000mbps Ethernet, bunch of 7200rpm HDDs running Ubuntu. 1.5gigabit internet service.

I run Mullvad VPN service - Its slightly annoying on Ubuntu because you can't just set Plex Server to Split Tunnel, you have to do it manually every time through the Mullvad App. It isn't too bad because its only when you restart the machine or lose connection somehow. However, not sure if that's dong anything.

Everything runs fine locally. Sometimes have to wait a few seconds for HDDs to spin up.

Remote Access - I can't get it to work, unless "Allow Relays" is on in the network settings, which is limited in its bandwidth usage - I think it limits to 2mbps.

I've gone through as many of the step by step guides I could fine. Here's what I've done so far.
- I set a static IP on my router for the device
- I did port forwarding on my router
- I tried to make sure they ports were open on Ubuntu
- I've tried all the various setups with the VPN and Kill-switch disabled.

I'm sure I've done a bunch of other stuff as well, but remote access is always red and only if Allow Relay is enabled, can I access my server from outside.

Remotely Devices are just houses I'm regularly at - I've juts logged into my own Plex account, and each house has a profile.

Any help would be very appreciated.

First time server builder here. I am currently running plex from my desktop, but I want to set up a dedicated server for it so I don't have to leave my pc on all the time. I have 3 hdd drives in my computer (2x10tb, 4tb) that I want to move to a server set up. Can anyone point me the right direction for building a mini pc server? I have built a couple computers but I'm pretty new to homelab servers, networking and I'm just feel overwhelmed with all the different stuff out there.

I'm currently 3d printing the lab rax 10" server rack. So I'm looking for something compact that I can fit in there. Any advice, guides, or recommendation will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

My hardware is pretty old and I can't upgrade the server anymore because of it. I'm pretty bummed, but it's time to build up a new one and this time with correct hardware - like a real raid array (I've been using two 8TB drives [shucked from WD Easystores] with no redundancy the entire time, which I know is the worst if a drive goes bad - I am in the IT field, so I understand server setups). I'm looking for suggestions on hardware that would support about 10 concurrent streams outside of my house.

The last time I looked at hardware was almost 10 years ago and Intel was the way to go over AMD because of how the processor worked, but I'm not sure it's the same now and I don't have a ton of time to get into the weeds like I used to because I'm a dad of two now.

I would like a dedicated server (unless I don't need it any more for high-quality external streams) and any suggestions/conversations would be a huge help as I dive back into building this server up again. As I am writing this, I looked up storage prices and they're astronomical now. I used to buy the WD Easy Stores from Best Buy, but that is now going to be 3/4 of the cost if not more.

I guess I'm just asking for resources to get me on the right track: where to search for storage, what processors are best for the plex server, if GPUs add anything to help streams, and anything else I might not be thinking about. Thanks in advance!