Is it possible to have different PMS servers accessing one library. I would like to be able to utilize the transcoding power of one of my desktops (i7 iMac or i5 Win) when I need it but still keep the main PMS on the NAS (DS 1815+) I tried running PMS only on the iMac but that was more trouble than it was worth and quickly failed the WAF test. I realize I can have multiple servers accessing the same shares but AFAIK that means maintaining as many separate libraries which I do not want to do.
Sure it is possible. In fact I know two people doing exactly that.
In theory you could have an infinite number of servers looking at just one folder or set of folder as a library. Plex never touches the media itself (with the exception of allow deletion being enabled) so however many servers are looking at the media it matters not at all.
In fact I guess you could have an infinite number of servers looking at an infinite number of media folders but that would quickly degenerate into a joke about monkeys and the works of Shakespeare. :-S
Rereading the question I see that I answered what was not asked exactly. The separate servers would be entities so the libraries involved would be completely separate and so would have to be maintained separately.
Having said that if you use network paths the two databases would look nearly identical so you could write a rathe complex database script to keep the watched status etc in sync. But that would be a pretty complex task.
I once set up a temporary setup where I had two servers that used network paths exclusively and I then set one as a primary server then I set a nightly task that shut down the secondary and copied the primary’s database to the secondary and restarted the secondary. This assured that the secondary never got more than one day out of sync but the primary never reflected anything done on the secondary.
Although that worked and satisfied my curiosity I could not really come up with a valid use for it.
Ideally the distributed transcoding project maturing would be ideal but getting that working is slightly over my head right now.
