I recently built a new server to join three others on which I have my rather vast Plex libraries. I know I can change the friendly name of any computer or NAS running Plex Media Server, and those changes will be immediate and non-destructive. But now I would like to change the NAS host names to match as closely as possible the Plex friendly names, for convenience. But some people have reported disastrous results! Port forwarding breaks, Plex breaks–naturally I don’t want to risk that. Have any of you changed a server’s host name for any reason? When you did, did you get good results? Bad? Have to reverse the change to restore browser and port forwarding and other accesses?
Hostname is independent of port forwarding and other settings.
Hostname is just an entry in /etc/hosts and, possibly, an entry in your DNS resolver if you have local DNS services.
In all cases, change the hostname & restart the host.
Success. The server involved was a Western Digital MyCloud Pro PR4100, running its iteration of Plex. Changing the server name, and then rebooting the server and every Samba client machine (most of these are Windows machines), caused the Master Browser to recognize the new name at startup. I did have to unpin a slew of directories, that referred to the old name, and repin them to recognize the new. (I have reason to believe that the pinned folders would still follow the old connection, which I believe is by IP address, not the name. But the name will not refresh on a pinned folder, so unpinning and repinning becomes necessary.)
More to the point, Plex never failed to recognize the server, to which it connected using the IP address if it was on the same network, or a forwarded port if not. I carefully set up port forwarding for all my servers long ago.
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