I currently have a Synology DS918+ (named Plex server) which contains both movies and TV shows. I also have a PC with Plex server installed (named Desktop 2) which also holds both movies and TV shows as well as live TV and DVR. Both work great.
Soon, I will be removing the PC, and adding 3 more Synology NAS drives, which will be named Plex Server 1, 2, 3 and 4.
My question is this: Currently, upon opening Plex, and prior to picking a movie or TV show, I have to select the server first (Plex or Desktop 2) which holds the movie or TV show I want to watch.
Once I have deployed all 4 Synology NAS drives, I’d like to simply have “movies” and “TV shows” as my 2 options. I don’t use Tidal or any other Plex services.
It seems to me that I shouldn’t have remember which NAS drive the movie or TV show resides. I should be able to see all movies and shows across the 4 NAS drives, pick the movie, and Plex should know where it is.
If you’ve configured the Synology with RAID (to make all the drives a single large volume with parity protection), you can then have shares containing the media. The actual files will be balanced across all the physical drives (how RAID operates).
You can create shares in a way which makes sense to you (how you want to group different content).
Plex will look at it by name (/volume1/Movies if named Movies) and you’ll see “Movies” in your server.
That’s it. It’s very effective in eliminating the manual “How much can I fit on that drive” question.
Chuck, Thanks for your response but I don’t think that I explained it correctly. I am going to have at least four 918+, each with four 16tb drives in a RAID 5. (16 drives total in those 4 NAS. For the sake of this discussion, let’s just say that all four of those boxes will be holding movies and nothing else. My question is, if I type in the name of the movie, is Plex smart enough to know that there are four different boxes, each one holding a separate raid, will it pull the movie or so I have to specify which server to look in.
Plex is “server-oriented”.
That having been said, you can put one type of media on one, another on the next, etc or you can create “Movies1” on the first and “Movies2” on another, etc.
Then, in the clients, you pick from the available sources and make them part of the home screen. The home screen is your customization of what you want to see, independent of where it is. It will go to the appropriate server for that “Library section” and get it. The clients present everything by Section Name. If you have 4 different movie library sections added then that’s what you’ll see.
What PMS won’t do is to deconflict duplicates across server instances. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re asking about whether or not it can.
