Is it possible for 2x PMS to share the preview thumbnail from one location

General Discussions
1

Hello,
So I have 2x Plex Media servers both running from windows 10 and both on same network. I use one as the main server and the other as a backup. All media is stored on a NAS both servers have access to.
I would like both of my servers to access the same preview thumbnails from one location, preferably my NAS if possible. Can this be done, and if so how? Directory Junction?

Thanks, Tom

2

I cannot say for absolutely sure but I think it is not possible. The only way that I can think of to make it happen would be to set the two servers up so that the share a Plex data directory and that was tried a good while ago by someone more adventurous that I and it, as I would expect, caused a corrupted database.

I would not even attempt it.

Storage is cheap and, if you server can do it you can attach a USB drive and use that for the Plex data directory. The disk speed of a USB drive is plenty fast enough for Plex’s data I use little else and have no problems. And as far as reliability goes USB drives are as reliable as any other.

The only thing is that the Plex data directory should never be stored on network attached drives or in any “pooled” drive setup. That will almost always cause database corruption eventually.

3

Thanks for your reply…

Disk space is not an issue. This is purely to lighten the load on the servers as it is very cpu intensive and time consuming to make these preview thumbnails. So if I can have one server or the other making the thumbnails that both can use; that would be ideal.
Maybe i can just sync both media folders to a folder on the NAS and have them all identical.

4

it’s quite easy just make symbolic links from /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata to show on your nas location.

But if you want for two plex servers to share same database, then you may encounter problems.
eg making sym links to
/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases

5

Thanks for your reply…

Please correct me if i’m wrong but, I thought junctions will only work with local folders.

6

PMS stores info about the preview thumbnail (BIF) in it’s database. It one PMS creates the BIF, the other PMS will not be able to reuse it and will want to create it’s own so it can then populate it’s database. If you copy the database info, then it may work.