This is an idea that just occurred to me. Why is there not a way to synchronize the meta data for 2 plex servers? It would actually be even better if I could designate a place for the metadata to be kept.
What got me thinking about this is the fact that I have put a lot of work into grouping and organizing and adding cover art to my current “production” plex. Giving my kids permissions to the movies that they are allowed to watch and things like that. All this work needs to be transferred to my new plex server that I am setting up with more space for my family’s media.
It would be really nice if I could tell my current plex server to backup to the new plex server or “sync” or even just copy itself to the new server.
I know there are ways to do this manually. But when you start with your Plex media server on a FreeNAS plugin that gets upgraded to a TrueNAS plugin and you barely know Linux or whatever the OS is, it becomes problematic. It would be more ideal to have a way to designate the source and the destination servers and tell one of them to “copy” to or from the other.
I don’t understand how many times it’s been said. Don’t attempt to sync 2 separate servers. There literally tons of info out there why this is a bad idea. The main reason is data corruption and failure between each. Every time an instance of Plex Server is running, it’s relies on temporary files that read/write until it needs to update the databases. You can easily find yourself in peril, only to find yourself having to start all over again from scratch. Additionally, each installation of Plex Server on whatever OS platform you choose to install it on must be identical if you were to attempt to sync the data. You just can’t attempt to sync all the data from a FreeNas Plex Server and transfer it to a MacOS or Windows Plex Server install and expect everything to be the same. Plex Server data files has to be copied over to the same OS platform that’s currently in use, such as Windows to Windows, MacOs to MacOS and so on. However, there are scripts for Linux and NAS setups that assist with keeping track of say a secondary server that basically gets its metadata info from a mothership server, like THIS
But you realize that the makers of the program should do this as a feature. In the day we live in with synchronizing of everything else we use it is about time they do something to add this feature to plex.
Here is the thing, I am not a plex guru, I haven’t read every article and post or documentation about every aspect of the software. I only use Windows and the OSs that I have in relation to things that interest me. I have no interest in all the deep dark secrets of Plex, or any other thing I use for gathering my entertainment and media.
I just want it to work and do so as easily as possible. I only use TrueNAS because it is free and Unraid because it seems to be a lot more friendly than TrueNAS. I have a plex on each and I want to simply move all the work I have done on the TrueNAS one to the new Unraid one.
Increasingly I am more and more interested in the results rather than the work to get something to work. I think a lot of people in the digital industry don’t seem to understand that there is a large amount of the populous that don’t give 2 hoots about how it works, they just want it to work in a quick, friendly, easy manner and are fully willing to leave it to someone else on the how. I have been an IT person for more than 30 years now and we still don’t have “Jarvis”.
Look, I’m just the messenger here but believe me when I say that your concerns and criticisms have been mutually been made by MANY Plex users about various IMPROVEMENTS that could have deeply impacted our very own workflow as Plex Server Administrators. I totally agree with you. Many and I mean many individuals on this forum along with other Plex groups such as Reddit, are already developers or in the IT industry themselves, with just as long of experience as you have.
However, despite any or all criticism that’s been made on our front as users, we are simply at the mercy of those who are actually working at Plex along with their corp execs.
Most of what will be suggested to you in the form of suggestions are mere MacGyver like solutions that often require third party tools.
I don’t know what to tell you but welcome to the land of Plex. The mods and Plex staff will simply tell you to vote on a current Feature Suggestion that’s still available to vote on, if it’s applicable or similar to your request. Otherwise, create a Feature Suggestion Request of your own to have people in the forum to vote on. If you take a look, there’s requests for server to server syncing 2016 and earlier.
Question to you: are your Plex Server devices within the same local network/physicality aka residence? are you attempting to sync files or metadata that’s over the internet at all or just via your local network?
What hardware and specs are you also working with as well?
I am trying to migrate really. I have a TrueNAS Core box with 2 separate pools of drives. It makes my PMS have to look at to different places for the media. Additionally, my current Plex server has customization of poster media, sort names, collections and who can see what (I have 2 sons who use it to watch stuff, but they have to request to see something that is on the server. I then use the share tags to give them the ability to watch stuff.).
I have recently built an UNRaid box with more space that allows all my media to be on one “pool” and I have managed to get a bunch of other things working on it that I couldn’t do on TrueNAS with satisfactory results. I want all the PMS on the UNRaid box to have all the customizations migrated to it so that I don’t have to do that all over again.
I have tried simply copying the Plex Media Server folder from the TrueNAS plugin jail to the /mnt/user/appdata/Plex-Media-Server/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server location on the UNRaid box. This didn’t have any effect.
Sure would be nice if there was a feature to migrate/sync servers.
This is over my local network. They are both physically in the same room.
Hardware isn’t really important. They are both old computers that I have repurposed for creating NAS boxes to experiment and toy with. If things work out well, meaning if I find a way to do this migration, then I will most likely be purchasing an unlimited license of UNRaid so I make the storage on this thing grow.
