# Server redundancy/load-balancing

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/server-redundancy-load-balancing/401704>\
**Category:** Feature Suggestions\
**Created:** [April 18, 2019, 5:20pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/server-redundancy-load-balancing/401704 "2019-04-18T17:20:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![forkwhilefork](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/forkwhilefork/32/210441_2.png) [@forkwhilefork](https://forums.plex.tv/u/forkwhilefork)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 5:20pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/server-redundancy-load-balancing/401704/1 "2019-04-18T17:20:54Z")

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Redundancy can be handled at the infrastructure level by running a VM in a clustered setup with e.g. VMware HA enabled. However, that can incur a downtime of a few minutes while the new VM boots up, and can possibly incur issues of unclean filesystems, etc.

Load-balancing can be handled by running multiple servers, but requires that users be manually, statically divided between the servers.

I’ve seen a few projects that aim to address the load-balancing problem (PlexRemoteTranscoder, which seems to be dead, and UnicornTranscoder), but these are third-party solutions. That’s not great for a few reasons. 1) Development could stop at any time, as we saw with PRT. 2) I have to delay updating the server until the new release has been tested by the 3rd party. 3) Full feature parity has not been achieved (e.g. UnicornTranscoder can’t do GPU transcoding and auto-quality.)

I realize that one of the major goals of Plex as a product is to make it simple to use, and that most users in the target audience probably have no interest in redundancy or load-balancing. But I’m curious if these are things that we’ll ever see from Plex directly. I’m hoping a dev can weigh in here.

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![ChuckPa](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/chuckpa/32/79710_2.png) [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 8:32pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/server-redundancy-load-balancing/401704/2 "2019-04-18T20:32:24Z")

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Plex doesn’t disclose their roadmap; not even to many of us internally.  
The product team and that part of Engineering are very tight-lipped.

I am moving this to Feature Request because it speaks to the larger audience and not linux-specific.

As a Feature Request, others can vote and provide that secondary Level-of-Interest information to both teams.

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**Author:** ![forkwhilefork](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/forkwhilefork/32/210441_2.png) [@forkwhilefork](https://forums.plex.tv/u/forkwhilefork)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2019, 12:38am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/server-redundancy-load-balancing/401704/3 "2019-04-19T00:38:02Z")

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Yeah, good point.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 12:38am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/server-redundancy-load-balancing/401704/4 "2019-07-18T00:38:08Z")

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