My Plex Workflow Question

[VinnyHaw]

Hi there,

So next month I should be setting up HexOS in a new rig, but before doing so I wanted to figure something out.

So right now I have a W11 system that I remote desktop into from my main PC. That W11 system runs Plex + has all of the software required for me to find/download/sort/organize media. I also run a Minecraft server on that system. 

Now for HexOS my plan is to install Ubuntu so that I can get Minecraft + other video game servers running, but I'm not sure about the workflow for Plex. 

I know there's a way to install Plex, but when it comes to the "find/download/sort/organize media" part, I'm not sure how any of that would be done. Could I install a W11 VM for all of that and move the media to the pool (not sure if I'm using that term correctly)? 

The HexOS server will be replacing the W11 system that I currently remote desktop into to do all of this. 

[Mobius]

You can setup vms in hexos but you don't need to setup vms for Minecraft servers or Plex

You can do both straight from hexos.

[VinnyHaw]

19 minutes ago, Mobius said:

You can setup vms in hexos but you don't need to setup vms for Minecraft servers or Plex

You can do both straight from hexos.

Wouldn't I need to install Ubuntu for Minecraft? 

 

It's the rest of the workflow that I'm trying to figure out.

[Mobius]

I don't play it myself but there is a guide showing how to setup a Minecraft server. It didn't mention vms 

https://hub.hexos.com/topic/2524-how-to-setup-minecraft-crafty-server/

[VinnyHaw]

I understand and aporeciate your help with the Minecraft input, but that's not the primary question that I asked about. I'm asking about the workflow as to my finding/downloading/organizing media files. Would I be able to do all of that in a W11 VM and then move the content over to the pool?

Edited June 23 by VinnyHaw

[Mobius]

Generally one would do that on a second device connected to the hexos device. 

I have not tested if a vm can connect to hexos services like that so i can't give you a solid answer. Maybe someone with experience using a VM inside hexos can give you better insight

[VinnyHaw]

Bump

[Mindless999]

I run Plex myself on a separated VM, and use SMB, which is mounted automatically during boot, and using those directories for plex. It's fast enough for discovery, and also for a few devices as long as you don't over-do it. That said, I would recommend just have a single machine for a certain purpose if you can (separation of concern)

Let me know if this is what you meant and will suit your means.

[VinnyHaw]

2 hours ago, Mindless999 said:

I run Plex myself on a separated VM, and use SMB, which is mounted automatically during boot, and using those directories for plex. It's fast enough for discovery, and also for a few devices as long as you don't over-do it. That said, I would recommend just have a single machine for a certain purpose if you can (separation of concern)

Let me know if this is what you meant and will suit your means.

Hi there

 

So I'm super new to all of this. From my understanding, through HEXOS I would be able to install Plex through the apps section. But it sounds like you installed a VM instead and installed Plex on that?

I'm not familiar with SMB.

I might be able to make the separation of software doable. Having my download/organize media content on another pc connected to the network, then moving the content over to my hexos machine?

But would it be the end of the world if I made a w11 VM (put aside idk, like 1.5 tb for it) and used that for all of my downloading/organizing software. Then moved the content to the pool?

Edited July 1 by VinnyHaw

[Mindless999]

As mentioned, I separate everything as much as possible. Plex for me isn't even running on hex OS, but on a completely different system. Using folders that you create in HexOS, you by default have SMB folders, but will require some linux know-how on how to connect them during startup etc. In the end it will be: what will work for you? and if it doesn't work: you can always change.

That said, keep in mind that what works for me, doesn't work for everyone. if you want to download directly into the folders do that, if you want to download on a different disk, and them move them do that.

 

[VinnyHaw]

4 hours ago, Mindless999 said:

As mentioned, I separate everything as much as possible. Plex for me isn't even running on hex OS, but on a completely different system. Using folders that you create in HexOS, you by default have SMB folders, but will require some linux know-how on how to connect them during startup etc. In the end it will be: what will work for you? and if it doesn't work: you can always change.

That said, keep in mind that what works for me, doesn't work for everyone. if you want to download directly into the folders do that, if you want to download on a different disk, and them move them do that.

 

Thank you

Space/Constraint wise I'm going to try and keep everything on a single system. The idea of having my media on my hexos rig, but then having Plex on another seems cool... but I don't have the linux know-how for something like that lol.

My use case might end up looking like:

Installing HexOS on a 1tb nvme ssd

Hardware will consists of a core i9-12900k, 32gb ram (will upgrade to 64 at some point), five 12tb drives running in raidz1 (each vdev will have 5 drives, i'll upgrade to five more drives later on, then another 5 way way later on). And I'll throw a GPU in at some point.

Installing Ubuntu for a Minecraft server (though I see that Minecraft is a app as well? so will install that and see how that goes first)
Install a w11 vm for other misc gaming servers that I would like to run + to download/organize Plex media before i move them over to the pool

Edited July 2 by VinnyHaw

[bitwise]

Some points from things I noticed reading through this thread:

* SMB is the protocol used to move Windows files through network transfers. For example, if I want to go to my NAS on my local network on Windows, I go to \\nas.homelab.local\share. On Linux, I got to smb://nas.homelab.local/share. It's just the protocol used to navigate to the destination, like https:// before a website URL. When you set up your data pool of all your drives, you create "shares" which are essentially folders for you to divide your content. On Linux, these are called "NFS" shares, but for compatibility, everyone just uses SMB shares.

* Plex cannot currently be installed through the HexOS panel, it can only be installed through the TrueNAS panel. The end result would be the same, though: a container would be created on top of HexOS/TrueNAS, and that container would run Plex. The only apps that can be installed through HexOS itself is Immich and Plex.

* Plex and Immich are currently the only things that could be installed on the HexOS 

> Having my download/organize media content on another pc connected to the network, then moving the content over to my hexos machine?

I run all my services on Linux. What I do is I mount the drive the SMB share as a folder on my other containers and they access the files directly. I run everything on the same machine (more on this in a bit), so I get 37 Gbps between my services. No need to worry about moving files back and forth. I just work on them via the network.

Have you considered running HexOS as a VM on Proxmox, rather than installing it on baremetal? While it's not officially supported, the only issue I have seen in such a setup is that I cannot install apps through the HexOS panel, but I can do so perfectly fine in the TrueNAS panel. There's a little more initial setup, but it's mostly just passing through the drives that would actually have the data pool, in your case the five 12TB drives. The initial setup would be a bit more complex, but you would have a lot more freedom in how you want to run things, such as limiting how much CPU or RAM to give HexOS versus other services. You would also have everything run at the same priority. Proxmox would also allow you to run LXC containers, whereas TrueNAS can only run Docker containers. It also allows for full Windows 11 servers.

Like I said though, it's initially more complex. The hardest bit, for example, would likely be setting up the HDD and GPU passthrough. There's a lot of community scripts to help automatically install a bunch of services, but GPU and HDD passthrough is a manual task (at least for me it was) There's multiple threads talking about people's experiences with Proxmox if you do a search through the forum.

As for game servers, I would use some kind of tool to make it easier. Pterodactyl Panel is a TrueNAS application and supports a lot of games. I prefer running an Ubuntu Server container and using LinuxGSM for my game servers, since I prefer using the terminal.

For your Windows 11 services, Proxmox should also fully support running a Windows VM perfectly fine for whatever you need to do there.