Storage advice around PLEX

[leenux_tux]

OK, so I have been using FreeNAS for ages now. It's rock solid, does everything I need, storing movies, music, backups and is also a NFS container for ProxMOX VM's.

I thought I would give PLEX a go. I have it installed and it's working like a charm. Question is, when setting up the library, does it make a copy of the media I add and put it into the media folder for the jail that plex installs to ? It looks like it does to me. This means I have two copies of the media on my FreeNAS box ? If so, seems like a bit of a waste ? Is there a way around this as I use snapshots to back up all my data to the ProxMOX server (which has openZFS installed) and storing 4 copies of music, movies and TV programs over two different servers seems a tad overkill.

 

[fracai]

When you create the Plex jail you'll also specify the location(s) of your media as mount points to be made available inside the jail. Your media won't be duplicated. You could also specify that you don't want to backup the actual jail. It would probably be easier to recreate instead of restore. And your configuration data can be mounted as well so it doesn't actually live inside the jail.

 

[m0nkey_]

Question is, when setting up the library, does it make a copy of the media I add and put it into the media folder for the jail that plex installs to ?

No. Plex does not copy any media. It will only access it from the path you specify. What it will do is build it's own metadata directory.

 

[leenux_tux]

Thanks for the prompt reply folks. I think I must have made a mistake with the install then as I'm sure I have copies of the media files.

For example, I have...
/mnt/TANK/MOVIES

The jail is installed to
/mnt/VM-POOL/jails/plexmediaserver_1

Under this directory I have a media folder, then under there the same folder structure as I have under /mnt/TANK/MOVIES, with all of the files.

I guess I should have configured PLEX's destination storage to be the same as the source ?

 

[Chris Moore]

It is most likely a link, not an actual copy. If you followed the guide

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[danb35]

Under this directory I have a media folder, then under there the same folder structure as I have under /mnt/TANK/MOVIES, with all of the files.

Yes, that's what happens when you mount storage--that's how it works. No, there isn't a second copy of your media.

 

[sretalla]

If you go into your jail under the /mnt directory and do a:

Code:

ls -l

You should see that MOVIES or whatever is actually a symbolic link, showing where it points to.

 

[danb35]

You should see that MOVIES or whatever is actually a symbolic link

No, it isn't a symlink. It's a nullfs mount. This is the same way storage for jails has worked since 8.something.