Moving from a Synology to a Qnap but, with complications

Plex Media Server
,
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This is going to be a project that I am planning on doing once I get the parts lined up and I am thinking it is going to be quite complicated.

Currently, I have a Synology 918+ with a 517 expansion on it loaded with 22TB Western Digital Red hard drives. I did not want to span a volume across the enclosures and that 9th hard drive is a hot spare. I use the native Synology Plex app.

I am planning on loading up a QNAP TVS-h1688x and getting three more 22TB Western Digital Reds, the 4 SSDs and M.32 drives. The only thing I don’t like on that box is that there are no dual power supplies for A/B power. Curses! Buying nine 22TB Western Digital Reds is just too cost prohibitive to just build up two independent servers with everything there. And, I want to keep things as online as I can.

With the hot spare and three new drives, I can begin to build my volume on the Qnap and just transfer what is on that expansion cabinet (Volume 2) to there and then, once those 4 drives (5 drives - the 1 hot spare I already moved) are empty, take those 4 drives and move them to the Qnap, expand that volume, and then move the contents on the Synology Volume 1 to it. I also have an offline backup of my content as well as an on premises backup on external USB drives.

I was planning on a cut/paste operation between the two NASes or I can restore from backups, whatever is faster.

I currently have a few top level folders under my “Movies” folder to give me some logical differentiation between what is on Volume 1 and Volume 2 on the Synology. I was planning on the destination on the Qnap not having that subfolder setup under movies. The folder will be called “Media” and then just have the subfolders Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Music and Photos under it.

So, as I move content from the Synology to the Qnap, it will disappear from the Synology and then show up under the Qnap
also, I fully plan on using the Write Once, Read Many feature on the Qnap as far as my content
I mean what a way to keep from corruption or accidental deletion, though I may need to think about that when I replace content.

So, the way I envision it, I am going to have to have two Plex servers sitting there running as content goes between them. How do I make sure the content I have viewed on the old shows viewed on the new? I know you just copy over the folder from old server to new server but I have about 60TB of content and I don’t want to be offline as I rebuild it. I am not sure how that works.

Then, I am thinking about the actual Plex server running on the Qnap, itself. I kind of want to make it a docker unless any of you can give me a great reason why I should not. I do plan on loading it up with memory and using it for a few VMs on my home network such as MQTT and possibly moving my Home Assistant to it (boy do I have a lot of trust in that single power supply
)

So, geniuses out there who know more than I do on this, do you see anything I need to add to my plan or other precautions I should be taking or am I completely insane for doing this? Is the server probably overkills? Yes.

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Nice upgrade.

The Plex DBRepair utility has the ability to export and import watch state.
There are also some website support articles on moving PMS to a new machine.
Hopefully someone else with docker experience has a few tips for you.
As far as the single power supply goes, check out

I would for sure test that in advance plus all the steps needed to expand and manipulate my storage pool and all the docker aspects including things I might not envision, like VPN, external access, iPerf, transcoding, DNS, Pihole, etc.

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Two ways


I would personally go with option 2

Ohh
And you are missing an UPS in your setup

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No I am not
have two in that area, lol. SNMP cards installed and on NUT for HA. I may get a third dedicated just to this NAS.

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I would go with moving the DB too
 Sorry I forgot that :slight_smile:

I’ve got to start shopping for a PCIe Gen 4 NAS now that QNAP has enough data lanes to support SFP+, USB3/TB. and a video card.

Then again, that fanless all solid state one with an external drive bay might be the last NAS I ever have to buy.

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Sorry, I have worked in IT since the mid-1990s and I have become extremely jaded with respect to things that are supposed to work that do not.

So, moving the database (I assume overwrite files?) is all I need to do? The paths for the individual content files are going to be remarkably different except for the actual file names. That is OK? I just put the path to the new volume and it should come up? I have noticed moving files from directories it works pretty well. I am just in uncharted territory and am extremely nervous.

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If you want poster etc. as well, you’ll need the entire data directory, as said in the Tech Article

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It’s good to be reluctant, pre-plan, and test. I believe our suggestion about moving the DB and metadata is how you preserve all of a working PMS, but it involves stopping a running server, moving it to a new system, and starting it only there. If your Syno PMS was named Zinger, you can’t have another Zinger PMS at the same time.

@ChuckPa thanks for helping.

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So name my server the same? I was planning on naming it KAH-PLEX01 instead of KAH-NAS01.

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Actually you can, but only if the Machine Identifier in the Preferences.xml file differs

As such, copy the whole datadir over, with the exception of the Preferences.xml file, and they can both run at the same time

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To add to Dane22,

  1. If you want a mirror copy (clone) the host, adjusting the paths, you will need this process. ( The pathnames will be different. See below for details )
  1. Adjustments to the procedure from Synology to QNAP after following the above,
  • Making of the tar file for transporting server from Syno → QNAP must be done as ‘root’ (not an administrator / administrative user).

On the Syno

  • SSH’d into Syno
  • sudo bash
  • cd /var/packages/PlexMediaServer/shares/PlexMediaServer/AppData
  • tar cf ./PlexMediaServer.tar "./Plex Media Server"
  • == COPY this tar ball (in PlexMediaServer) to the Public share of the QNAP ==

On the QNAP

  • SSH into the QNAP as root, with tar ball in /share/Public (Public shared folder)
sudo bash
# get into the PMS directory
cd /share/*/.qpkg/Ple*/Li*
# remove the default (empty) PMS
rm -rf Plex\ Media\ Server
# Extract the PMS server from the Syno  (THIS IS A CLONE of the Syno)
tar xf /share/Public/PlexMediaServer.tar
chown -R 0:0 .

Follow Dane22’s post above with Preferences.xml instructions

ASK if you have questions

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Awesome thanks Chuck. I saw your PM, but when I clicked my icon to read it, the forums ate your mail, which I luckily found forwarded to my email account. Everything looks great! I hope the OP proceeds with ease, too, even when a tar command seems to take forever. This all sounds very doable.

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There was a feature request about having a way to export settings and import them. I would vote for that feature but I think a way of doing it in the program would make this a lot easier
especially when you could do something like changing the library location during the import process from the export you took on the old server.

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@kahilzinger

The fundamental problem with the feature request is:

  1. PMS needs the database to start
  2. You cannot get an exclusive lock to perform the import or export if PMS is running.
  3. Therefore, it must be done externally with PMS fully stopped.
  4. As an experiment, try it with PMS running. Linux will let you do it using ‘tar’. What you get will be either luck or train wreck.
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Disagree. You can do all of that in the program as part of the import process.

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Don’t know which program you’re referencing here but PMS will not import its own database. This speaks nothing to transferring default or customized metadata & posters.

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