QNAP+QNAP to QNAP migration - advice appreciated

[rossinior]

Server1 Version#: 1.14.1.5488 (QNAP PMS: QTS firmware: 4.2.6 - not upgradable)
Server2 Version#: same as Server1

Server3:
QNAP TVS-672XT-i3-8G
Totally new system - new hard drives

I own two QNAP PMS at the moment. Plex decided a while ago that certain library support for PMS needs to go to higher version, so I cannot upgrade these PMS to any 1.15 or higher release. The QNAP Server1 and Server2 cannot be upgraded to QTS firmware beyond 4.2.6.

So I now bought a NEW QNAP (Server 3) and I am waiting for the hard drives which will probably arrive tomorrow.

My plan is to install the drives, upgrade the QTS to be most up-to-date and install the most actual PMS v1.16.whatever is most actual (Plex Pass beta) at that time.

However, I would be happy to not only copy the multimedia data from BOTH servers to the new server, but I would be glad to migrate ALL libraries and all meta-data FROM BOTH servers (Server1 as well as Server2) to the new QNAP PMS.

Short question: How does this work?
@ChuckPa @tobiashieta or any other…
ChuckPA offered to help me with that on Feb 7 in another thread, but only now I am ready to take action…

What is the step-by-step procedure in setting the new QNAP server up in order not to ruin everything from the beginning?
How can I combine the libraries from both old servers?

Any advice is appreciated.

[dane22]

You can’t combine two PMS servers…

What you can do, is move the biggest over, and then, when confirming everything works, add the medias from the other one, and then update your libraries, downloading fresh metadata for those.

Also you might be able to use the Lambda plugin to assist you with custom posters etc, but view state etc for users will be lost sadly for the smallest PMS

[rossinior]

Argh… thank you for the info.

And how does it work?

[dane22]

@rossinior

And how does it work?

If you mean Lambda, I suggest you read up on this thread, as well as ask there:

[REL] Lambda (Local Assets-Metadata Double Agent) for Plex Metadata export)

Link: https://github.com/ZeroQI/Lambda.bundle Features: Takes Plex metadata and save it locally alongside media files, including collections ‘Local Media Assets’ imports back local metadata exported, and what isn’t supported will be imported back with this agent: collection summary (not yet supported for upload: collection poster, fanart, and not yet supported for upload/download: metadata text fields in NFO file) It supports the export of following Plex metadata: Series: (*)Poster, F…

[rossinior]

Thank you @dane22.

But I have no clue on how to migrate one of the two older QNAP servers to the new one.
I don’t know, how to start and what I will get and what I won’t get.

Do I need to install PMS on the new server first? What do I need to copy and when? Do I need to have exactly the same file locations? Hundreds of questions, no clue…

[dane22]

See: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/

To access the directory to copy, this might be handy:

Create a share for Plex Library Directory

NOTE: This should no longer be used, if PMS is version 1.19.5 or above, since now build into PMS. See Q28 of the QNAP FAQ If not on PMS 1.19.5 or above, then look here: So, if you want an easy access to like logs, to add/remove 3.Party plugins etc.then this QPKG will help you in creating this share. Simply download the qpkg from here, and install it manually from the AppCenter. It’ll then create a share named Plex pointing to the Library directory, where only admin user has access Happy Pl…

[rossinior]

I have a couple of questions which I cannot find answers to.

First:
The old QNAP server has PMS version 1.14.1.5488 (and cannot be updated). Do I need to install the same version of the PMS software or will it be just okay for me to install the most actual PMS software (1.16…)?

Second:
I have a couple of metadata agents, even some third-party ones. When copying the data, will these metadata agents and their setup be transferred okay?

Thank you in advance. I am currently in the process of copying the movies themselves to the new NAS since this will takes days. After that is finished, I will try transferring the PMS data.

[nibbles]

I might have to do this someday. So I’ve been following your thread.

Would you explain the downside of starting over from scratch versus transferring the PMS data, when it comes to your library and custom agents? Thanks. I’ve always been inclined to fresh installs of macOS for example, rather than in place upgrades.

I thought because PMS fetches everything automatically that installing from scratch avoids any cruft, exposing the benefits or limitations of the new setup.

[rossinior]

@nibbles
Thank you for that question… Main show stoppers for me are the follwoing:

• Viewed / Unviewed status of a couple of thousand movies and a couple of thousand TV series episodes. A clean install will not have them. And editing them manually one by one would be too much an effort.
• German language: because of my own (special) folder structure (not Plex fault), I need to manually assign movies to match them correctly. With a clean install, I would need to either change that structure (unwanted) or manually scan for unmatched movies and manually match them again after the move (also far on the bottom of my wish-list).
• German age restrictions and other labels I edited when necessary: I have no idea how many labels I set and on which movies I did so over the years. I really would love to have them but it is not obvious where they would be missing.
• no easy plug-in support nowadays… I haven’t made myself wiser regarding how to install metadata agents. While there might be or not might be ways to do it with 1.16… I would prefer to “magically” have these when transferring PMS data. But I am unsure whether this works.
• Individual movie covers: I don’t use them a lot since I am happy with the automatic results usually. But most of my documentation TV series have my own creations… since I cannot combine-transfer two NAS into one, I will loose these anyway.

What is more than worrying to me: At the moment, I cannot transfer my Premium music libary… and this really was a mess to create it. Almost all song titles were manually matched, since I don’t have that Artist - Album - Title structre but rather one big folder with individual songs in them. This will probably lead me to abandon Plex as a music archive, though it really was one of the main reasons for me to use Plex at all. I really hope that transferring the server data will keep the Premium music library state and - together with a future PMS update - serve me well. But if this does not work, I will not do the work again to match these songs.

[nibbles]

Nice that makes a lot of sense. I really hope your agents work out too, especially the German language ones.

Your first question about which PMS version to install is complex.
The QNAP Appcenter version we start with is past your source PMS-1.14.1.
Currently QNAP is offering PMS-1.16.3 for install to QTS-4.3.6.
I don’t know the correct course of action. Do you still have the 1.14.1-5488.qpkg
left around from the last time you did a manual PMS upgrade?

Your second question might be easier to assess. Because you store all your media in your Library paths, and because PMS on QNAP stores all it’s data under

getcfg -f /etc/config/qpkg.conf PlexMediaServer Install_path

and because the migration directions tell you to copy the above whole path,
nothing from your source would be left behind.

[rossinior]

Well, thank you @nibbles .

The question about PMS server version is way more complex.
I might still have the old installation package lying around somewhere, BUT
the two old QNAP servers have the firmware 4.2.6 (which was 32-bit) and the new one has 4.4.0 (64-bit). So the PMS 1.14.1… QPKG package that I might have, will not be of any help.

I want to know if it is possible to copy the old PMS data OVER a new install like this and not destroy everything. I don’t have a lab to test that…

[nibbles]

Are they deploying 4.4.0? I thought it was beta still at 4.4.1. I will go read.

I understand now your question, if you go into Appcenter and try to install PMS-1.16.3 over top of a PMS that isn’t running and never was run, then what will happen?

I can’t wait to hear

[dane22]

@rossinior

I want to know if it is possible to copy the old PMS data OVER a new install like this and not destroy everything. I don’t have a lab to test that…

It’s possible

[rossinior]

Do I understand correctly:

• I install PMS 1.16.something on my new QNAP server, following the procedure in that document:
  https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/?_ga=2.36817952.1601232565.1567424707-1907162896.1525006744

• Then I stop all PMS involved, copy over the data from that 32-bit PMS 1.14.1…

• Question: Do I then need to reinstall the new package once again on the new server over that old data or just start the PMS and let it do its magic…?

[dane22]

@rossinior

Do I understand correctly:

• I install PMS 1.16.something on my new QNAP server, following the procedure in that document:
  https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/?_ga=2.36817952.1601232565.1567424707-1907162896.1525006744
• Then I stop all PMS involved, copy over the data from that 32-bit PMS 1.14.1…

Correct

@rossinior

Question: Do I then need to reinstall the new package once again on the new server over that old data or just start the PMS and let it do its magic…?

Just start it

[nibbles]

@dane22

Do I understand correctly:

• I install PMS 1.16.something on my new QNAP server, following the procedure in that document:
  https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/?_ga=2.36817952.1601232565.1567424707-1907162896.1525006744
• Then I stop all PMS involved, copy over the data from that 32-bit PMS 1.14.1…

Correct

@dane22 The support article describes copying the entire main Plex directory.
Wouldn’t that overwrite his new 1.16.3 executables and libs with old ones
that are 32-bit and won’t run?

[/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer] # ls -l
total 46032
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators  1636904 2019-08-27 16:07 CrashUploader*
drwxr-xr-x  3 admin administrators     4096 2019-08-27 16:08 lib/
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin administrators     4096 2019-07-10 12:07 Library/
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators   407920 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Commercial Skipper*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators  4852064 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex DLNA Server*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators  6867128 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Media Scanner*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators 26593024 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Media Server*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators   717784 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Relay*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators    12824 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Script Host*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators     6170 2019-08-27 16:33 plex.sh*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators   263264 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Transcoder*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin administrators  5744520 2019-08-27 16:07 Plex Tuner Service*
drwxr-xr-x 10 admin administrators     4096 2019-08-27 16:35 Resources/

[rossinior]

That was the intended meaning of my question. Thx…

[dane22]

ONLY copy the Library directory over!

The QPKG I linked towards earlier, will create a share for that, so you after installing this, can use QNAP NAS2NAS copy

And remember to have the PMS turned off on the destination QNAP when doing so

[rossinior]

Thank you for this clarification.
Will I have a way of getting the OFDB agent and other third-party metadata scrapers and their configuration transferred this way?

[dane22]

@rossinior

Will I have a way of getting the OFDB agent and other third-party metadata scrapers and their configuration transferred this way?

Since they live in Library/Plugins they’ll all be transferred as well