Plex Media Server
- Thread starter martynbez
- Start date
I'd personally not use torrents, as they tend to suck vs using news and I can do a constant x00Mbit via news 24/7 if i'm that way inclined.
Simplified version:
1. Register a domain (I like TSO Host), you can use whoever you like through and any domain is fine, doesn't have to be a .com, but you need DNS/nameserver management, you don't need hosting though.
2. Take out a free 30 day trial of Suite Business, it's about £6.60/m after the trial expires, it'll fluctuate due to currency changes. Follow the instructions to forward your domain to googles name servers.
3. Go to Hetzner Cloud and fire up a cheap VM, if you're not transcoding, you don't need much and they start from £3 odd/month, they only bill by the minute and have a maximum monthly charge depending on what level of server you choose, so if you test for a few hours, the bill will be in pence. Choose Ubuntu (18LTS ideally), grab the U/P and SSH in via putty, do an update and while it runs head over to PlexGuide, register and click on the install tab, paste the install command in and it will bring up the guided install instructions. Add your GDrive credentials, install Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, NZBGet, Netdata, import some lists for content and then let it do its thing. skip over to Portainer (port 9000) and set-up a password asap. For Radarr/Sonarr add download client (NZBGet/Sab/Deluge etc), configure quality references etc. Each VM comes with a shared 10Gb symmetrical pipe, you'll want to use a VPN container for torrent use (binhex-deluge etc.) as Germany is somewhat risk averse, I prefer news personally, something like NGD (same owner as news demon) will set you back $35-40/yr and it's safe/fast.
4. Claim your Plex server, point it towards any content you have (unions/...), disable thumbnail generation, set the your quality settings and pin up your clients. Optionally kill transcoding via Tautulli scripts, but basically try and stay away from stupidly large files with unsupported audio formats, or adapt your workflow to include mp4 automator (details on PG).
You now have a remote Plex server running on your own domain with a shared 10Gb pipe that costs only slightly more than the power bill on a local box, but doesn't hammer your uplink. I've skipped a few bits, securing it for example, but it's a quick/simple process.
Interested to know how many of you are running Docker containers for your Plex/Sonarr/Radarr/Sab needs? I previously had the workload spread across a couple of VMs, but have recently migrated to Docker in order to simplify and learn more about containerisation.
I must say, I'm very impressed with the simplicity and ease of onward management. Negligible performance hit too. So much so I've just containerised my mail server, teamspeak box, web server... containerise all the things!
I must say, I'm very impressed with the simplicity and ease of onward management. Negligible performance hit too. So much so I've just containerised my mail server, teamspeak box, web server... containerise all the things!
Plex in a Docker rather than the plugin on FreeNAS?
Yes, I dont use FreeNAS, just UnRAID, go into the Docker add in Plex, need to set where the media files are but thats it, just runs along happily
Great info, thanks very much, will give this a go.
I use torrent because I'm lucky enough to have access to some very private trackers that served me well for almost a decade! So will look into VPN.
Within Unraid I run dockers for Sab/Sonarr/Radarr/Plex/Unifi/PiHole/Calibre/Cops/Nextcloud/Letsencrypt/heimdall/Lidarr and Airsonic. Very resource efficient, that lot runs on an i5 and 16Gb of RAM with no problem.
In fairness yes, the rate of development is rapid, but the new menu system presents relevant info in many cases rather than the wiki, documentation is one of the areas that has been acknowledged as less user friendly than it could be. Thing is PlexGuide was born out of the Amazon U turn, one frustrated reddit user posted a step by step guide to enable people to use Google and got some quite brutal feedback, a small amount of it was constructive and from that PG became a thing. I remember cringing at some of the replies and it wasn't even my post
Everything in docker, it's so much easier and more efficient as you don't need a full VM or the resources for them. Then again I run Ubuntu in a VM on ESXi and then run docker from Ubuntu. Unraid wise obviously it's geared towards running native dockers. I keep meaning to look into rancher etc. but at present this works and I throw up a lot of test VM's.
I run Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr/Jacket/Pihole/Portainer/Heimdall/Ombi/Watchtower/Tautulli/AirSonic and BookSonic All via Docker, it just makes everything so much cleaner on the server, I ran a windows server for many years with plex/sonarr/radarr and the dependencies get out of control so contanerisation has been a huge improvement on resources and control of the host os (still windows).
I notice PlexGuide is mentioned a lot here but 90% of the scripts and tools in it actually come from cloudbox https://github.com/Cloudbox/Cloudbox -
If you notice the word cloudbox is banned from the PG forums
I've been using it for a couple of years now - It's a bit harder to configure but they have a decent discord channel with loads of tips / support.
If you notice the word cloudbox is banned from the PG forums
I've been using it for a couple of years now - It's a bit harder to configure but they have a decent discord channel with loads of tips / support.
I notice PlexGuide is mentioned a lot here but 90% of the scripts and tools in it actually come from cloudbox https://github.com/Cloudbox/Cloudbox -
If you notice the word cloudbox is banned from the PG forums
I've been using it for a couple of years now - It's a bit harder to configure but they have a decent discord channel with loads of tips / support.
Haven't we had a similar conversation previously? Please provide details of your '90%' claim, unfortunately I often find people pull numbers like that from somewhere numbers shouldn't generally come from, unless its a number two
Having literally watched PG grow from single document posted on reddit, to what it is now, they are similar - both use Ansible, both install dockers from reputable sources on Ubuntu, so yes, a certain level of similarity is pretty much guaranteed, though each has a slightly different focus and 30 seconds looking at GitHub would tell you one project has a lot more code commits over a long period of time than the other, but either way neither came up with the idea/process and you can trace the methodology back way further.
As to why certain projects are not discussed, I can only speak to what I have personally seen. Some people genuinely join a projects forum and make threats about what they'll do because they perceived some sleight against them/a project they use/support, believe it or not, sometimes they are so upset that they reply to a welcome message making threats about what they'll do and how they're happy to misrepresent others work (work that's easily shared under the licensing terms it's published under), sometimes they even do so without noticing how many other people are included in the conversation.
I've said it before and it should be obvious from the above post anyway, but now seems like an appropriate time to say it again in the interests of transparency, I have a very minor role in PG, I have also used/been around several other projects such as CloudBox, Quickbox and Swizzin to name a few, I used to do things the manual way for years, but depending on your needs, many of the scripted installers save time/effort now. Use what fits your needs best
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It's rather obvious when you speak with the developers (aka people like l3uddz & desimaniac) who wrote some of the original source code for things like cloudplow, plex_autoscan and various other things, then released it under glp so it's was fair game.
I just didn't like how PG was attempting to monetize something which wasn't really his (In my opinion). You can even see the copy and paste mistakes where 'admin' has simply done a find and replace in his early commits
Edit* I never validated this - but things like adding a miner into PG was a classy move as well
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarde...litz_encrypted_edition_upload_past_750gb_per/
But anyways - They both do the same thing - I'm happy being more on the bleeding edge rather than being ruled over. (PGDiscord shenanigans lol)
I certainly couldn't have over 450TB hosted at home that's for sure!
I just didn't like how PG was attempting to monetize something which wasn't really his (In my opinion). You can even see the copy and paste mistakes where 'admin' has simply done a find and replace in his early commits
Edit* I never validated this - but things like adding a miner into PG was a classy move as well
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarde...litz_encrypted_edition_upload_past_750gb_per/
But anyways - They both do the same thing - I'm happy being more on the bleeding edge rather than being ruled over. (PGDiscord shenanigans lol)
I certainly couldn't have over 450TB hosted at home that's for sure!
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It's rather obvious when you speak with the developers (aka people like l3uddz & desimaniac) who wrote some of the original source code for things like cloudplow, plex_autoscan and various other things, then released it under glp so it's was fair game.
I just didn't like how PG was attempting to monetize something which wasn't really his (In my opinion). You can even see the copy and paste mistakes where 'admin' has simply done a find and replace in his early commits
Edit* I never validated this - but things like adding a miner into PG was a classy move as well
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarde...litz_encrypted_edition_upload_past_750gb_per/
But anyways - They both do the same thing - I'm happy being more on the bleeding edge rather than being ruled over. (PGDiscord shenanigans lol)
I certainly couldn't have over 450TB hosted at home that's for sure!
Giving users the *option* to install a CPU miner is no different to l3udzz accepting Paypal, BTC and LTC for cloudbox (which he does - I have transaction history
), Cloudbox also makes use of code from multiple other projects under permitted licensing, so as my moral outrage is clearly missing something, how is it wrong for one project to give users the option of donating in various forms and OK for another?As to PGDiscord ‘shenanigans’, i’m guessing you’re on about it being pulled briefly? I’m not a massive fan of ‘********* IRC’ (yes, that term is filtered on here), but some people love it. The down side is seemingly several of those people choose to ignore forum discussion where issues have been resolved/solutions documented and just PM the hell out of anyone who looked vaguely like a project member/tag them, it also doesn’t come across well when people get bent out of shape if they don’t get a timely reply at 4am... on a Sunday. It was tweaked to limit notifications and re-introduced a while back though
Both projects do similar things and use slightly different ways of achieving that goal. Storage wise, I know people with getting on for 2PB of data stored, I stopped playing the e-peen game a long time ago, someone always has more, and with the advent of remux/4K and GC it’s reasonably quick/easy to do if you manipulate the system.