Hello,
I am currently running 2 servers:
- Laptop 2007 with 3GB of RAM with an Intel® Core 2 CPU T5300 @ 1.73GHz × 2 running Linux
- Mac Pro (Early 2008) 16GB of RAM with a Quad-Core Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz x 2 running OS X "El Capitan"
The content for the laptop comes from some drives using USB 3.0 (using a PCI Express Card) and the content for the Mac Pro comes from internal spinning disks (nothing fancy 5200 rpm).
The client most of the time is a Samsung TV (UE40D6510WSXZG) running Plex via the Samsung Apps Hub (or whatever the correct name is) ;)
The network goes like this:
- Laptop has a Ethernet connection 10/100 Mbit/s
- Mac Pro has 2x Ethernet connection 10/100/1000 Mbit/s
But, both servers are in the same room and the TV is in another room, communication between rooms is made via wireless (bridge mode) between access points, wired on both ends.
Playing content from the Laptop server almost all the time works, sometimes is just a matter of changing from //auto select// to //direct playing// or //direct streaming// but playing content from the Mac Pro is not always that easy, anyone has an idea of the why? Since the Mac Pro is more powerful machine... not sure if the problem(s) has to do with the differences of the CPUs.
First thing I would like to fix is the network but where I live by contract I can not install twisted pair cable, however I am looking into power lines, but not sure if this will help since I have run UTP cable across rooms (on the floor) to see if the performance is better but it did not got much better.Then probably get a NAS but which one? The Synology DS1815+ looks OK but so does some QNAP models but then with the mentioned Synology model probably the processor wont be enough, maybe a better combination would be a recent Intel NUC and NAS.
But I am getting off-topic, can you give me your insights/feedback on this setup and how to make it work better?
Thank you!