Proxmox and Plex

[krphilabaum]

New to Proxmox so any replies treat me as a total noob.

I've installed Proxmox and setup without issue on my Dell PE R710. Plan on using it for a few things but I'm trying to setup a Plex server first and seem to have an issue with how my media storage would work.

So here's how I have storage setup (or at least planned in my head):

Proxmox installed to a USB on the internal connector. All 6 3.5 inch bays are populated with 2TB SAS drives operating from the PERC6i RAID controller all setup via the controller in RAID 0 as single disks (not worried about data loss cause nothing is critical and is backed up on my Synology NAS anyway).

Plan to use drives as following:

0 - VMs (setup in Proxmox as LVM)
1 - ISOs (setup in Proxmox as Directory)
2 - currently unused
3 - currently unused
4 - Plex media storage
5 - Plex media storage

What I am trying to accomplish is setup Plex Server as a container (my Google research seems to indicate that this would be best option) and use the 2 hard drives 4 & 5 to store the actual media files on. I've found some basic information on how to setup a Plex container but I am struggling to understand how I setup the media storage for it to access. All i need from the media storage is for Plex to have access to it and a way for me to add files to it. I've been unable to find any complete start to finish guides on the subject so if someone can point me in the right direction, it would be appreciated.

 

[Dominic]

You could, for example, create your container on drive 0. Additionally, you create a LVM volume on disks 4 and 5 and add it as Storage to Proxmox VE. In the Resource options of your container you can then add the storage as Mount Point for your container. This makes the 4TB of storage available to your container like a normal directory.

 

[krphilabaum]

Thanks for the response Dominic. I've been struggling to get my head around how storage would work as I'm mainly a Windows guy. I was unsure what storage option I should be using, actually think at one point i actually setup an LVM volume but wasn't sure if that was the best way to go around implementing the media storage.

If I implement the storage like this what would be the best way to put my media files on it from my external drive? Only thing I've transferred to storage was my OS ISOs to the Directory storage I setup previously using SFTP.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dominic]

If your external drive is attached to your Proxmox VE host you could additionally take a look at pct push. Transferring via network (rsync, scp, SFTP) is a good option for many situations, nonetheless.

 

[krphilabaum]

So I created the LVM Volume called PlexStorage.



Added the Mount Point to the Plex container.



MediaStorage now appears in Plex web interface as a folder but unable to locate it in SFTP. I have however found the PlexStorage volume as a folder with a file called vm-101-disk-0 which I'm assuming is the MediaStorage mount point in some kind of virtual disk/folder file? Seems that I cant add files to a folder that I can use the SFTP program to send any media files to.

At this point I'm assuming that I am doing something wrong somewhere or used an incorrect setting. I'm at least getting somewhere now having successfully setup the container and have Plex running, but this storage is baffling me having never used Proxmox before. Plex seeing a location is progress but without me able to figure out how to get media files to that location for Plex to use is getting a bit frustrating.

Thanks for your patience any further advice you could give appreciated.

 

[Dominic]

volume as a folder with a file called vm-101-disk-0

Virtual hard disks and mount points are logical volumes with LVM if you view it from the host. If you add more of them for one guest, you would get vm-101-disk-0, vm-101-disk-1, vm-101-disk-2 and so on in Proxmox VE. In the guest you see a file system at a path specified during creation, that is /MediaStorage in your case.

MediaStorage now appears in Plex web interface as a folder but unable to locate it in SFTP.

You mean you can connect with SFTP to your guest and everything is there except your /MediaStorage folder?

 

[krphilabaum]

When you referring to guest above does that mean the Plex Container? If so that may be why I'm not finding the folder because I've been SFTP to Proxmox itself. If this is the case should I be connecting to the Containers IP with the root login and password via SFTP?

Also is this the best method to access the media file storage location anyway or should I be using another method? Only reason I've been attempting to use this method is that I know how it works after learning how to setup Proxmox and uploading ISO files for it to use.

All I need to be able to do is access the folder location on my Windows PC so I can upload media files. Trying to keep it as simple as possible as I need to be able to show my wife how to do it if she wants to add to Plex Library in future once it's all setup.

 

[Dominic]

When you referring to guest above does that mean the Plex Container? I

Yes. Guest is a more general term for virtual machines and containers.

If this is the case should I be connecting to the Containers IP with the root login and password via SFTP?

This is one possibility. Make sure that you have ssh etc. installed in the container in this case.

Using a graphical client for SFTP on a Windows PC is an easy way to get your files to your container, I think. Maybe Plex has some upload feature, too?

 

[janvv]

Three years later.... but still jumping into this discussion. Maybe someone is still listening.

In my setup, I have Plex running in an LXC.
All my media files are simply in a directory of an ssd on the proxmox host. I added this directory as a mount point to the Plex container.
The advantage is that I can easily add new media by copying (scp, rsync, croc, whatever you are familiar with) it to that folder. Plex will automatically pick it up.
The same directory can be mounted to an LXC running a Samba server. Then I have access to that same directory from my Windows clients.

Does this make sense?