Server Version#: nvidia shield (I am remote to this server, at the moment) I see 1.18.4.2171 under General in the web GUI.
Scheduled tasks are set to run between 2am and 5am, daily. During that time, a network monitoring dashboard shows the plex server and my NAS (where plex media is stored) with about 350 Mbps of network traffic for the entire duration of the 2-5am task window.
I’m not sure why this happens. I understand that certain tasks will run, daily, and that network data exchange is common, but why is that happening for the duration of the task window and what is data is being exchanged/downloaded/etc? I could see this happening if large amounts of media files were added earlier in the day, but that’s not something that is done all the time (adding media).
server is nvidia shield and the data share is on a synology NAS. I’m using LibreNMS to monitor the switch, which is where the nvidia shield and synology NAS connect to.
Thanks.
Edit- It is not internet traffic, it is traffic between the NAS and the plex server.
Is that local traffic or actual internet traffic?
Some of the scheduled tasks include updates to the technical details of your files (e.g. if you added a new audio / subtitle track). For that, Plex will need to read those files – if they’re on a separate device connected via network… this will for sure cause some network traffic.
I need to edit my post, the traffic is between the NAS and plex, my mistake for not including that (I thought I did).
Take a look at
Settings - Server - Scheduled Tasks
and also at
Settings - Server - Library
Many of these tasks require the media files to be read in full, from start to finish. Particularly when the server is just set up freshly or after having added a lot of media to it, this can cause a lot of data to get read during the maintenance period.
If your media files are stored outside of the server device (as is the case when using a NAS for media storage), you might want to disable this checkbox:
Settings - Server - Library - “Empty trash automatically after every scan”
Otherwise, it can cause your libraries to get emptied out regularly, purging the metadata of the removed items. Which then need to get re-created each night…
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Ok, I will check this setting. What happens if it isn’t emptying the trash? Does a directory build up w/o me being able to see how much wasted space can be purged?
Thanks.
Edit- You know what…when checking the setting that you recommended I change… (disable empty trash automatically after ever scan) I see a setting that I DID enable, recently, which does seem to match up around the time when I first started noticing the high network usage…I enabled ‘Scan my library periodically’ and specifically set it to ‘daily’. I did this because I added a second media folder to plex and it contained some duplicate files and once I deleted the duplicate video files I still noticed that some movie icons still had a 2 being displayed on the poster. I let this go for about a week and the 2 did not go away. However, when I clicked on the movie poster and loaded the next screen the 2 did disappear (since there are no longer 2 copies).
I forgot that I set the library scan to daily. I’m going to uncheck that setting, but I’m going to leave ‘Empty trash automatically after every scan’ for now, I don’t want to change two things at once because I won’t know what fixed my problem.
Thanks.
The trash only contains the metadata of removed media files. i.e. not a really big amount of data. The main issue might probably be the slight annoyance to see those ‘trash can’ icons on the thumbnails of removed media items. 
You can empty out the trash manually in Plex Web, after making sure that the NAS is up and all drives are spinning. So that no items are considered “removed” when they actually are not.
I’ve never seen the trash icon you are referring to. When I delete a media file, the poster disappears. Unless there is another place I should be looking?
That happens when you delete the file from within Plex.
But you could also access your NAS directly (e.g. from your desktop computer) and remove the media files that way.
After a library scan, Plex will notice the files are missing and show the trash cans.
Normally I do delete it from the network share from my desktop, however, I don’t immediately load plex to check. By the time I get back to Plex it has updated and removed everything.
Sounds like auto empty trash.
I just checked, this is enabled, ‘Empty trash automatically after every scan’. That answers that.
Unchecking the option to scan my library, daily, didn’t solve the bandwidth issue, I still see the bandwidth spiked during the full duration of the scheduled tasks window. I assume these changes are instant and that there is no need to wait another day to confirm. I changed the setting yesterday when I made this thread and the job wasn’t scheduled to run until 2am, this morning.
I am going to uncheck ‘Empty trash automatically after every scan’ and see if that solves the issue.
The trash option did not make a difference, I still saw the bandwidth spike for the duration of the scheduled tasks time frame. Maybe it is possible that the metadata was trashed from the previous day and still had to go through one cycle to grab metadata…not sure, but that’s why I’m here.
Wait longer before jumping to conclusions. If it has to make all these video preview thumbs etc for a whole library, it may take easily more than one night.
I will still keep an eye on it, but I did want to provide some type of update vs nothing at all. I had a similar thought, if it did delete the trash, it would need to build everything back up. I’m not understanding why this happens, though?
Why isn’t plex seeing a new video file, scraping data for it and then leaving it all in the db/wherever until the file is deleted?
Because it can happen that the file is ousted from the Plex library, automatically, due to ‘Empty trash automatically after every scan’. For instance if the storage medium is not available or doesn’t react fast enough when accessed by Plex.
This is always a concern when using external storage.
- Make sure that media storage is always available, as long as Plex server is running.
- Don’t let your NAS spin down its drives.
- Don’t switch off any network infrastructure (WiFi access points, ethernet switches etc.) during the night, when Plex may be doing its maintenance tasks.
The NAS is on 24/7, I specifically make sure the drives don’t go into any type of hibernate/sleep mode, that is the first setting I check when setting up my NAS. NAS is hard wired using two NICs on the NAS and two switchports on the switch (both sides are using the LACP protocol). The plex server (nvidia shield) is hard wired to the same switch. The NAS and the switch are plugged into a UPS, as well.
I will keep an eye on it for a few more days, hopefully the data spike goes away unless something else is causing the spike.
Thanks.
Still running spiked bandwidth for the duration of the scheduled task window. Not sure what else to check.
Did you add new media recently?
