Niiiice, quick question, are both of y’all running the latest UniFi Controller version & using the new WebUI view layout?

What I’ve noticed is any third party app won’t matter until we get some more content that isn’t the front page buzzing about the exact same topic for multiple days. Right now ironically it’s all talking about Sync, when a lot of iOS users can’t even use it.

I definitely don’t want them to be the same project. I love the logical separation between the two

I don’t go too over the top like this but I make my wife her lunch everyday before she goes to work because I WFH and don’t have to immediately be on my computer before she leaves

You’re very welcome! Feed free to reach out if you need any more help :)

The main reason why I mentioned a NUC is it gets them familiar with distributed roles for each system, but you’re right, I’d definitely go pure whitebox & setup unRAID that has a nice GUI for Docker for newbies to understand.

No worries, happy to help!

Main benefit is modularity, where you can use each system for a different use case that it’s more suited for. Also if one system goes down/has issues, it doesn’t necessarily make the entire thing unusable, just degraded. This also means you can upgrade different parts when necessary.

NUC = Runs services, no data (other than application data) is stored here, so if it dies, your data is still safe on the NAS.

NAS = Stores media/personal data. If it dies (dear god please have a 3-2-1 backup in place), the only services affected are ones that rely on the data being accessible from the NAS. This seems like a big drawback, but at least you ONLY have to fix the NAS and not have to recreate all the service configs.

If you’re using proper Docker practices (defining all of your services in docker compose), then even rebuilding your NUC isn’t that much of a headache. DOCUMENT YOUR JOURNEY AND MISTAKES!

Yes, NAS devices are expensive, but in order to have one that can TRULY be a good all in one data storage AND Plex server, you’d really break the bank to get one that runs an Intel CPU, since most NAS devices run a low powered ARM chip, or a very under powered Intel CPU.

The most cost effective way to do this when first starting out is to scrap, scavenge and buy used/old equipment. Chasing after the newest hardware for this stuff is tempting, and you’ll eventually get there, but you gotta walk before you swim.

Seriously, ebay, pawn shops, facebook marketplace (yes, yuck, but I’ve gotten killer deals here) and friends/relatives getting rid of old “useless” computers will be their trash, your treasure.

Yes absolutely. Last time I checked, the Nvidia Shield is the only Plex client that can direct play any video/audio codec without causing Plex to transcode the media. You can watch media directly on Plex (as a client) off the NUC but I’ve never done it before. I’ve always had a server/client setup separately because all my server equipment is in the office.

Direct Playing/Direct Streaming is what you want to achieve most of the time if you can. The next best Plex client is the AppleTV, which I personally have myself and it’s so much better than my old Roku devices. Roku has kinda gone downhill quality wise for me.

Ran Plex for many years before Jellyfin existed. Plus the ease of sharing on Plex is still king

Just making sure I understand the ask here. You’re currently running Plex & a torrent client off of your laptop, and using the Plex app on your TV to connect to your Plex server running on your laptop?

I’m going to treat this as a simple guide of where I would start if I was just starting again.

You’re going to need two things, a completely separate PC, usually an Intel NUC, to run all of these services with docker on Linux. Then you’ll need storage. Most users start out with a simple 2 or 4 bay NAS, that connects over the network to your other machine (Plex server)

If you don’t want to tinker with all of that and get straight to the point, build yourself your own computer that has a case for multiple 3.5inch HDD drives, then install unRAID on it. There’s your perfect media server right there. I’ve been running that setup for years without it breaking a sweat.

Let me know if you want me to elaborate on these details

I’ve always hated this meme template

Seconding this. On my unRAID host, I run a docker container called “Vorta” that uses Borg as its backend mechanism to backup to my SynologyNAS over NFS. Then on my Syno, run two backup jobs using HyperBackup, one goes to my cousin’s NAS connected via a Site-to-Site OpenVPN connection on our edge devices (Ubiquity Unifi Security Gateway Pro <-> UDM Pro), the other goes to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.

OP, let me know if you need any assistance setting something like this up. Gotta share the knowledge over here on Lemmy that we’re still used to searching evil Reddit for.

Most likely Hyper Backup & Hyper Vault, two applications built into Synology’s DSM software that runs on their NAS devices.

This is fantastic for us homelabbers. Now I can pick up some insanely powerful ones years from now for dirt cheap!