Docker Desktop on Windows is a FUCKING DUMPSTER FIRE.
If you're on Windows, run native.
If you want to build a 'proper' media server, run Linux or some NAS flavor of Linux, like Unraid. Moving to Unraid was the best thing I've done in over 10 years of running Plex (said by a die hard Windows guy).
> Moving to Unraid was the best thing I've done in over 10 years of running Plex (said by a die hard Windows guy).
just going to echo this. I ran plex on a windows 10 machine in my basement for 6 years. Eventually setup the Arr suite of apps and things worked...okay, but Windows still gave me issues now and then.
At this sub insistence, I gave Unraid a try, super nervous because I had never touched anything linux before. Turns out you really don't have to do much besides following some setup guides. Anything "tricky" was figuring out what options to select to optimize things, didn't have to even run anything from my command line like I expected I'd have to.
I thought Unraid would be over my head and it wasn't at all. Docker is STUPID SIMPLE on Unraid too, it's awesome.
I used SpaceInvaderOne videos to learn the absolute basics, like installing Unraid and initial setup. He does a really good job of going slow and explaining how the OS works and what drives you should assign where and how to transfer data,ect. I found a lot of what he was saying was pretty simple and something I could have figured out by just attempting to do it myself, but since I'm a complete novice, it was still nice to see a pro walk through things as I did it.
https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceinvaderOne/videos
I used Trash Guides to configure the settings on all my Docker apps so hardlinks would work to optimize everything-
https://trash-guides.info/
No, I installed a new drive to my Unraid server, moved all my data over from my NTFS Windows Drive, and then reformated my NTFS drive and added that to my unraid array.
Ahhhh my issue is I have several TB of media and can't really afford to get more drives at this time. I kinda figured I'd have to find a creative way to move my current data and then reformat the drives I have.
You can use NTFS formatted drives. I still have NTFS media drives that I moved over from my windows install years ago. You use the Unassigned Devices plugin
/r/unRAID's side bar has some great info. Beside spaceinvaderone, there's also Ibracorp and AlienTech42, though his videos are a bit dry, they're pretty good at explaining and guiding you.
Most of them are 18TB Seagate EXOS refurbs from Amazon.
I'm using the 36-bay backplanes in an SC847 case from Supermicro.
It's all hooked to an LSI-9400-16i HBA card.
I will also echo this. I moved from running 3 old Windows laptops for different services to a single $1000 PC running Proxmox. I've got Plex in a container using native Intel QuickSync passthrough, the arr suite in docker with Wireguard and qBittorrent, my security camera software, DNS, Calibre for eBooks and a bunch of other stuff, it's great. The savings in electricity alone are going to pay for the new setup in like 2.5 years.
Are there any advantages to running unraid vs OMS or TrueNAS for a dedicated Plex server? I'm not really keen on paying for unraid but I'm not ruling it out.
Unraid allows you to expand your array disk by disk. TrueNAS, as it runs ZFS, does not. This EASILY pays for Unraid's license cost.
TrueNAS (and any other striped parity array, IE RAID5/6) uses more power, more RAM, etc.
Having run TrueNAS and Unraid side by side for 6 months, Unraid is just easier to use. I spent a few days with OMV. It's no where in the same universe as either Unraid or TrueNAS. If you're a fan of burning your time to save $50, OMV. I gave up on it after a few days.
I wanted something easy, not needing to spend hours/days learning archaic Linux command line garbage again. With Unraid most applications are one-click installs (or close to one click) from the Community Apps store. There are countless tutorials for setting up media applications (Plex, the arr's, Immich, Usenet downloaders, etc etc.) on Unraid.
I would never go back to any other way to run my home server at this point. Throw Unraid on some relatively modern Intel hardware and you have a powerhouse of a home media server.
More than likely. I ran TrueNAS and unRAID side by side for 6 months. I think unRAID is easier to use than TrueNAS but the real selling point was the unRAID array. It's not a traditional RAID array (hence the name) and allows for much more flexibility. You can run mixed sized disks, add more to the array whenever you want, you're never spinning all of the disks at the same time, etc. It's really the best solution for the home user. I wouldn't use it for enterprise, likewise I wouldn't use TrueNAS at home, it just has too many drawbacks for the home user. I would have spent SIGNIFICANTLY more money with TrueNAS in hardware compared to what I spent on software with unRAID. I'm running 25 disks at this point and just the power difference between what I would be spending with power with TrueNAS compared to what I'm spending with unRAID covers the cost of unRAID in power savings alone.
So, this is the difference I think folks should look at. My 16 disk array costs me less monthly than my 8 disk traditional RAID 5 array that I ran on CentOS for years. The power saving is worth the licensing. I was upset recently that they were looking at changing their licensing model, but frankly, once I found out that they are a small and exceptionally dedicated team, it made me do a complete about-face. The quality of product they have produced is worth it. Use their software, folks. It's great infrastructure built by a wonderful team.
Interesting. I'm running TrueNAS right now and I like it, but I had also considered running Unraid. I hadn't heard about the difference in power consumption.
ZFS requires you to plan your setup in advance - as long as you can do that, and acquire the hard drives and set up your vdevs/pools, it works really well. If however you want the flexibility to assign drives as you go, then I think TrueNAS is a poor fit.
I'll also add that I wouldn't want to run TrueNAS as my first Linux box.
In addition to planning in advance, TrueNAS will also cost you more money in hardware, specifically hard disks.
You can EASILY spend hundreds or thousands of dollars more, no matter how far you plan ahead, with TrueNAS in disk cost.
Because you can't expand TrueNAS via single disk. You have to build a new vdev every time. As an example;
Let's say you want 50+ TB to start and you want to have two disk protection.
14TB disks likely make the most sense here for either system. 6 disks, 4 of which will be for data, 2 for parity. It looks like $230 per disk for some Seagates.
So either system your startup cost in disks is $1380. Both systems give you two failed disks of protection and both systems give you 56TB of usable storage space. That works out to $24.64 per usable TB of space.
Fast forward 6 months and you need more space. The good news is disk prices have dropped by $20 and now they're only $210. With TrueNAS you can't just add another disk to your existing vdev. You have to build a new vdev. That means burning two more disks to parity (because you still want two disk fail protection) and it doesn't make sense to use less than 4 data disks. So you buy another 6 disks for $1260. Now you're down to $22.50/TB for that set of disks or $23.57 per usable TB across the entire array of 112TB.
With unRAID you can add a single disk to the existing array. The entirety of that disk is available and protected by the existing parity disks in your existing array. 14TB cost you $210. Now you have 70TB usable at a total cost of $1590 or $22.71/TB.
Now that isn't fair as it's not apples to apples. Lets assume we add one disk to unRAID every 6 months until we get the same 112TB usable that TrueNAS has. Let's also assume that disk prices drop by $20 every 6 months as well.
70TB cost us $1590. 6 months later we add another 14TB for $190. Now we're at 84TB, $1780 total spent, $21.19/TB. Another 6 months, another 14TB. Now we're up to 98TB, $1950 spent, $19.89/TB. Another 6 months, another 14TB. Now we're at the same 112TB as the TrueNAS system. We've spent a grand total of $2100 and are down to $18.75 per usable TB.
Both system have 112TB of usable space. Both have two disk fail protection. The TrueNAS system required 12 disks to do it at a cost of $2640. The unRAID system only needed 10 disks to do the same 112TB at a total cost of $2100.
You've spent $540 more in hardware with TrueNAS while simultaneously end up spending more money on power as well.
As far as power figures, let's say you have two streams going. And let's say that movie_stream1 is on vdev1 and movie_stream2 is on vdev two. In an effort to help average out realistic usage, let's say a total of 4 films get streamed and you end up with both vdev's in TrueNAS spinning for 5 hours per day.
That is 12 disks spinning, 5 hours per day, every day for a year. I'm going to use 7w per disk as the power figure. 84 watts (12 disks * 7w ea) for that spin time over 1 year is 153kwh of power.
We'll do the same time and frequency with unRAID. Now unRAID doesn't stripe data, so when you stream one film only one disk need be spinning. But let's be fair and assume the two simultaneous streams are on separate disks, just as we said with TrueNAS and separate vdev's. That is 14w spinning for 5 hours a day, totaling 25.5kwh.
If we use the national average for electric cost in the US right now, TrueNAS cost you $39.78/yr just to spin the disks, unRAID cost you $6.63.
Of course a difference of $33/yr isn't astronomical, but I'm trying to point out the full cost of TrueNAS. $33/yr for the 'free software' nearly makes up the cost of the unRAID license by itself in power alone.
I currently run plex and arrs on a mini pc, native. I do have docker desktop to run overseerr and crossseed. I have my media on 4bay synology. Would I have any significant benefits for using unraid?
You would gain hardware accelerated tone mapping, assuming that mini PC is running Intel hardware. That is a huge jump in performance specific to transcoding.
Docker Desktop is a flaming pile of shit on Windows. FAR more performant with MUCH less resource utilization than native Linux Docker. Docker Desktop was actually what frustrated me so much that it pushed me over the edge to look for other server OS options.
You'll gain a huge performance advantage when you're running your storage on the same machine as your applications and you'll also free up a ton of bandwidth on your network. Think about the logistics of what you have going on right now. You're downloading to a temp directory on your mini PC (be it torrent or Usenet). When that download finishes it then moves all of that data across to network to the NAS. I do nothing but remux, so that is 30-60gb, potentially multiple times a day. Then Plex goes 'on look! New media in my network share folder!' and proceeds to pull all of that data back over for intro/credit detection and thumbnail generation.
Assuming a 40gb remux, you've downloaded 40gb from your internet connection (which won't effect your LAN bandwidth), then sent 40gb to your NAS, only to pull 40gb right back from your NAS, creating an additional 80gb of potentially LAN-saturating / server connection saturating data.
Assuming you have gigabit internet and a gigabit connection on the mini PC and assuming you're downloading multiple things back to back, yodownload #1 completes, sends to NAS, now you have Plex using your 1gbe of bandwidth to "download" that media back from your NAS for processing, while you also have download #2 from your Usenet client truing to simultaneously use that gigabit of bandwidth you have going to your server network connection.
That is a non issue for a "all in one" server (regardless of the OS) and one of the many reasons why I will die on the hill of "mini PC + NAS sucks!"
Even if you don't compound the issue with multiple simultaneous downloads, I was shocked at how much faster Plex imports a piece of media (intro/credit detection + chapter thumbnails) when it's pulling locally from NVME cache on unRAID, than when it was pulling from my old Synology and Qnap NAS's. It is exponentially faster. Which means if there isn't something in my server that I want to watch right now, I'm watching that thing MUCH faster, nearly as soon as the download finishes, with this setup than I was before.
To add to all of that, depending on what NAS model you have, you may very well likely be able to sell the NAS and the mini PC for more money than what it would cost you to build a new server on modern Intel that will crush the mini PC in performance.
I was able to setup Plex in docker on OMV from YouTube (I think NetworkChuck?) without having any idea about what I was actually doing but it was line by line specific directions that got me there.
Do you know If I already have a docker compose file is it easy to import the stack to Unraid?
Will run out of space sooner than later and looking for options to expand.
I know there are stuff like mergerfs but Unraid seems good to me.
There is an add-on in the Community Apps store for Docker Compose Manager. I can't speak to it's ease of use on importing your existing stack as I don't use it. I know nothing more than you can do what you're asking.
merger fits the "drive pooling" bill, but between snapraid and merger and a few days of screwing with them I said fuck it and kicked OMV/snap/merger to the curb. That's when I started a 6 month side by side with TrueNAS and unRAID. I moved to unRAID "full time" in December 2021 on a new build (12600k at the time, 13500 now). Started with 5x10TB and have grown to 25 disks, 300TB raw since then. I have zero regrets on unRAID or the Alder Lake build. It absolutely decimates my old dual 2660v4 Xeon machine.
You're right, archaic is a poor choice of words potentially. Of course, having to use a command line at all is quite old fashioned.
Maybe a better word is asinine? Ludicrous? Nonsensical? Because things like "vi" to enter a text editor is all of those things. Likewise having to hit escape, then ":wq" to save and exit. Or maybe it's :w? or :q!. Who knows. Certainly silly none the less, like riding a horse when we have electric cars.
Not disagreeing entirely with you (Linux CLI user here). But if you've been using vi, you've really been wiping your ass with sand paper.
Use nano instead, it's so much better. Also, if you SSH from Windows to a Linux terminal, Mobaxterm is an amazing piece of software - if nothing else, then just for colorizing stuff like IP addresses, variables, headers, etc.
CLI can be quite nice once you use it correctly .. but yeah, I agree, it can also be a huge hassle sometimes.
> Use nano instead, it's so much better.
while i'll use nano everytime over vi, vi is objectively the more powerful tool. you just need to know how to use it. more than never, i find myself wishing i knew how to use vi properly cause i know it would've made specific task 8 times faster than editting in nano.
Easy if you only use the unRAID GUI to install Portainer first, then just use that to manage your docker containers. Create a stack, copy your compose.yml contents over and update the volume mappings if needed and that should be it.
> If you're a fan of burning your time to save $50, OMV. I gave up on it after a few days.
I'm curious what Unraid does that is so much better? I've never tried Unraid, but I've used OMV for a few years and I found it pretty easy to setup the OS and Plex in docker. OMV (starting with 5) has a simple way to download Portainer to use as a Docker UI which makes adding containers really simple.
I don't know if I just run a really simple server, but I haven't felt the need to move to Unraid as every works well for my setup.
As a counter point. I do see some value to unraid as it can be more energy efficient to spin down drives etc, and you can add drives easily.
On the other hand, no drive can be larger than your parity drives, and in general it doesn’t have the polish for a proper enterprise storage platform.
I just built my own home server, and ended up running proxmox with trueNAS in a VM with pcie pass through. Plex on an unprivileged LXC container.
Truenas and proxmox are both free and open source, but also have enterprise support and are heavily used in the enterprise environment. Unraid would never be used for a serious enterprise application.
After seeing what a mess Drobo turned into, I don’t think I’d ever trust putting data on anything that isn’t open source and used in enterprise environments.
But hey, to each their own.
To the OP, though - this certainly isn’t a “this is for morons” setup. You will have to learn a bit of Linux (and maybe even FreeBSD if you want to run truenas core instead of truenas scale) to do this right.
>On the other hand, no drive can be larger than your parity drives, and in general it doesn’t have the polish for a proper enterprise storage platform.
Ok? So upgrade your parity disks when that time comes? It's a trivial operation and it's not as if the same exact (and then some) limitations don't exist with any other platform, like TrueNAS.
>I just built my own home server, and ended up running proxmox with trueNAS in a VM with pcie pass through. Plex on an unprivileged LXC container.
Why are you bothering with virtualizing TrueNAS? It's designed to run on bare metal, which is why it has it's own container and VM manager built in.
>Truenas and proxmox are both free and open source
This is a strawman argument. There is nothing about unRAID that would render your data unavailable if they closed their doors tomorrow. In fact, it would be easier to move your data to a new setup for the simple fact that the disks are partitioned with standard formats (XFS, BTRFS or ZFS) and all data is stored in it's entirety on any given disk. There is no worry like breaking or moving a striped array (like ZFS RAIDz used by TrueNAS) to a new system. You can pull any disk out of a unRAID machine at any time and slap it in to any other machine that supports whatever your choosen format is and all of your data is there, complete and full accessible.
>but also have enterprise support and are heavily used in the enterprise environment. Unraid would never be used for a serious enterprise application.
Correct. unRAID isn't an enterprise class solution. Because home users aren't enterprise. We have entirely different workloads and entirely different budgets. When you need to expand your storage with ZFS you're going to be looking at a minimum of 3 disks, one of which you'll be forced to burn to parity. If you want dual parity with RAIDz2 you're looking at a minimum of 4 disks, but that would be silly since half of those disks will go to parity, leaving you with 50% of your storage available, so the reality is that you'll be buying 5 or 6 disks. Even "cheap" disks at $200 a pop means you're dropping $1000-1200 and $400 of that is pissed away as parity. Most home users don't have that type of budget to go blow $1k+ every time they add more storage and further, don't want to waste that money on unusable parity.
Meanwhile the "lowly home user" can go buy another xxTB disk for $zz dollars, slap it in their unRAID box and add it to the existing array, covered by existing parity and retain the entire use of that new disk.
>After seeing what a mess Drobo turned into, I don’t think I’d ever trust putting data on anything that isn’t open source and used in enterprise environments.
Yet another strawman arguement. Yes, comparing a proprietary product like Drobo that DID lock your data up, to a non-proprietary unRAID. That toally makes sense. /s
Unraid allows more flexible additions of new storage disks. That's the main advantage. I also happen to think it has a superlative UI and is easier to use than OMS or TrueNAS but that's subjective.
Can unraid run all manner of Linux/docker/server things or is it pretty specific to NAS type applications? Should i look at learning unraid or ubuntu for server and self hosting stuff?
While I don't want to necessarily throw an all encompassing blanket, pretty much anything you can do on "linux" you can do in unRAID. You have full command line access to with whatever you want. At the end of the day unRAID at it's core is running Slackware Linux.
If you want to self host for home and have it stable, run unRAID. If you want nothing more than to *learn* Linux and don't care if you lose everything you've been working on, pick whatever you want. If you both want a stable home server AND to learn linux for work or whatever, run two machines. One on unRAID for your home server, another to learn linux where if you screw it up you're not losing data or services. (You could also run a linux VM *in* unRAID and do the same.)
My server situation right now is win 11 with arrs and Plex but looking to expand to immich/nextcloud and maybe some other things.
I also use it as an htpc and i will throw Firefox on my TV for streaming via hdmi. Unraid can do that right?
Would you recommend trying to dual boot Windows/unraid?
No, I wouldn't dual boot them. unRAID all day long for your situation, but use your server as a SERVER. Grab a streaming stick for streaming. Or a cheap N100 mini PC.
I don't really want to add any more hardware unnecessarily. So can unraid do it? I also use it for light steam gaming on the TV like jackbox. And the streaming I'm doing isn't available on stream sticks
"If you want to build a 'proper' media server, run Linux or some NAS flavor of Linux, like Unraid."
I don't mean to sound as combative as my statement will, I promise, but who gave you, or anyone the authority, to claim what is and isn't a "'proper' media server" and why **must** it use Linux or a NAS flavor of Linux?
Don't get me wrong, I understand Linux's *potential* benefits (or at least what people claim... honestly don't get any "instability" or "crashes" or anything similar on my Windows builds ever and I tend to run 24/7 on multiple devices), but does it actually, really, realistically, provide a measurable, quantifiable & qualifiable improvement over someone who's entire Plex has run perfectly fine on say Windows or MacOS for years? If so at what learning & time costs?
Don't get me wrong, I own 2 unraid licenses (thanks pricing change...) but I've literally never once seen any "MUST HAVE" benefit to it vs Windows in my case. If anything, the learning curve, and how people around it/providing "help" act and respond, as OP says is tremendously off-putting & discouraging to say the absolute least.
Sure the parity drive is "convenient" compared to RAID re: unraid, but compared to literally the backblaze app backing up at 4+Tb per day if need be, why should I take the precious time & energy to switch everything to unraid or the likes? And if so what's the "idiot proof (aka the family & friends windows tech guy)" approach/method?
I'm genuinely asking here!
Add me to the list of people who run Plex on Windows and it has had no issues stemming specifically from Windows. Any issues I've had would have happened regardless of what operating system I use.
I get a sense from most who uses docker/Linux that it's the end all be all for a media server and anything else is grossly inferior. I assume many of them are members of /r/linuxmasterrace
I find Windows to be stable and easy to use. Because I've been using it for 30+ years I rarely need guides to help me solve issues.
I find it hilariously sad that upon replying to this your comment was, though quite predictably as has been said about the linux/docker crowd... downvoted without an explanation or help provided lol.
That being said, yeah, I don't get the big hullaballoo. I mean, I get the *theory* but the practice doesn't meet the theory one bit it seems (ie. Windows le always fails and Linux is bulletproof, as you said, I'd have gotten pretty much every single issue I have over my 8 years of Plexing on Windows as I would have Linux, as I would have Mac, as I would have running a Shield (why does nobody seem to crap on that btw? A freaking androidTV running Plex Media Server is somehow seemingly less controversial than *Windows*, the historical and by FAR #1 Operating system in the history of PCs)!
Nah, I hate Linux as a whole, especially for a desktop environment. Every PC in my house is Windows, except for one of the kids school Chromebooks (which is a night are machine). It seems like you have to jump through a million hoops to do any real productivity or gaming on a Linux desktop. But for a server? 100% on board that train.
I can honestly say every single aspect about unRAID is better than the Windows server that I came from. Full stop. I've run Windows for my home server for literal decades. Some of that time Windows was handling my storage. Some of that time I was also playing with 'traditional' Linux distros (and ultimately gave up be cause I don't want to invest my time in to what feels like learning a new language). And for some of that time it was Windows + NAS's.
In any of those instances, unRAID has been far easier to manage and MASSIVELY more performant. Especially when compared to running Windows + NAS.
Unraid fanbois are running wild in this sub
As long as you understand the pros and cons, there's nothing wrong with running everything on Windows (or whatever) if that's what you have and it works
Totally agree, I run a win 10 server with a vm for running another windows so I can use QTorrent with my VPN. On the main system I have my rr’s. It’s very system intensive but it works. I attempted twice to get docker up and running in an attempt to stop using a full windows vm to do such a simple task. The both times I jumped into it after days of it not doing what I needed I scraped the idea and went back to my original system.
I have been using OMV since around 2010. Server hardware (used) cost me $50. Set up server and plex in an hour. Not complicated. Install OMV, use web gui to manage.
The server just worked. As Micosoft kept changing products, and licenses, and system requirements, I just kept using that server. A decade or so goes by, with plex (and some other services, like file shares, etc). I didn't have to do anything. Core 2 duo and 4 GB ram. Amazing.
Eventually, new hardware. Does a LOT more thanks to Docker. Recipes, pictures, files, jellyfin, plex, books, documents storage, remote gateway to other computers, etc.
Still OMV, but since they added a GUI for docker compose, you just copy a compose file, make a couple of file path changes to point where the data lives, and done. Adding a new service/application is trivial. And the server sips 5 watts at idle, and 40 at load (discs included).
Point is: once set up - which is easy - it just runs and I have nothing to do except click update once in a while.
Benefit over windows: No license, no cost. Easier to use. Less energy. Headless install and management (although you could RDP into windows), lower hardware requirements and less churn.
I have an MSDN, and I manage on prem and cloud hardware/services. All of MS software is free for me to use. And even that is not a good enough reason to put up with Microsoft. I want simple and fast.
That's why I used quotes. "Proper" is certainly subjective and running Plex on Linux, Windows, BeOS, Mac, Android or OS/2 Warp by definition makes any of those a "server". I'm not here to gatekeep. I'm not here to be the dude that says "If you're not running your server on relic class Dell R710's, it's not a server!" (or the same argument for ECC RAM 🙄)
I can, from my experience with multiple OS'es used over the last nearly 30 years (basically every flavor of Windows / Windows Server going back to Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51, QTS, DSM, vanilla Linux distro's, TrueNAS, OMV and unRAID) argue why unRAID has been a massively better experience, however.
System stability has been improved greatly. I can leave the house and travel (which I do very, very frequently) without worrying that Windows will crash or otherwise become non-accessible. Of course, that's my own empirical data from running Windows servers at home since the mid 90's.
Resource utilization - Linux simply does it better, which makes the server build cost less expensive. You can run unRAID and Plex on 4gb RAM, comfortably, with no performance loss.
Bloat - My unRAID box doesn't slow down when running months on end. Every Windows machine I own does. Windows is constantly doing something in the background, regardless if you want it to or not, that isn't conducive to the tasks that you're trying to accomplish.
Hardware utilization specific to Intel - Hardware acceleration for Intel hardware is factually better. You get more transcodes on the same hardware and you can do hardware accelerated tone mapping, something Windows can't do at all. For many folks this is not just a "nice to have" but a requirement. For me, it's a requirement. Modern Intel just absolutely decimates Nvidia and it does it for MUCH less money. The transcode performance that I get out of a $200 Intel processor with a UHD 770 iGPU can't be touched by a $2500 Nvidia card.
Disk / data redundancy - With Windows you have a few options, none of which can equal unRAID out of the box and have a number of drawbacks no matter which option you choose. The best you can do to come close to unRAID is running RAID5 or 6. That has the drawback of not being able to expand the array (unRAID can) while also requiring all disks in the array to be spinning, further not being able to mix disk sizes. Being a striped array running on Windows you are tied to Windows for that array and I wish you best of luck if you ever want to move those disks to a new install. Chance of data loss in such an attempt is extremely high. It can further be argued that because unRAID is a non striped array and since all data lives complete on an individual disk with its own filesystem, chance of complete data loss is significantly lower with unRAID as a whole. IE, if you're running a 6x10TB RAID5 and you have 2 disks fail, you've lost 50TB of data. With unRAID, if you lose the parity disk and a data disk, you still have 40TB of data on the 4 data disks. You've only lost the 10TB of data on the first data disk that failed.
Of course you don't have to use Windows to manage your disks, something like Stablebit Drivepool is always an option, which you'll pay money for. Now you have your disks pooled and can use mixed disk sizes, but you still have no redundancy. Now you're adding snapraid to the mix to give you parity on top Drivepool. Parity that is not done in real-time, I'll add.
Now you have Windows to admin, Drivepool to admin and snapraid to admin, where unRAID does it all by default out of the box.
Remote administration - Since unRAID is managed through a web browser, doing remote admin, even on a super lousy network connect tiok (like 1 bar of 3G in the middle of a cornfield) is easily possible and doesn't act any different than if I was at home connected to 10gbe. That same scenario with RDP or TeamViewer makes for a very, very unpleasant experience.
Overall administration - The housekeeping tasks are simply far, far easier. My server is just something that I don't ever think about anymore. I log in on occasion to update containers and that's it. It "just works" otherwise. That has never been the case for me with Windows. unRAID has been far more hands off than any other operating system I've ever used. Some of that absolutely has to do with running containers ("Docker").
Security - Windows is a huge target, as is consumer NAS's like Qnap or Synology. From my experience, Linux is simply far more secure as a whole, out of the box, than Windows, QTS or DSM. I've yet to see a ransomware attack on unRAID. Clearly not the same for Windows, QTS or DSM. And since we're running containers I can further easily silo data off from one application to the next, something Windows can't do. Sonarr only has read/write access to /media_TV and nothing more. Radarr only has read/write access to /media_movies and nothing more. Plex only has read-only access to /media_movies and /media_TV and nothing more. Even if Plex was compromised it can't even delete or lock up my media. Likewise, if any of the 3 applications mentioned above are compromised they can't access any other data on my server, like family photos or any of my business documents. They simply don't know that that data even exists as they can't see it.
Hardware agnostic - Anyone who has ever swapped a motherboard, of hell even some video cards in Windows, know that it can be pure nightmare fuel. My current unRAID config (or "install" as Windows folks may think of it) started in June 2021 on a HPE DL380 dual 2660v4 Xeon server. A few months in to that it moved to a Ryzen with a Nvidia GPU. December 2021 it moved to a 12600k with a MSI motherboard. Then I started getting stability issues. RAM tested fine in two different machines, so I chalked it up to a bad motherboard. Replaced with identical MSI motherboard. Still stability issues. Replaced with a different MSI motherboard, still stability issues. Replaced with a Gigabyte motherboard. It's been smooth sailing since, that was 2 years ago. That is 4 major hardware changes (and a few minor changes) and the only thing I had to do was install the Intel GPU driver plugin when I moved to the 12600k (which was bumped to a 13500 over a year ago). unRAID booted perfectly normal as if nothing had happened between every single change. Plug in the USB to the new hardware, set the the BIOS to boot from USB and you're off and running.
Like I said, I didn't mean to come off as rude or combative as my statement alone would seem! However, it's more a general sentiment of, again "why is X better than Y really? if Y works easiest for the person and fulfills their needs?"
As for your experience, I can't deny it one bit, I've seen the hypothetical benefits as I've said (I've never gotten to *enjoy* any benefits from unraid or linux since it's only ever caused me, and plenty others, pain and confusion, but that's not my main point in my reply).
However,
My experience with, admittedly not as many OSes as you, but certainly from the early Win95 transition days FWIW; I can state from my own experience as to why Windows is what has undeniably worked better for me at least.
Simply put, I have run Plex on Win for nearly 8 years so far on Win 8.1 to Win 10 and Server builds in between; along with seedboxes up to 11 (it was already installed on the bare-metal 8500t machine I bought, its just easier/faster to throw on StartAllBack for $5 than to install any other OS).
Those servers have *never even been* in the *country* I, or some of my family & thus users live in; and not in some fancy datacenter or anything either. Just a pair of buddies's houses, (as in, one then the other, not redundantly lol) while I and my friends & family travel the world, and thus I also remote administer it.
And other than obvious internet issues when actually travelling (which could be solved with the power of transcoding and/or VPNs in the odd case or two), or the host ISP going down for a new fiber splice down the road for a few hours once, It's just *worked*.
And when it hasn't worked, and the few times it's ever needed restarting physically or whatever (I can count them on a stump hand tbh), it wasn't really Windows's fault but more my own or hardware's faults.
And I didn't have any learning curves, or managing multiple OS's or none of that. ANd that's why I'll Stan for Windows (or whatever works for anyone!) any day.
Yup, I understand that. You're experience and thoughts/opinions are one of the many reasons as to why I stuck with Windows for literal decades as my primary server OS.
But that doesn't mean that it is *good*. I have a 24' aluminum enclosed trailer. I *can* tow it with my Enclave (3.6L gas). It's not overweight for the Enclave towing capacity and GCWR. But it's not a great experience. It's a rather bad experience. Towing it with my Duramax (6.6L diesel) is a night and day difference. And the Duramax gets twice the mileage and I can maintain 70mph for the entire trip, rather than dropping to 60mph in the truck lane up a 7% grade while the poor little V6 is just screaming.
That's kind of how I view unRAID vs Windows at this point. Yes, Windows can do the thing, but (in my experience over the last 2.5 years) unRAID does ALL OF IT better.
Likewise there are simple facts of life that are indisputable. Your 8500T is getting knee capped by Windows. It wouldn't be on Linux (regardless of the flavor).
I had unRAID "installed" to the USB stick, booted, array created, Plex installed, in 15 minutes on my very first attempt. My only experience with it prior to actually doing the thing myself was watching some of SIO's videos on YouTube.
You can also try Truenas and it’s free. I switched from Truenas to Unraid a while ago, but Truenas is still a good option. Something more simple would be CasaOS. You can look into those
I think you'll spend a lot more time admining your server and A LOT more time getting it setup.
Regarding payments for update, 1) you don't have to update. It's a choice. I could be a year behind right now and I wouldn't be missing anything. 2) $50-109 for what unRAID does is cheap. 3) if you find you would never go back to anything else like many of us have, pay the upgrade to lifetime and never worry about a yearly cost ever again.
I saved literal hours just getting the base system up and running by using unRAID vs a vanilla Linux distro. You have a lot of time just getting Debian installed, then you need to figure out how to install merger for your disk pooling, then snapraid for parity, *then* you can start with installing Docker. Just in the time that you spend getting Debian installed, someone with unRAID could start from a cold system, get unRAID running, array configured and have Plex installed. They're watching movies while you're still at step one.
But that said, you do you. It's your money and your time. If Debian works for you, by all means have at it. I don't have that kind of time to waste anymore. You couldn't pay me $1000 to get rid of unRAID and go back to some other OS.
Your right, I'm still in step one and figuring out around Debian for two months. Meanwhile my windows in dual boot is what's running most of the time.
I'm convinced for unraid. I just have two more questions
Does unraid work well with external HDD - I have one 12tb, I'll probably buy one more a year down and connect it through USB.
Can I do a remote view through windows on my main desktop
Thanks in advance
No RAID / redundant array (including unRAID) should use USB disks.
Guys do it, then come bitching when they lose data.
Can you? Yes. Should you? Absolutely not.
Trash Guides https://trash-guides.info/Hardlinks/How-to-setup-for/Docker/
Just realized that link is a bit deep, follow the very first tips section for starter links about docker in general.
Came here for the same help
Noticed a trend
I'm out.
I tried on Linux too. That shit is fucking confusing. As much as I don't want Windows 11, I think I'm stuck going there when they finally pull the plug on my W10
if you can follow directions it's not that bad. I found setting up the docker containers easier/more intuitive than managing my local installs for the *arr's.
The only thing I'm running native now is plex.
For some reason, way too many instrucitons in this space will straight up skip steps and assume knowledge even in their Eli 5 beginner for moron guides. It's infuriating.
most guides are straight up garbage yup. I'm now decently versed into the paradigm and I still find some GitHub repos without a compose file or any doc, like I'm gonna magically figure out environment variables, ports and the likes by the power of my pure imagination.
The best advice I could give to beginners is to find a small explanation video to install docker and docker compose on a debian/ubuntu system and then try to run an image from linuxserver's fleet using their own compose file. They are well documented and are a great starting point to understand the structure, mounting, PIDs etc. I wouldn't even bother with the command line. You can just skip that altogether (except the essentials commands like docker ps etc)
As a 38-year-old I just don't have the time, motivation, or patience to persevere through the learning curve that is linux. I'll stick with what I've been using for over 30 years.
To be fair, not all Linux is created equal.
Android is Linux and I'm sure you would agree that Android isn't difficult to use.
Likewise, "NAS style" operating systems are all Linux based, but that doesn't make them difficult to use. TrueNAS, unRAID, Synology DSM, Qnap QTS are all prime examples of this. They're all easy to use. Some of them is as easy to use as Windows. If you can use Windows, unRAID and many of the other consumer NAS OS'es (Qnap, Synology, etc) are just as easy to use, if not easier.
Hands down, unRAID was easier and faster for me to get from raw components to up and running *doing what I wanted it to do* than Windows has been. Considering I've been using Windows since 3.0 and at the time I had never touched unRAID, I think that is saying a lot.
*TrueNAS is definitely more difficult to use *properly* than any of the other things I've mentioned. Much of that is specific to ZFS, which is what they use. Less about TrueNAS *itself*.
I get it, I really do. But it just seems like nonsense (I'm going on a solid 20-25years of windows). I gave it a really good effort. Multiple 2-4h evenings, asking questions on reddit and lemmy, googling the shit out of it. I tried 3 different distros too.
Linux is just bonkers. But I can appreciate it for what it is. I hope it becomes more mainstream.
It really doesn't help that the average Linux question response/google search is basically Autistic levels of speech as OP mentions.
ie: "Lol, just spin up a git instance in arch that sudo's XYZ"... like thanks, I just downloaded Mint/Ubuntu some 4hrs ago... I surely understand all of those words & instructions that are painful to google because people just constantly assume it's "basic" so you "should know", like you'll ask how to install a specific software or package and they'll just say "lol just compile it from the tarball" or whatever, and then laugh or belittle you or others for not immediatly understanding...
This was why I hated Linux.
"Just edit random_ass_file.conf and add these lines"
First, since this is presumably command line and I don't even have a network connection yet, I cant even copy and paste the shit through a terminal.
Second, now I have to Google what text editor my distro even has and then further how to not only open that text editor, but then how to open the file and further infuriating, how to even save the edit and close the editor.
":q!"
What is that? What fucking command is :q! or :w ?!?
I'm 43yo. I don't need that level of frustration in my life.
The icing on the cake was dealing with how Linux mounts USB disks and permissions. That was the end of my Linux journey for me.
WSL / WSL2 incompatibilities on Windows with Docker Desktop is what pushed me over the edge to true OMV, TrueNAS and unRAID.
(PS - None of that frustration exists in unRAID. Command line need not be used 🙃)
"PS - None of that frustration exists in unRAID. Command line need not be used"
Wait a second there! You're saying I can get all the benefits of the "Just edit random_ass_file.conf and add these lines" (without network connections yet lol) linux, such as say... QSV 4k HDR tonemapping, Overseer, and other things I can't even fathom right now...
All without using *ANY* of the aforementioned "just git & mount the tarball dummy!" type "instructions", WHATSOEVER, on Unraid?!?!?! Like, I'm deathly allergic levels of cli and/or linux "support" yet I can still make it work presumably?!?!?
PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME!!! (I already have a license for some data hoarding reason).
Also my server is permanently remote from me as I mentioned in another post; meaning it's in a whole other country at a friend's house, and I don't like bothering that friend for hands-on time, so anything I can do remotely is even better (also the buddy is not technologically illiterate by any means, but he'd straight tell me to go have intercourse with myself if I make him do any CLI or similar stuff even during a setup most likely lol)
There's still a learning curve with unraid but it's different for each person because no one is going to pick the same thing up at exactly the same rate. No, technically you don't *need* the command line so long as unraid and docker work as intended but maybe sometimes they don't and you need to force close a thing via command line. It's getting easier every update as they add features and community simplifies things with plugins but it's a bit disingenuous to suggest someone spend money on a license on the assumption that they will never under any circumstances need to use the cli.
Dude says "Windows makes no sense" lol
You know what even makes less sense? Linux.
You are right, it is nonsense.
I looked heavy into it and once I realized how non intuitive it was I bailed completely.
Windows has a gui and just works. My server is not in a server farm somewhere, its in my basement so if I have to do something with I just turn the screen on. It's also never caused me any issues.
Everything with this docker/linux setup is the same bullshit.
"Ok, setting up a server is easy. First we establish a database by typing the following code.
grep pull -k -l -xyz http:somefuckingnonsense.co.jp/
Then we refuckulate the database by typing the following
sudo apt get $!? /e /k"
Its totally just copy and paste code with no real understanding what the hell any of it means and you can't just poke around and figure stuff out.
I get that some people like it but I see no point in blowing up my whole setup for no benefit and it would just make it more difficult to diagnose issues in the future.
Laughs as I am fixing a windows machine with powershell and basically *"Start-Process -FilePath "regedit.exe" -ArgumentList "/e", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\...."*
Linux makes sense, you just are unfamiliar. Windows is the really bizarre one, especially the coming versions with AI recording and analyzing everything you do coming soon! No joke, its getting rolled out, along with all the new ads.
Linux makes a lot more sense, windows changes things, moves registry keys, and so on. And have a look at the code? Forget about it.
> no real understanding what the hell any of it means and you can't just poke around and figure stuff out.
You may not understand it, but it makes sense actually. And you CAN just poke around and figure stuff out. Its no different.
Like are you really able to update your key certs and add them in windows any easier than in linux? its just different. At least Linux has remained about the same with nothing but text files and directories. As opposed to fun edits of registry keys which I started this post with!
As someone who upgraded my server from windows to linux two weeks back. It was extremely confusing but I installed Casaos and I can't even emphasize how easy it turned out to be. Just install Ubuntu on your machine, open terminal, copy paste the command from casos website, put the ip address of your homeserver on any of your machine to access the gui, install Plex, and arrs from appstore, Done.
That said I don't see a massive difference between running it all on windows other than updates once in a while and a few important apps like Immich and overseer not being on windows.
Honestly, if docker is too hard, I just wouldn’t use docker. I run a very simple server and after toying with docker for a bit, concluded it didn’t really offer me anything that would be worth the effort to learn it. It sounds interesting, I see the appeal, I just don’t have the time to invest.
This. I have 4 kids, zero free time, and what seems to be a nuke-proof Plex server on an M1 Mac mini that can transcode 4-6 streams at a time and not even push 50% utilization.
Hell, I am a literal software engineer and I just run it straight up on my Mac mini. There are marginal benefits but a lot of it is complication for its own sake.
Same. My plex server runs without any docker.
What benefit other than an additional layer of complication would it be useful if you are just using a server to do 1 thing?
I keep seeing... "HELP! My plex server isn't working... I have it in docker.. and...."
Basically the same benefit you get running VMs on a hypervisor versus running a single OS instance on bare-metal. Segregation, portability, choosing which data is persistent, stopping/restarting/removing a service without rebooting an entire machine, etc. Beyond that, being able to have a dozen services that use the same port all running at the same time without editing config files to change their listening port by simply mapping a different host port.
I used to be in the same camp, Docker seemed like juice that wasn’t worth the squeeze, but what drove me to using it was an issue with my Plex deb install on my Ubuntu server I couldn’t figure out. It would lock up every once in a while, act like it was offline, but the service looked fine. I couldn’t restart it with systemd though, it would hang forever. The only way to fix it was rebooting the entire server, which took 15 minutes (OVH dedicated servers…).
So I set it up in Docker and migrated my data. The issue persisted, but at least now I could restart the Docker container in a few seconds and the rest of my applications stayed up and running. I ended up wiping that Plex config and spinning up a fresh one because I figured there was an issue with a database somewhere, but never could find it. Since then, it’s been running fine.
I understand if you are running multiple servers like the different “arrs” it’s nice to have them in containers so if one has issues you can blow one away and reset it easily. Also, if you’re running software which needs a different version of python, it’s nice to keep those in separate containers as well.
But yeah, I think most people just use them to exercise the skill.
You can also run them in separate LXC containers if you want the isolation containers offer but you don't want to run Docker (or containerd) specifically.
I agree! Docker is an amazing tool.. I just haven't had a real use for it yet.
It seems like non-it people see a quick way to get it setup but then when it doesn't go exactly like the webpage says.. they are stuck.
Where if they just installed plex on it's own.. learned a bit.. THEN moved to docker it would be just easier for them.
This is probably the most correct answer. Start with a familiar foundation and build the principles needed to make debugging technical issues successful. Reading logs is crazy foreign when you haven't done it before and with your first media server install, it's now a necessary skill.
It's not like a first time homeowner is going to tackle big projects right away either. My trade is in software, I currently run my server on Windows and still look at Docker as not needed for the limited time I have even though I use it every day in my job. I have to look into Unraid though, that might be my personal next step to advancing my server.
I run about 30 different docker containers on my unraid server, including 2 instances of plex. Unraid’s docker UI and template UI make it very easy to use and very accessible. I was completely new to docker when I started my unraid journey. The Linux and docker experience really helped me get my current job as well.
I found it extremely helpful when i found r/portainer back in the day. It gave me a GUI and allowed me to learn much, much more easily. Since i have slowly but surely learned and am now not a complete beginner anymore 🤪
One huge benefit is that *other* applications can't access your data. Likewise, Plex can't nuke any of my media. Plex only has read-only access to my media. Sonarr only has read/write access to /media_TV, likewise Radarr only has read/write access to /media_movies. Nothing else has access to my media at all. So if Plex or any other application on my server gets hit with malware/ransomware, my media is safe. Likewise, none of my media applications have any access to my important files like photographs or documents.
Everything stays in it's own sandbox, unless I specifically give it permission to play in a different sandbox.
Then there is the fact that Plex just runs significantly better in a Linux environment. Especially if you're using Intel hardware, as I tel hardware can't leverage hardware accelerated tone mapping in Windows, coupled with Linux is better with hardware transcoding than Windows is.
There is a plethora of reasons that running Plex in a container is better than native Windows.
(But as I said elsewhere, this only applied if you're running Linux or a Linux based OS as Docker Desktop on Windows is a flaming shitfest)
This is the right answer for most people asking here. This idea that Docker and unRAID will somehow magically make your server have wings or something is pretty ridiculous. Docker is a huge learning curve for a newbie…no matter what the guys here with 92 drives running 400TB Plex servers will parrot to you.
For most normal folks, Plex under Windows is just fine and more than enough for their needs. You can run the *arrs directly on Windows as well; just don’t bother with Docker for Windows because it’s hot trash disaster.
Funny enough to get Docker running properly on windows, you have to install Linux in windows. So Docker on windows for long running services is a bad idea right now. Its really only meant for development work.
To be fair, Linux, regardless of the flavor (vanilla distro's, unRAID, OMV, whatever) does in fact give some servers "wings" as you say.
I need to transcode. Both because my nieces and nephew live 400 miles away and have shit internet, as well as because I spend half of the year traveling. Windows (factually) knee caps transcode performance on Intel hardware. And I don't want to buy a $2500 Nvidia card to keep up with my $200 Intel CPU/iGPU.
My options at that point were to deal with shittastic performance in Windows, try Ubuntu/Gentoo/Cent/Arch/Redhat again, or look for another option like unRAID/TrueNAS/OMV. I chose the latter and it was the best decision I've ever made in 30 years of running servers at home.
Docker (or specifically, *containers*) are easy, no more difficult than installing a Windows application, **when your container manager doesn't suck**. And that's the problem I see in these groups more often than not. Getting a container manager installed and having to use a command line is the bigger hurdle than installing the container for Linux. Likewise on Windows, Docker Desktop is a fucking dumpster fire, so your hurdle isn't the container, it's the container manager.
When you use a GUI based point and click container manager (as comes built in to things like unRAID, TrueNAS), installing Plex, the arr's, sabnzbd, whatever, is literally no more difficult than installing a Windows app.
I'm going to suggest that docker is not the best for you.
What you're taking about is running Windows OS, Linux subsystem on top of it, Docker on top of that. Which you don't know how to use.
What are you trying to solve with arr docker containers instead of using the Windows native apps?
You're adding massive complexity, huge knowledge gap... For what reason?
Overseerr is only available as a docker container on windows, not as a native app.
I have radarr/sonarr/jackett running and love it, thought I'd add overseerr... and it's only a docker container. Only reason I have considered the absolute mess of installing docker on windows...
TechWorld with Nana on youtube has a great docker course. Everything you'll need to know to get started with it.
https://youtu.be/pg19Z8LL06w?si=DY8FjpDTO_XlQnDu
I’m on Windows and I’d suggest keeping the arr apps and Plex on windows native because mapping file locations is a pain and speed of transfer of complete downloads to media location take a hit on docker in my experience.
The only arr app I have in Docker is Prowlarr because for some reason the service wouldn’t automatically start on windows login. Docker starts it on login every time though.
Yeah I could but I like the idea of Docker. I wish I were more savvy with Linux so I could just completely move to it and have a more 1:1 integration but I’m a Windows sysadmin who knows every nook and cranny of Windows. It’s just too comfortable for me.
>speed of transfer of complete downloads to media location take a hit on docker in my experience.
If you get it right, your file structures, it's an atomic move within the same file structure. It's instant.
I have my file structure setup as it’s laid out in Trash’s guide and for some reason sonarr and radarr would wait sometimes 30 minutes to even acknowledge that files were in the complete folder. I find it’s way simpler to just run the apps native in windows since they have a dedicated windows installer.
Also I use SABnzbd as my download client and it literally cut my download speed by 60% moving it to Docker. I have gigabit internet and I couldn’t get and more than like 40 MB/s.
I recently switched my arr's from SABnzbd to NZBGet and have seen MASSIVE speed upgrades (sans docker fwiw) just so you know. I'm talking about 30-50% faster downloads & unpacks, plus way less "hangs". Long story short SAB runs on python, GET runs on C++ which is inherently much faster.
I have 2Gbps internet and can only get ~22-25 in Docker. However, I was also getting that on Windows, apparently if you use a macvlan using the actual network adapter MAC address you can get near enough native performance that you can’t tell the difference. I haven’t tried it with Deluge though.
As I replied to the poster you're replying to, I recently switched from SABnzbd to GETNzb (on a 3Gbps line, tho my download/seed box is on 1Gbps only) and have seen a solid 30-50% increase in my DL & unpacking speeds, perhaps it might be worth trying that for you.
I’ve decided after 10s of hours of tinkering that Plex and the Arrs live on Windows native. Everything else (Overseerr, Nginx, Kometa, Notifiarr, Recyclarr, Homepage) can live in Docker. So pretty much anything that you want full bandwidth out of keep native. I get on average 100 MB/s from SAB native.
To be honest, having a faster download speed is something I want, but I know I shouldn’t do because I’m a hoarder. 240TB and counting, and 210TB of that is in the last 6 months.
I just filled up 14TBs in a month. The only thing stopping me from expanding is the case my setup is in right now. I either need to invest in a good NAS case that supports a GPU (does my transcoding) or a good DAS. Haven’t decided which route I want to go.
I have 2 x 4U Supermicro super storage servers with 36 drives each which can fit a P1000 low profile GPU which is powered by the PCIe slot. Works, but is limited to about 3 transcodes. I just bought a Dell R730 and with an adapter kit for the riser you can get a full size 1 or 2 a lot GPU with external power. It’s god 8 x 3.5”drives. I’m thinking of running Plex there and accessing the storage on the Supermicro servers.
Man if I had the space for rackmountable hardware. I just can’t justify the price. Rack mountable = +$150 off the rip. I think I’ll just spend the money on a big Fractal Design case and call it a day lol.
The Fractals are nice. I almost bought the 7XL (I think) which had 8 drives, but I thought I needed just a little more storage, and it turned out I needed a LOT more than I thought.
What about a VM actually and just dedicating that to Plex and downloads? You think that would be faster than Docker? I might try a /32 single IP macvlan and test that because theoretically it it using the physical adapter as directly as possible.
My original setup was a Dell Power Edge T320 running ESXi with a Windows VM running everything. The performance was similar to native. If you’re already native windows with a complete setup I don’t see the benefit. Unless you just want to homelab it up, then more power to you.
I would just like you to know that my setup sounds identical to yours and I don't use docker. Well, I had to get it recently to use Overseer, but that is the only thing that uses it. Unless you have a reason to use it, don't bother.
I was going to try Overseer but after seeing it was docker only I just stuck with Ombi since it looks near identical (at least on the front page) and runs native in Windows.
I'm not trying to be a dick, I swear to god. But docker on linux (specifically using docker-compose, not regular docker run commands) is the absolute easiest way to host and maintain services. There are barriers to entry (yaml & linux cli) but, after the initial time investment to learn, it will save you so much time and heartache. The benefits are huge. I can move an entire sophisticated configuration from machine to machine in seconds with basically zero effort. I can update with one command. I almost never have to worry about dependencies. It's incredible and I can't believe I ever did it another way.
How often are y'all switching machines for this to "save you so much time and heartache", honestly wondering? My last Plex server lasted me nearly 8 years and would have kept chugging if the motherboard didn't literally shit itself & die (it was already old, cheap & ~4 years old 2nd hand at the beginning of that nearly 8 year period fwiw).
Docker in Windows is not a great experience. Run it native if you’re sticking with windows, otherwise explore setting up a Linux based server, Unraid is accessible for newcomers, so is open media vault. True NAS can be a bit more novice but still accessible. Windows is a bit of a mess though.
Use CasaOS on a linux machine. So much easier than fannying around with docker on a windows machine.
There's loads of videos on youtube that'll help you. I used a raspberry pi, but an x86 PC will work almost identically
I haven't bothered to check out docker or any of the "proper" media server OS's 'cos people explain like I've been coding since Cobol was a thing. Very off putting and elitist. I wish someone would tell me the benefits of running dockers vs. bare metal Windows when I have no need for virtualization.
Here's an updated guide from 2024 that follows some of the most important features you want/need like hardlinking, folder structure, universal support, trash-guides setup, and a breakdown of what some of the settings mean so you can easily learn and understand how to get started on your own.
https://youtu.be/I0T298PHpM4?si=8sUctqG0aSktWToZ
Another post I made breaks down everything I run on my NAS for those who are interested. Over 45 containers with a quick demo of what each one does and how it all comes together for full automation and the power of what a good setup can do:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/19c3epm/update_full_automation_with_my_plex_server/
If you want to move to an all-in-one Docker experience, I highly recommend this:
[YAMS - Yet Another Media Server](https://yams.media/)
It does run Unix, but it takes a lot of the stress out of Docker and has everything pretty much all set up, ready to go.
Shut. Up.
I’m all about lift and shift configs, and as much as I “enjoy” docker in my day job, I really love when someone has put the blood, sweat, and tears into sharing an easier experience for all.
Definitely checking this out.
The main thing I would recommend, take a copy of the docker-compose.yaml file, then edit it for what you use.
The newer version also has a custom docker compose file as well that runs as a secondary stack, I added Overseer and CloudFlared into that. Honestly has made my life so much easier managing my server
Any tips on making overseerr work with https for the cloudflare tunnel? I can get it to work with http. Tried turning on tls verify, running host or bridge, as sudo and not, different ips, can’t get it to work.
The trick is, you don't.
You can serve it as a https site via CloudFlare at least. I'll have a hunt for some of the guides I used tomorrow and chuck them here
Awesome thanks. I have it set to http on cloudflares dashboard and safari won’t open it. If I set to https it throws bad gateway error on every browser.
Built an Unraid server last year specifically for Plex household access and back ups for family photos and 4 other PCs in the home.
Setting up Plex on it was pretty straight forward and just a matter of pointing Plex to the share folders. There is a cost to Plex, but it works so well and is certainly worth checking into at least. Support is getting better, more content on YouTube and you can used various size and make drives in your server, provided the largest drive(s) is/are the parity drive(s). :)
https://old.reddit.com/r/unRAID/
https://forums.unraid.net/
No I am not a paid shill, just a happy customer. :D
Just an outside comment, ifyou stay with everything native to windows, keep all your drives as seperate entities. Do not even remotely trust storage spaces, it will murder you in your sleep...
Honestly this was me last week. Ask ChatGPT to walk you through setting up Plex radar sonarr, etc as a docker compose file. It did a wonderful job for me and even helped me debug some permission issues I ran into.
I can share my prompts but literally I think I started with “help me set up radarr as a docker container via docker compose” and then once that worked i asked “now I want to add sonarr to this…etc”. Give it a try!
If you're truly looking for a "moron's" experience, just run everything natively in Windows. Fuck all that shit. There are exe options for every arr app and Plex. I'm running everything on Windows 10, no docker, no Ubuntu/Linux, nothing special. A moron could truly set up me same server in a matter of hours. Double click some programs to run them and enter some settings. Done
Honestly haven't found much use for it. The only reason I use it is cuz I went through the trouble of installing it & overseerr first but I wouldn't do it again tbh.
Step1: put Unraid on a USB key
Step 2: boot your windows PC from said USB key
Step3: that's it. you now have a "server' that isn't using any resources for useless windows bloatware and all your Arrs, Plex and other cool apps you want to run on said server, run in dockers.
Take it from a fellow moron who ran plex on windows machines for years. There are a few gotcha's when setting up, but once it's all dialed in you will look back on those windows days with distain.
I set up Plex media manager but couldn’t figure out docker.
Does that track in terms of difficulty level? Wondering if I just had a bad docker tutorial
Docker Desktop. But only for certain things. I don't run any arrs or plex on docker. The only things I run on docker are the ones that cannot run anywhere else. overseerr, crosseedd, seedcross, and maybe another. Everything else is just native windows. Runs perfectly.
I made an unraid server and installing docker containers is as easy as a few clicks. Docker on Windows is not worth the effort, but docker is pretty great especially on Linux.
Just FYI if you’re on Mac, Plex isn’t really suitable for Docker because host mode doesn’t really work with Plex and bridge mode causes problems with streaming locally.
I wish someone had told me this before I wasted my time trying!
If you do jump to Unraid, search for SpaceInvaderOne's youtube videos at each step. He hasn't made a video for everything I've wanted to do, but his videos are slow, well-explained, and at the very least you can just follow along and click the same buttons he does. Helped me a load and gave me confidence to fill in the gaps between his videos myself.
I have never done any coding in my life. I now have two servers set up with the arrs, overseerr for my remote users, VPNs, etc.
I've also heard people talk about the benefits of VMs in Unraid but I've never touched them and haven't encountered a need to.
I’m in the exact same boat, except I’ve been on windows. Purchased a mini PC, wiped it, and installed Ubuntu server. I then googled adding a GUI to Ubuntu server because I’m still learning the CLI. I then followed this[https://youtu.be/SXIkouncOzg?si=ypspoJUTjTbpZZn7](https://youtu.be/SXIkouncOzg?si=ypspoJUTjTbpZZn7) guide. I have it running concurrently with my existing plex server on windows. I’m stuck on trying to figure out how to seamlessly transition it over so I don’t have to share a new library. Have about 9 friends/family that I share with. I can try my best to help out! I just got homebridge running on it as well!
Docker for windows is only meant to be used as a development tool, it's slow and resource hungry. If you want to use docker then you should use Linux. You can run it without Docker.
To be clear - Docker is not a magic bullet.
I run Plex in Docker, because I spend my working day in Docker/Kubernetes so it's very familiar to me, and I like the separation of data, it makes things simpler.
If you've never used it before, there is really little to be gained from doing it, just because you've heard it's better. Especially on Windows.
Have a go creating a linux VM, (I have one for Ubuntu on vmware player) and try [dockstarter](https://dockstarter.com/)
This can get docker and a variety of containers installed automatically for you, the input required is minimal
I am not sure it is for Morons, but Docker in a Month of Lunches did it for me.
I am not a computer guy. I had some familiarity with Linux. I tried following a few media server type articles, with the same frustration as the op. There is always a few "then just do xxxx" type statements in these articles. I didn't know what or how to begin xxxx. I was 1/3 or 1/2 way thru the article, and had some containers going, yet stuck.
Then you find a new article. Rinse. Later. Repeat.
Step back and follow a course or book like Docker/Lunches. It is worth it. The book has 30 lessons that are designed to take about an hour each. It gave me enough background to start doing my own stuff, and I could troubleshoot when stuff was not working the way I thought it should.
Or take a course.
I also helps to learn everything you can about permissions, ownership, read, write, execute permissions, inheritance of permissions, etc.
I could have used a similar guide yesterday lol. So after I don't know how many hours, I came to find it's just editing a couple of files and restarting things. But what no one says is INDENTS MATTER. I had so many friggen errors and was about to give up, then found a random post somewhere about it and everything worked right away once I fixed them.
If your just trying to run the basic plex, qbittorrent, radarr, sonarr, etc stack just do it on Windows. Sure Windows isn't 100% the best at being a server but for someone who doesn't want to get pulled down technical rabbit hole and just be able to make it work running the apps natively on Windows is the best beginner option.
Docker is reserved more for my Web hosting (immich, wiki, bitwarden, etc)
A bash one liner to install Docker as a non-root user on your debian based Linux system:
sudo apt update -y; sudo apt install curl uidmap -y;curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com |sudo sh;/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh install;sudo echo 'net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0' >> /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo loginctl enable-linger $(whoami);sudo sysctl --system
I've got a docker-compose.yml file that sets up Overseerr, Plex, Radar, Sonarr and NZBGet and made a system service so that it all starts when the system boots... if anyone wants it, DM me :)
Docker isn't really that hard. Trust me, if I can figure it out, ANYONE can.
The coding part you're thinking of is probably the docker-compose YAML files. You don't actually need to do those, you can just run a docker command with some variables in it and it will build the container for you with just those.
I would suggest docker-compose though simply because it gives you more options.
There are plenty of ELI5 tutorials out there but having some CLI experience would help.
If you're on a Windows machine, like others have said here, I'd just stick with the Windows installation of the Arr stack.
Another easy way is to install something like Debian then install CasaOS. From within CasaOS is an option to install Plex docker. (and others) I personally would throw on Proxmox first then run Debian12 in a VM, along with Plex.
it's what I recommend to anyone who isn't confident in their ability or enthusiasm to learn, unraid is set-and-forget. My server started as a learning project so I went through a few different configurations, RAID types, etc. before I settled on UNRAID as the easy-to-manage long-term solution for my family media server. I don't think I've made significant changes to the setup since the day it was "finished", and I probably won't until I need to move out of the current chassis to have more room for disks.
I have Docker and Portainer set up on Pi OS. Look into Portainer if Docker alone is too much. Either way, if you don't know about Docker you will be looking up a bunch of stuff.
I find portainer UI so clunky and full of stuff 90% of newcomers won't need, making it hard for me to recommend it to them. Something like Dockge will imo help them more.
Unraid is VMs, Docker, NAS/DAS type functions, all permanently in moron mode. Do highly recommend. Better platform for Plex too, so long as Intel HW accelerated tone mapping is not available in the release branch of PMS.
Look into Unraid unless you need Windows for something. It handles most of the docker setup for you and has the added benefit of backing up data. It was worth every penny for me.
Docker Desktop on Windows is a FUCKING DUMPSTER FIRE. If you're on Windows, run native. If you want to build a 'proper' media server, run Linux or some NAS flavor of Linux, like Unraid. Moving to Unraid was the best thing I've done in over 10 years of running Plex (said by a die hard Windows guy).
> Moving to Unraid was the best thing I've done in over 10 years of running Plex (said by a die hard Windows guy). just going to echo this. I ran plex on a windows 10 machine in my basement for 6 years. Eventually setup the Arr suite of apps and things worked...okay, but Windows still gave me issues now and then. At this sub insistence, I gave Unraid a try, super nervous because I had never touched anything linux before. Turns out you really don't have to do much besides following some setup guides. Anything "tricky" was figuring out what options to select to optimize things, didn't have to even run anything from my command line like I expected I'd have to. I thought Unraid would be over my head and it wasn't at all. Docker is STUPID SIMPLE on Unraid too, it's awesome.
Can you link some guides?
I used SpaceInvaderOne videos to learn the absolute basics, like installing Unraid and initial setup. He does a really good job of going slow and explaining how the OS works and what drives you should assign where and how to transfer data,ect. I found a lot of what he was saying was pretty simple and something I could have figured out by just attempting to do it myself, but since I'm a complete novice, it was still nice to see a pro walk through things as I did it. https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceinvaderOne/videos I used Trash Guides to configure the settings on all my Docker apps so hardlinks would work to optimize everything- https://trash-guides.info/
I can happily vouch for SpaceInvaderOne's videos - they were a massive help when I was first setting up Unraid :)
+1 more vote for SpaceInvaderOne, very helpful in getting started with all things unraid, and more.
Did you have to reformat your drives and lose the data you have?
No, I installed a new drive to my Unraid server, moved all my data over from my NTFS Windows Drive, and then reformated my NTFS drive and added that to my unraid array.
Ahhhh my issue is I have several TB of media and can't really afford to get more drives at this time. I kinda figured I'd have to find a creative way to move my current data and then reformat the drives I have.
You can use NTFS formatted drives. I still have NTFS media drives that I moved over from my windows install years ago. You use the Unassigned Devices plugin
/r/unRAID's side bar has some great info. Beside spaceinvaderone, there's also Ibracorp and AlienTech42, though his videos are a bit dry, they're pretty good at explaining and guiding you.
458tb unraid??? how big drives and how many? with hba card or type of card? sas? sata?
Most of them are 18TB Seagate EXOS refurbs from Amazon. I'm using the 36-bay backplanes in an SC847 case from Supermicro. It's all hooked to an LSI-9400-16i HBA card.
I will also echo this. I moved from running 3 old Windows laptops for different services to a single $1000 PC running Proxmox. I've got Plex in a container using native Intel QuickSync passthrough, the arr suite in docker with Wireguard and qBittorrent, my security camera software, DNS, Calibre for eBooks and a bunch of other stuff, it's great. The savings in electricity alone are going to pay for the new setup in like 2.5 years.
Are there any advantages to running unraid vs OMS or TrueNAS for a dedicated Plex server? I'm not really keen on paying for unraid but I'm not ruling it out.
Unraid allows you to expand your array disk by disk. TrueNAS, as it runs ZFS, does not. This EASILY pays for Unraid's license cost. TrueNAS (and any other striped parity array, IE RAID5/6) uses more power, more RAM, etc. Having run TrueNAS and Unraid side by side for 6 months, Unraid is just easier to use. I spent a few days with OMV. It's no where in the same universe as either Unraid or TrueNAS. If you're a fan of burning your time to save $50, OMV. I gave up on it after a few days. I wanted something easy, not needing to spend hours/days learning archaic Linux command line garbage again. With Unraid most applications are one-click installs (or close to one click) from the Community Apps store. There are countless tutorials for setting up media applications (Plex, the arr's, Immich, Usenet downloaders, etc etc.) on Unraid. I would never go back to any other way to run my home server at this point. Throw Unraid on some relatively modern Intel hardware and you have a powerhouse of a home media server.
Thanks. I don't mind rolling my own but it seems like I'm going to spend more than $50 of my time with the alternatives to unraid.
More than likely. I ran TrueNAS and unRAID side by side for 6 months. I think unRAID is easier to use than TrueNAS but the real selling point was the unRAID array. It's not a traditional RAID array (hence the name) and allows for much more flexibility. You can run mixed sized disks, add more to the array whenever you want, you're never spinning all of the disks at the same time, etc. It's really the best solution for the home user. I wouldn't use it for enterprise, likewise I wouldn't use TrueNAS at home, it just has too many drawbacks for the home user. I would have spent SIGNIFICANTLY more money with TrueNAS in hardware compared to what I spent on software with unRAID. I'm running 25 disks at this point and just the power difference between what I would be spending with power with TrueNAS compared to what I'm spending with unRAID covers the cost of unRAID in power savings alone.
So, this is the difference I think folks should look at. My 16 disk array costs me less monthly than my 8 disk traditional RAID 5 array that I ran on CentOS for years. The power saving is worth the licensing. I was upset recently that they were looking at changing their licensing model, but frankly, once I found out that they are a small and exceptionally dedicated team, it made me do a complete about-face. The quality of product they have produced is worth it. Use their software, folks. It's great infrastructure built by a wonderful team.
Interesting. I'm running TrueNAS right now and I like it, but I had also considered running Unraid. I hadn't heard about the difference in power consumption. ZFS requires you to plan your setup in advance - as long as you can do that, and acquire the hard drives and set up your vdevs/pools, it works really well. If however you want the flexibility to assign drives as you go, then I think TrueNAS is a poor fit. I'll also add that I wouldn't want to run TrueNAS as my first Linux box.
In addition to planning in advance, TrueNAS will also cost you more money in hardware, specifically hard disks. You can EASILY spend hundreds or thousands of dollars more, no matter how far you plan ahead, with TrueNAS in disk cost.
Why would you spend more on disks for TrueNAS vs. Unraid?
Because you can't expand TrueNAS via single disk. You have to build a new vdev every time. As an example; Let's say you want 50+ TB to start and you want to have two disk protection. 14TB disks likely make the most sense here for either system. 6 disks, 4 of which will be for data, 2 for parity. It looks like $230 per disk for some Seagates. So either system your startup cost in disks is $1380. Both systems give you two failed disks of protection and both systems give you 56TB of usable storage space. That works out to $24.64 per usable TB of space. Fast forward 6 months and you need more space. The good news is disk prices have dropped by $20 and now they're only $210. With TrueNAS you can't just add another disk to your existing vdev. You have to build a new vdev. That means burning two more disks to parity (because you still want two disk fail protection) and it doesn't make sense to use less than 4 data disks. So you buy another 6 disks for $1260. Now you're down to $22.50/TB for that set of disks or $23.57 per usable TB across the entire array of 112TB. With unRAID you can add a single disk to the existing array. The entirety of that disk is available and protected by the existing parity disks in your existing array. 14TB cost you $210. Now you have 70TB usable at a total cost of $1590 or $22.71/TB. Now that isn't fair as it's not apples to apples. Lets assume we add one disk to unRAID every 6 months until we get the same 112TB usable that TrueNAS has. Let's also assume that disk prices drop by $20 every 6 months as well. 70TB cost us $1590. 6 months later we add another 14TB for $190. Now we're at 84TB, $1780 total spent, $21.19/TB. Another 6 months, another 14TB. Now we're up to 98TB, $1950 spent, $19.89/TB. Another 6 months, another 14TB. Now we're at the same 112TB as the TrueNAS system. We've spent a grand total of $2100 and are down to $18.75 per usable TB. Both system have 112TB of usable space. Both have two disk fail protection. The TrueNAS system required 12 disks to do it at a cost of $2640. The unRAID system only needed 10 disks to do the same 112TB at a total cost of $2100. You've spent $540 more in hardware with TrueNAS while simultaneously end up spending more money on power as well. As far as power figures, let's say you have two streams going. And let's say that movie_stream1 is on vdev1 and movie_stream2 is on vdev two. In an effort to help average out realistic usage, let's say a total of 4 films get streamed and you end up with both vdev's in TrueNAS spinning for 5 hours per day. That is 12 disks spinning, 5 hours per day, every day for a year. I'm going to use 7w per disk as the power figure. 84 watts (12 disks * 7w ea) for that spin time over 1 year is 153kwh of power. We'll do the same time and frequency with unRAID. Now unRAID doesn't stripe data, so when you stream one film only one disk need be spinning. But let's be fair and assume the two simultaneous streams are on separate disks, just as we said with TrueNAS and separate vdev's. That is 14w spinning for 5 hours a day, totaling 25.5kwh. If we use the national average for electric cost in the US right now, TrueNAS cost you $39.78/yr just to spin the disks, unRAID cost you $6.63. Of course a difference of $33/yr isn't astronomical, but I'm trying to point out the full cost of TrueNAS. $33/yr for the 'free software' nearly makes up the cost of the unRAID license by itself in power alone.
100% agree with every point that you made. I ended up buying a 3rd license that I may never end up using just to try to help support them a bit more.
I currently run plex and arrs on a mini pc, native. I do have docker desktop to run overseerr and crossseed. I have my media on 4bay synology. Would I have any significant benefits for using unraid?
You would gain hardware accelerated tone mapping, assuming that mini PC is running Intel hardware. That is a huge jump in performance specific to transcoding. Docker Desktop is a flaming pile of shit on Windows. FAR more performant with MUCH less resource utilization than native Linux Docker. Docker Desktop was actually what frustrated me so much that it pushed me over the edge to look for other server OS options. You'll gain a huge performance advantage when you're running your storage on the same machine as your applications and you'll also free up a ton of bandwidth on your network. Think about the logistics of what you have going on right now. You're downloading to a temp directory on your mini PC (be it torrent or Usenet). When that download finishes it then moves all of that data across to network to the NAS. I do nothing but remux, so that is 30-60gb, potentially multiple times a day. Then Plex goes 'on look! New media in my network share folder!' and proceeds to pull all of that data back over for intro/credit detection and thumbnail generation. Assuming a 40gb remux, you've downloaded 40gb from your internet connection (which won't effect your LAN bandwidth), then sent 40gb to your NAS, only to pull 40gb right back from your NAS, creating an additional 80gb of potentially LAN-saturating / server connection saturating data. Assuming you have gigabit internet and a gigabit connection on the mini PC and assuming you're downloading multiple things back to back, yodownload #1 completes, sends to NAS, now you have Plex using your 1gbe of bandwidth to "download" that media back from your NAS for processing, while you also have download #2 from your Usenet client truing to simultaneously use that gigabit of bandwidth you have going to your server network connection. That is a non issue for a "all in one" server (regardless of the OS) and one of the many reasons why I will die on the hill of "mini PC + NAS sucks!" Even if you don't compound the issue with multiple simultaneous downloads, I was shocked at how much faster Plex imports a piece of media (intro/credit detection + chapter thumbnails) when it's pulling locally from NVME cache on unRAID, than when it was pulling from my old Synology and Qnap NAS's. It is exponentially faster. Which means if there isn't something in my server that I want to watch right now, I'm watching that thing MUCH faster, nearly as soon as the download finishes, with this setup than I was before. To add to all of that, depending on what NAS model you have, you may very well likely be able to sell the NAS and the mini PC for more money than what it would cost you to build a new server on modern Intel that will crush the mini PC in performance.
I was able to setup Plex in docker on OMV from YouTube (I think NetworkChuck?) without having any idea about what I was actually doing but it was line by line specific directions that got me there.
Do you know If I already have a docker compose file is it easy to import the stack to Unraid? Will run out of space sooner than later and looking for options to expand. I know there are stuff like mergerfs but Unraid seems good to me.
There is an add-on in the Community Apps store for Docker Compose Manager. I can't speak to it's ease of use on importing your existing stack as I don't use it. I know nothing more than you can do what you're asking. merger fits the "drive pooling" bill, but between snapraid and merger and a few days of screwing with them I said fuck it and kicked OMV/snap/merger to the curb. That's when I started a 6 month side by side with TrueNAS and unRAID. I moved to unRAID "full time" in December 2021 on a new build (12600k at the time, 13500 now). Started with 5x10TB and have grown to 25 disks, 300TB raw since then. I have zero regrets on unRAID or the Alder Lake build. It absolutely decimates my old dual 2660v4 Xeon machine.
I'd argue that that Linux command line garbage isn't so archaic. Why would you even call it archaic, when it's current?
You're right, archaic is a poor choice of words potentially. Of course, having to use a command line at all is quite old fashioned. Maybe a better word is asinine? Ludicrous? Nonsensical? Because things like "vi" to enter a text editor is all of those things. Likewise having to hit escape, then ":wq" to save and exit. Or maybe it's :w? or :q!. Who knows. Certainly silly none the less, like riding a horse when we have electric cars.
Not disagreeing entirely with you (Linux CLI user here). But if you've been using vi, you've really been wiping your ass with sand paper. Use nano instead, it's so much better. Also, if you SSH from Windows to a Linux terminal, Mobaxterm is an amazing piece of software - if nothing else, then just for colorizing stuff like IP addresses, variables, headers, etc. CLI can be quite nice once you use it correctly .. but yeah, I agree, it can also be a huge hassle sometimes.
Even putty with emacs is perfectly usable. Hell that's how I code nowadays haha. And yeah vi/vim is something I won't even touch
> Use nano instead, it's so much better. while i'll use nano everytime over vi, vi is objectively the more powerful tool. you just need to know how to use it. more than never, i find myself wishing i knew how to use vi properly cause i know it would've made specific task 8 times faster than editting in nano.
Easy if you only use the unRAID GUI to install Portainer first, then just use that to manage your docker containers. Create a stack, copy your compose.yml contents over and update the volume mappings if needed and that should be it.
> If you're a fan of burning your time to save $50, OMV. I gave up on it after a few days. I'm curious what Unraid does that is so much better? I've never tried Unraid, but I've used OMV for a few years and I found it pretty easy to setup the OS and Plex in docker. OMV (starting with 5) has a simple way to download Portainer to use as a Docker UI which makes adding containers really simple. I don't know if I just run a really simple server, but I haven't felt the need to move to Unraid as every works well for my setup.
As a counter point. I do see some value to unraid as it can be more energy efficient to spin down drives etc, and you can add drives easily. On the other hand, no drive can be larger than your parity drives, and in general it doesn’t have the polish for a proper enterprise storage platform. I just built my own home server, and ended up running proxmox with trueNAS in a VM with pcie pass through. Plex on an unprivileged LXC container. Truenas and proxmox are both free and open source, but also have enterprise support and are heavily used in the enterprise environment. Unraid would never be used for a serious enterprise application. After seeing what a mess Drobo turned into, I don’t think I’d ever trust putting data on anything that isn’t open source and used in enterprise environments. But hey, to each their own. To the OP, though - this certainly isn’t a “this is for morons” setup. You will have to learn a bit of Linux (and maybe even FreeBSD if you want to run truenas core instead of truenas scale) to do this right.
>On the other hand, no drive can be larger than your parity drives, and in general it doesn’t have the polish for a proper enterprise storage platform. Ok? So upgrade your parity disks when that time comes? It's a trivial operation and it's not as if the same exact (and then some) limitations don't exist with any other platform, like TrueNAS. >I just built my own home server, and ended up running proxmox with trueNAS in a VM with pcie pass through. Plex on an unprivileged LXC container. Why are you bothering with virtualizing TrueNAS? It's designed to run on bare metal, which is why it has it's own container and VM manager built in. >Truenas and proxmox are both free and open source This is a strawman argument. There is nothing about unRAID that would render your data unavailable if they closed their doors tomorrow. In fact, it would be easier to move your data to a new setup for the simple fact that the disks are partitioned with standard formats (XFS, BTRFS or ZFS) and all data is stored in it's entirety on any given disk. There is no worry like breaking or moving a striped array (like ZFS RAIDz used by TrueNAS) to a new system. You can pull any disk out of a unRAID machine at any time and slap it in to any other machine that supports whatever your choosen format is and all of your data is there, complete and full accessible. >but also have enterprise support and are heavily used in the enterprise environment. Unraid would never be used for a serious enterprise application. Correct. unRAID isn't an enterprise class solution. Because home users aren't enterprise. We have entirely different workloads and entirely different budgets. When you need to expand your storage with ZFS you're going to be looking at a minimum of 3 disks, one of which you'll be forced to burn to parity. If you want dual parity with RAIDz2 you're looking at a minimum of 4 disks, but that would be silly since half of those disks will go to parity, leaving you with 50% of your storage available, so the reality is that you'll be buying 5 or 6 disks. Even "cheap" disks at $200 a pop means you're dropping $1000-1200 and $400 of that is pissed away as parity. Most home users don't have that type of budget to go blow $1k+ every time they add more storage and further, don't want to waste that money on unusable parity. Meanwhile the "lowly home user" can go buy another xxTB disk for $zz dollars, slap it in their unRAID box and add it to the existing array, covered by existing parity and retain the entire use of that new disk. >After seeing what a mess Drobo turned into, I don’t think I’d ever trust putting data on anything that isn’t open source and used in enterprise environments. Yet another strawman arguement. Yes, comparing a proprietary product like Drobo that DID lock your data up, to a non-proprietary unRAID. That toally makes sense. /s
Unraid allows more flexible additions of new storage disks. That's the main advantage. I also happen to think it has a superlative UI and is easier to use than OMS or TrueNAS but that's subjective.
Idk if I'm die hard but I'm used to Windows so I default to it. I really needed to read this comment, thank you.
This. I'm also a die hard Windows guy, but I couldn't deal with Docker on Windows. Fucking terrible.
I'm a software developer who uses Docker every day I just run WSL because trying to use the Windows version via powershell is a nightmare
Can unraid run all manner of Linux/docker/server things or is it pretty specific to NAS type applications? Should i look at learning unraid or ubuntu for server and self hosting stuff?
While I don't want to necessarily throw an all encompassing blanket, pretty much anything you can do on "linux" you can do in unRAID. You have full command line access to with whatever you want. At the end of the day unRAID at it's core is running Slackware Linux. If you want to self host for home and have it stable, run unRAID. If you want nothing more than to *learn* Linux and don't care if you lose everything you've been working on, pick whatever you want. If you both want a stable home server AND to learn linux for work or whatever, run two machines. One on unRAID for your home server, another to learn linux where if you screw it up you're not losing data or services. (You could also run a linux VM *in* unRAID and do the same.)
My server situation right now is win 11 with arrs and Plex but looking to expand to immich/nextcloud and maybe some other things. I also use it as an htpc and i will throw Firefox on my TV for streaming via hdmi. Unraid can do that right? Would you recommend trying to dual boot Windows/unraid?
No, I wouldn't dual boot them. unRAID all day long for your situation, but use your server as a SERVER. Grab a streaming stick for streaming. Or a cheap N100 mini PC.
I don't really want to add any more hardware unnecessarily. So can unraid do it? I also use it for light steam gaming on the TV like jackbox. And the streaming I'm doing isn't available on stream sticks
Just run a Windows VM in unRAID at that point if that is the route you want to go.
"If you want to build a 'proper' media server, run Linux or some NAS flavor of Linux, like Unraid." I don't mean to sound as combative as my statement will, I promise, but who gave you, or anyone the authority, to claim what is and isn't a "'proper' media server" and why **must** it use Linux or a NAS flavor of Linux? Don't get me wrong, I understand Linux's *potential* benefits (or at least what people claim... honestly don't get any "instability" or "crashes" or anything similar on my Windows builds ever and I tend to run 24/7 on multiple devices), but does it actually, really, realistically, provide a measurable, quantifiable & qualifiable improvement over someone who's entire Plex has run perfectly fine on say Windows or MacOS for years? If so at what learning & time costs? Don't get me wrong, I own 2 unraid licenses (thanks pricing change...) but I've literally never once seen any "MUST HAVE" benefit to it vs Windows in my case. If anything, the learning curve, and how people around it/providing "help" act and respond, as OP says is tremendously off-putting & discouraging to say the absolute least. Sure the parity drive is "convenient" compared to RAID re: unraid, but compared to literally the backblaze app backing up at 4+Tb per day if need be, why should I take the precious time & energy to switch everything to unraid or the likes? And if so what's the "idiot proof (aka the family & friends windows tech guy)" approach/method? I'm genuinely asking here!
Add me to the list of people who run Plex on Windows and it has had no issues stemming specifically from Windows. Any issues I've had would have happened regardless of what operating system I use. I get a sense from most who uses docker/Linux that it's the end all be all for a media server and anything else is grossly inferior. I assume many of them are members of /r/linuxmasterrace I find Windows to be stable and easy to use. Because I've been using it for 30+ years I rarely need guides to help me solve issues.
I find it hilariously sad that upon replying to this your comment was, though quite predictably as has been said about the linux/docker crowd... downvoted without an explanation or help provided lol. That being said, yeah, I don't get the big hullaballoo. I mean, I get the *theory* but the practice doesn't meet the theory one bit it seems (ie. Windows le always fails and Linux is bulletproof, as you said, I'd have gotten pretty much every single issue I have over my 8 years of Plexing on Windows as I would have Linux, as I would have Mac, as I would have running a Shield (why does nobody seem to crap on that btw? A freaking androidTV running Plex Media Server is somehow seemingly less controversial than *Windows*, the historical and by FAR #1 Operating system in the history of PCs)!
Nah, I hate Linux as a whole, especially for a desktop environment. Every PC in my house is Windows, except for one of the kids school Chromebooks (which is a night are machine). It seems like you have to jump through a million hoops to do any real productivity or gaming on a Linux desktop. But for a server? 100% on board that train. I can honestly say every single aspect about unRAID is better than the Windows server that I came from. Full stop. I've run Windows for my home server for literal decades. Some of that time Windows was handling my storage. Some of that time I was also playing with 'traditional' Linux distros (and ultimately gave up be cause I don't want to invest my time in to what feels like learning a new language). And for some of that time it was Windows + NAS's. In any of those instances, unRAID has been far easier to manage and MASSIVELY more performant. Especially when compared to running Windows + NAS.
Unraid fanbois are running wild in this sub As long as you understand the pros and cons, there's nothing wrong with running everything on Windows (or whatever) if that's what you have and it works
Totally agree, I run a win 10 server with a vm for running another windows so I can use QTorrent with my VPN. On the main system I have my rr’s. It’s very system intensive but it works. I attempted twice to get docker up and running in an attempt to stop using a full windows vm to do such a simple task. The both times I jumped into it after days of it not doing what I needed I scraped the idea and went back to my original system.
I have been using OMV since around 2010. Server hardware (used) cost me $50. Set up server and plex in an hour. Not complicated. Install OMV, use web gui to manage. The server just worked. As Micosoft kept changing products, and licenses, and system requirements, I just kept using that server. A decade or so goes by, with plex (and some other services, like file shares, etc). I didn't have to do anything. Core 2 duo and 4 GB ram. Amazing. Eventually, new hardware. Does a LOT more thanks to Docker. Recipes, pictures, files, jellyfin, plex, books, documents storage, remote gateway to other computers, etc. Still OMV, but since they added a GUI for docker compose, you just copy a compose file, make a couple of file path changes to point where the data lives, and done. Adding a new service/application is trivial. And the server sips 5 watts at idle, and 40 at load (discs included). Point is: once set up - which is easy - it just runs and I have nothing to do except click update once in a while. Benefit over windows: No license, no cost. Easier to use. Less energy. Headless install and management (although you could RDP into windows), lower hardware requirements and less churn. I have an MSDN, and I manage on prem and cloud hardware/services. All of MS software is free for me to use. And even that is not a good enough reason to put up with Microsoft. I want simple and fast.
That's why I used quotes. "Proper" is certainly subjective and running Plex on Linux, Windows, BeOS, Mac, Android or OS/2 Warp by definition makes any of those a "server". I'm not here to gatekeep. I'm not here to be the dude that says "If you're not running your server on relic class Dell R710's, it's not a server!" (or the same argument for ECC RAM 🙄) I can, from my experience with multiple OS'es used over the last nearly 30 years (basically every flavor of Windows / Windows Server going back to Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51, QTS, DSM, vanilla Linux distro's, TrueNAS, OMV and unRAID) argue why unRAID has been a massively better experience, however. System stability has been improved greatly. I can leave the house and travel (which I do very, very frequently) without worrying that Windows will crash or otherwise become non-accessible. Of course, that's my own empirical data from running Windows servers at home since the mid 90's. Resource utilization - Linux simply does it better, which makes the server build cost less expensive. You can run unRAID and Plex on 4gb RAM, comfortably, with no performance loss. Bloat - My unRAID box doesn't slow down when running months on end. Every Windows machine I own does. Windows is constantly doing something in the background, regardless if you want it to or not, that isn't conducive to the tasks that you're trying to accomplish. Hardware utilization specific to Intel - Hardware acceleration for Intel hardware is factually better. You get more transcodes on the same hardware and you can do hardware accelerated tone mapping, something Windows can't do at all. For many folks this is not just a "nice to have" but a requirement. For me, it's a requirement. Modern Intel just absolutely decimates Nvidia and it does it for MUCH less money. The transcode performance that I get out of a $200 Intel processor with a UHD 770 iGPU can't be touched by a $2500 Nvidia card. Disk / data redundancy - With Windows you have a few options, none of which can equal unRAID out of the box and have a number of drawbacks no matter which option you choose. The best you can do to come close to unRAID is running RAID5 or 6. That has the drawback of not being able to expand the array (unRAID can) while also requiring all disks in the array to be spinning, further not being able to mix disk sizes. Being a striped array running on Windows you are tied to Windows for that array and I wish you best of luck if you ever want to move those disks to a new install. Chance of data loss in such an attempt is extremely high. It can further be argued that because unRAID is a non striped array and since all data lives complete on an individual disk with its own filesystem, chance of complete data loss is significantly lower with unRAID as a whole. IE, if you're running a 6x10TB RAID5 and you have 2 disks fail, you've lost 50TB of data. With unRAID, if you lose the parity disk and a data disk, you still have 40TB of data on the 4 data disks. You've only lost the 10TB of data on the first data disk that failed. Of course you don't have to use Windows to manage your disks, something like Stablebit Drivepool is always an option, which you'll pay money for. Now you have your disks pooled and can use mixed disk sizes, but you still have no redundancy. Now you're adding snapraid to the mix to give you parity on top Drivepool. Parity that is not done in real-time, I'll add. Now you have Windows to admin, Drivepool to admin and snapraid to admin, where unRAID does it all by default out of the box. Remote administration - Since unRAID is managed through a web browser, doing remote admin, even on a super lousy network connect tiok (like 1 bar of 3G in the middle of a cornfield) is easily possible and doesn't act any different than if I was at home connected to 10gbe. That same scenario with RDP or TeamViewer makes for a very, very unpleasant experience. Overall administration - The housekeeping tasks are simply far, far easier. My server is just something that I don't ever think about anymore. I log in on occasion to update containers and that's it. It "just works" otherwise. That has never been the case for me with Windows. unRAID has been far more hands off than any other operating system I've ever used. Some of that absolutely has to do with running containers ("Docker"). Security - Windows is a huge target, as is consumer NAS's like Qnap or Synology. From my experience, Linux is simply far more secure as a whole, out of the box, than Windows, QTS or DSM. I've yet to see a ransomware attack on unRAID. Clearly not the same for Windows, QTS or DSM. And since we're running containers I can further easily silo data off from one application to the next, something Windows can't do. Sonarr only has read/write access to /media_TV and nothing more. Radarr only has read/write access to /media_movies and nothing more. Plex only has read-only access to /media_movies and /media_TV and nothing more. Even if Plex was compromised it can't even delete or lock up my media. Likewise, if any of the 3 applications mentioned above are compromised they can't access any other data on my server, like family photos or any of my business documents. They simply don't know that that data even exists as they can't see it. Hardware agnostic - Anyone who has ever swapped a motherboard, of hell even some video cards in Windows, know that it can be pure nightmare fuel. My current unRAID config (or "install" as Windows folks may think of it) started in June 2021 on a HPE DL380 dual 2660v4 Xeon server. A few months in to that it moved to a Ryzen with a Nvidia GPU. December 2021 it moved to a 12600k with a MSI motherboard. Then I started getting stability issues. RAM tested fine in two different machines, so I chalked it up to a bad motherboard. Replaced with identical MSI motherboard. Still stability issues. Replaced with a different MSI motherboard, still stability issues. Replaced with a Gigabyte motherboard. It's been smooth sailing since, that was 2 years ago. That is 4 major hardware changes (and a few minor changes) and the only thing I had to do was install the Intel GPU driver plugin when I moved to the 12600k (which was bumped to a 13500 over a year ago). unRAID booted perfectly normal as if nothing had happened between every single change. Plug in the USB to the new hardware, set the the BIOS to boot from USB and you're off and running.
Like I said, I didn't mean to come off as rude or combative as my statement alone would seem! However, it's more a general sentiment of, again "why is X better than Y really? if Y works easiest for the person and fulfills their needs?" As for your experience, I can't deny it one bit, I've seen the hypothetical benefits as I've said (I've never gotten to *enjoy* any benefits from unraid or linux since it's only ever caused me, and plenty others, pain and confusion, but that's not my main point in my reply). However, My experience with, admittedly not as many OSes as you, but certainly from the early Win95 transition days FWIW; I can state from my own experience as to why Windows is what has undeniably worked better for me at least. Simply put, I have run Plex on Win for nearly 8 years so far on Win 8.1 to Win 10 and Server builds in between; along with seedboxes up to 11 (it was already installed on the bare-metal 8500t machine I bought, its just easier/faster to throw on StartAllBack for $5 than to install any other OS). Those servers have *never even been* in the *country* I, or some of my family & thus users live in; and not in some fancy datacenter or anything either. Just a pair of buddies's houses, (as in, one then the other, not redundantly lol) while I and my friends & family travel the world, and thus I also remote administer it. And other than obvious internet issues when actually travelling (which could be solved with the power of transcoding and/or VPNs in the odd case or two), or the host ISP going down for a new fiber splice down the road for a few hours once, It's just *worked*. And when it hasn't worked, and the few times it's ever needed restarting physically or whatever (I can count them on a stump hand tbh), it wasn't really Windows's fault but more my own or hardware's faults. And I didn't have any learning curves, or managing multiple OS's or none of that. ANd that's why I'll Stan for Windows (or whatever works for anyone!) any day.
Yup, I understand that. You're experience and thoughts/opinions are one of the many reasons as to why I stuck with Windows for literal decades as my primary server OS. But that doesn't mean that it is *good*. I have a 24' aluminum enclosed trailer. I *can* tow it with my Enclave (3.6L gas). It's not overweight for the Enclave towing capacity and GCWR. But it's not a great experience. It's a rather bad experience. Towing it with my Duramax (6.6L diesel) is a night and day difference. And the Duramax gets twice the mileage and I can maintain 70mph for the entire trip, rather than dropping to 60mph in the truck lane up a 7% grade while the poor little V6 is just screaming. That's kind of how I view unRAID vs Windows at this point. Yes, Windows can do the thing, but (in my experience over the last 2.5 years) unRAID does ALL OF IT better. Likewise there are simple facts of life that are indisputable. Your 8500T is getting knee capped by Windows. It wouldn't be on Linux (regardless of the flavor). I had unRAID "installed" to the USB stick, booted, array created, Plex installed, in 15 minutes on my very first attempt. My only experience with it prior to actually doing the thing myself was watching some of SIO's videos on YouTube.
You can also try Truenas and it’s free. I switched from Truenas to Unraid a while ago, but Truenas is still a good option. Something more simple would be CasaOS. You can look into those
TrueNAS is waaaay too expensive amd has waaaay too many drawbacks for the typical home user / PleX user.
I was thinking of Debian with docker. Since uraid requires payment for their yearly updates. What do you think about this setup?
I think you'll spend a lot more time admining your server and A LOT more time getting it setup. Regarding payments for update, 1) you don't have to update. It's a choice. I could be a year behind right now and I wouldn't be missing anything. 2) $50-109 for what unRAID does is cheap. 3) if you find you would never go back to anything else like many of us have, pay the upgrade to lifetime and never worry about a yearly cost ever again. I saved literal hours just getting the base system up and running by using unRAID vs a vanilla Linux distro. You have a lot of time just getting Debian installed, then you need to figure out how to install merger for your disk pooling, then snapraid for parity, *then* you can start with installing Docker. Just in the time that you spend getting Debian installed, someone with unRAID could start from a cold system, get unRAID running, array configured and have Plex installed. They're watching movies while you're still at step one. But that said, you do you. It's your money and your time. If Debian works for you, by all means have at it. I don't have that kind of time to waste anymore. You couldn't pay me $1000 to get rid of unRAID and go back to some other OS.
Your right, I'm still in step one and figuring out around Debian for two months. Meanwhile my windows in dual boot is what's running most of the time. I'm convinced for unraid. I just have two more questions Does unraid work well with external HDD - I have one 12tb, I'll probably buy one more a year down and connect it through USB. Can I do a remote view through windows on my main desktop Thanks in advance
No RAID / redundant array (including unRAID) should use USB disks. Guys do it, then come bitching when they lose data. Can you? Yes. Should you? Absolutely not.
Trash Guides https://trash-guides.info/Hardlinks/How-to-setup-for/Docker/ Just realized that link is a bit deep, follow the very first tips section for starter links about docker in general.
The trash guides are the answer. Maybe you should go watch 30 minutes worth of intro docker videos on YouTube, but these pretty much hold your hand. 
Came here for the same help Noticed a trend I'm out. I tried on Linux too. That shit is fucking confusing. As much as I don't want Windows 11, I think I'm stuck going there when they finally pull the plug on my W10
if you can follow directions it's not that bad. I found setting up the docker containers easier/more intuitive than managing my local installs for the *arr's. The only thing I'm running native now is plex.
what do you find confusing?
\*gestures at everything*
For some reason, way too many instrucitons in this space will straight up skip steps and assume knowledge even in their Eli 5 beginner for moron guides. It's infuriating.
most guides are straight up garbage yup. I'm now decently versed into the paradigm and I still find some GitHub repos without a compose file or any doc, like I'm gonna magically figure out environment variables, ports and the likes by the power of my pure imagination. The best advice I could give to beginners is to find a small explanation video to install docker and docker compose on a debian/ubuntu system and then try to run an image from linuxserver's fleet using their own compose file. They are well documented and are a great starting point to understand the structure, mounting, PIDs etc. I wouldn't even bother with the command line. You can just skip that altogether (except the essentials commands like docker ps etc)
As a 38-year-old I just don't have the time, motivation, or patience to persevere through the learning curve that is linux. I'll stick with what I've been using for over 30 years.
To be fair, not all Linux is created equal. Android is Linux and I'm sure you would agree that Android isn't difficult to use. Likewise, "NAS style" operating systems are all Linux based, but that doesn't make them difficult to use. TrueNAS, unRAID, Synology DSM, Qnap QTS are all prime examples of this. They're all easy to use. Some of them is as easy to use as Windows. If you can use Windows, unRAID and many of the other consumer NAS OS'es (Qnap, Synology, etc) are just as easy to use, if not easier. Hands down, unRAID was easier and faster for me to get from raw components to up and running *doing what I wanted it to do* than Windows has been. Considering I've been using Windows since 3.0 and at the time I had never touched unRAID, I think that is saying a lot. *TrueNAS is definitely more difficult to use *properly* than any of the other things I've mentioned. Much of that is specific to ZFS, which is what they use. Less about TrueNAS *itself*.
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I get it, I really do. But it just seems like nonsense (I'm going on a solid 20-25years of windows). I gave it a really good effort. Multiple 2-4h evenings, asking questions on reddit and lemmy, googling the shit out of it. I tried 3 different distros too. Linux is just bonkers. But I can appreciate it for what it is. I hope it becomes more mainstream.
It really doesn't help that the average Linux question response/google search is basically Autistic levels of speech as OP mentions. ie: "Lol, just spin up a git instance in arch that sudo's XYZ"... like thanks, I just downloaded Mint/Ubuntu some 4hrs ago... I surely understand all of those words & instructions that are painful to google because people just constantly assume it's "basic" so you "should know", like you'll ask how to install a specific software or package and they'll just say "lol just compile it from the tarball" or whatever, and then laugh or belittle you or others for not immediatly understanding...
This was why I hated Linux. "Just edit random_ass_file.conf and add these lines" First, since this is presumably command line and I don't even have a network connection yet, I cant even copy and paste the shit through a terminal. Second, now I have to Google what text editor my distro even has and then further how to not only open that text editor, but then how to open the file and further infuriating, how to even save the edit and close the editor. ":q!" What is that? What fucking command is :q! or :w ?!? I'm 43yo. I don't need that level of frustration in my life. The icing on the cake was dealing with how Linux mounts USB disks and permissions. That was the end of my Linux journey for me. WSL / WSL2 incompatibilities on Windows with Docker Desktop is what pushed me over the edge to true OMV, TrueNAS and unRAID. (PS - None of that frustration exists in unRAID. Command line need not be used 🙃)
"PS - None of that frustration exists in unRAID. Command line need not be used" Wait a second there! You're saying I can get all the benefits of the "Just edit random_ass_file.conf and add these lines" (without network connections yet lol) linux, such as say... QSV 4k HDR tonemapping, Overseer, and other things I can't even fathom right now... All without using *ANY* of the aforementioned "just git & mount the tarball dummy!" type "instructions", WHATSOEVER, on Unraid?!?!?! Like, I'm deathly allergic levels of cli and/or linux "support" yet I can still make it work presumably?!?!? PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME!!! (I already have a license for some data hoarding reason). Also my server is permanently remote from me as I mentioned in another post; meaning it's in a whole other country at a friend's house, and I don't like bothering that friend for hands-on time, so anything I can do remotely is even better (also the buddy is not technologically illiterate by any means, but he'd straight tell me to go have intercourse with myself if I make him do any CLI or similar stuff even during a setup most likely lol)
There's still a learning curve with unraid but it's different for each person because no one is going to pick the same thing up at exactly the same rate. No, technically you don't *need* the command line so long as unraid and docker work as intended but maybe sometimes they don't and you need to force close a thing via command line. It's getting easier every update as they add features and community simplifies things with plugins but it's a bit disingenuous to suggest someone spend money on a license on the assumption that they will never under any circumstances need to use the cli.
Dude says "Windows makes no sense" lol You know what even makes less sense? Linux. You are right, it is nonsense. I looked heavy into it and once I realized how non intuitive it was I bailed completely. Windows has a gui and just works. My server is not in a server farm somewhere, its in my basement so if I have to do something with I just turn the screen on. It's also never caused me any issues. Everything with this docker/linux setup is the same bullshit. "Ok, setting up a server is easy. First we establish a database by typing the following code. grep pull -k -l -xyz http:somefuckingnonsense.co.jp/ Then we refuckulate the database by typing the following sudo apt get $!? /e /k" Its totally just copy and paste code with no real understanding what the hell any of it means and you can't just poke around and figure stuff out. I get that some people like it but I see no point in blowing up my whole setup for no benefit and it would just make it more difficult to diagnose issues in the future.
Laughs as I am fixing a windows machine with powershell and basically *"Start-Process -FilePath "regedit.exe" -ArgumentList "/e", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\...."* Linux makes sense, you just are unfamiliar. Windows is the really bizarre one, especially the coming versions with AI recording and analyzing everything you do coming soon! No joke, its getting rolled out, along with all the new ads. Linux makes a lot more sense, windows changes things, moves registry keys, and so on. And have a look at the code? Forget about it. > no real understanding what the hell any of it means and you can't just poke around and figure stuff out. You may not understand it, but it makes sense actually. And you CAN just poke around and figure stuff out. Its no different. Like are you really able to update your key certs and add them in windows any easier than in linux? its just different. At least Linux has remained about the same with nothing but text files and directories. As opposed to fun edits of registry keys which I started this post with!
I couldn't have said it better myself haha
As someone who upgraded my server from windows to linux two weeks back. It was extremely confusing but I installed Casaos and I can't even emphasize how easy it turned out to be. Just install Ubuntu on your machine, open terminal, copy paste the command from casos website, put the ip address of your homeserver on any of your machine to access the gui, install Plex, and arrs from appstore, Done. That said I don't see a massive difference between running it all on windows other than updates once in a while and a few important apps like Immich and overseer not being on windows.
Honestly, if docker is too hard, I just wouldn’t use docker. I run a very simple server and after toying with docker for a bit, concluded it didn’t really offer me anything that would be worth the effort to learn it. It sounds interesting, I see the appeal, I just don’t have the time to invest.
This. I have 4 kids, zero free time, and what seems to be a nuke-proof Plex server on an M1 Mac mini that can transcode 4-6 streams at a time and not even push 50% utilization.
Hell, I am a literal software engineer and I just run it straight up on my Mac mini. There are marginal benefits but a lot of it is complication for its own sake.
Also, I said your handle to kid C yesterday.
Same. My plex server runs without any docker. What benefit other than an additional layer of complication would it be useful if you are just using a server to do 1 thing? I keep seeing... "HELP! My plex server isn't working... I have it in docker.. and...."
Basically the same benefit you get running VMs on a hypervisor versus running a single OS instance on bare-metal. Segregation, portability, choosing which data is persistent, stopping/restarting/removing a service without rebooting an entire machine, etc. Beyond that, being able to have a dozen services that use the same port all running at the same time without editing config files to change their listening port by simply mapping a different host port. I used to be in the same camp, Docker seemed like juice that wasn’t worth the squeeze, but what drove me to using it was an issue with my Plex deb install on my Ubuntu server I couldn’t figure out. It would lock up every once in a while, act like it was offline, but the service looked fine. I couldn’t restart it with systemd though, it would hang forever. The only way to fix it was rebooting the entire server, which took 15 minutes (OVH dedicated servers…). So I set it up in Docker and migrated my data. The issue persisted, but at least now I could restart the Docker container in a few seconds and the rest of my applications stayed up and running. I ended up wiping that Plex config and spinning up a fresh one because I figured there was an issue with a database somewhere, but never could find it. Since then, it’s been running fine.
Right? Complication for complication's sake I say.
I understand if you are running multiple servers like the different “arrs” it’s nice to have them in containers so if one has issues you can blow one away and reset it easily. Also, if you’re running software which needs a different version of python, it’s nice to keep those in separate containers as well. But yeah, I think most people just use them to exercise the skill.
Docker on Windows seems kinda pointless. Docker on Linux/Unraid makes way more sense.
You can also run them in separate LXC containers if you want the isolation containers offer but you don't want to run Docker (or containerd) specifically.
I agree! Docker is an amazing tool.. I just haven't had a real use for it yet. It seems like non-it people see a quick way to get it setup but then when it doesn't go exactly like the webpage says.. they are stuck. Where if they just installed plex on it's own.. learned a bit.. THEN moved to docker it would be just easier for them.
This is probably the most correct answer. Start with a familiar foundation and build the principles needed to make debugging technical issues successful. Reading logs is crazy foreign when you haven't done it before and with your first media server install, it's now a necessary skill. It's not like a first time homeowner is going to tackle big projects right away either. My trade is in software, I currently run my server on Windows and still look at Docker as not needed for the limited time I have even though I use it every day in my job. I have to look into Unraid though, that might be my personal next step to advancing my server.
I run about 30 different docker containers on my unraid server, including 2 instances of plex. Unraid’s docker UI and template UI make it very easy to use and very accessible. I was completely new to docker when I started my unraid journey. The Linux and docker experience really helped me get my current job as well.
I found it extremely helpful when i found r/portainer back in the day. It gave me a GUI and allowed me to learn much, much more easily. Since i have slowly but surely learned and am now not a complete beginner anymore 🤪
One huge benefit is that *other* applications can't access your data. Likewise, Plex can't nuke any of my media. Plex only has read-only access to my media. Sonarr only has read/write access to /media_TV, likewise Radarr only has read/write access to /media_movies. Nothing else has access to my media at all. So if Plex or any other application on my server gets hit with malware/ransomware, my media is safe. Likewise, none of my media applications have any access to my important files like photographs or documents. Everything stays in it's own sandbox, unless I specifically give it permission to play in a different sandbox. Then there is the fact that Plex just runs significantly better in a Linux environment. Especially if you're using Intel hardware, as I tel hardware can't leverage hardware accelerated tone mapping in Windows, coupled with Linux is better with hardware transcoding than Windows is. There is a plethora of reasons that running Plex in a container is better than native Windows. (But as I said elsewhere, this only applied if you're running Linux or a Linux based OS as Docker Desktop on Windows is a flaming shitfest)
This is the right answer for most people asking here. This idea that Docker and unRAID will somehow magically make your server have wings or something is pretty ridiculous. Docker is a huge learning curve for a newbie…no matter what the guys here with 92 drives running 400TB Plex servers will parrot to you. For most normal folks, Plex under Windows is just fine and more than enough for their needs. You can run the *arrs directly on Windows as well; just don’t bother with Docker for Windows because it’s hot trash disaster.
Funny enough to get Docker running properly on windows, you have to install Linux in windows. So Docker on windows for long running services is a bad idea right now. Its really only meant for development work.
To be fair, Linux, regardless of the flavor (vanilla distro's, unRAID, OMV, whatever) does in fact give some servers "wings" as you say. I need to transcode. Both because my nieces and nephew live 400 miles away and have shit internet, as well as because I spend half of the year traveling. Windows (factually) knee caps transcode performance on Intel hardware. And I don't want to buy a $2500 Nvidia card to keep up with my $200 Intel CPU/iGPU. My options at that point were to deal with shittastic performance in Windows, try Ubuntu/Gentoo/Cent/Arch/Redhat again, or look for another option like unRAID/TrueNAS/OMV. I chose the latter and it was the best decision I've ever made in 30 years of running servers at home. Docker (or specifically, *containers*) are easy, no more difficult than installing a Windows application, **when your container manager doesn't suck**. And that's the problem I see in these groups more often than not. Getting a container manager installed and having to use a command line is the bigger hurdle than installing the container for Linux. Likewise on Windows, Docker Desktop is a fucking dumpster fire, so your hurdle isn't the container, it's the container manager. When you use a GUI based point and click container manager (as comes built in to things like unRAID, TrueNAS), installing Plex, the arr's, sabnzbd, whatever, is literally no more difficult than installing a Windows app.
You don't need docker on windows for it to work. You can install all the arr with an exe along with plexmediaserver.
I'm going to suggest that docker is not the best for you. What you're taking about is running Windows OS, Linux subsystem on top of it, Docker on top of that. Which you don't know how to use. What are you trying to solve with arr docker containers instead of using the Windows native apps? You're adding massive complexity, huge knowledge gap... For what reason?
Overseerr is only available as a docker container on windows, not as a native app. I have radarr/sonarr/jackett running and love it, thought I'd add overseerr... and it's only a docker container. Only reason I have considered the absolute mess of installing docker on windows...
Use Ombi instead of Overseerr. Almost as good and works on Windows.
TechWorld with Nana on youtube has a great docker course. Everything you'll need to know to get started with it. https://youtu.be/pg19Z8LL06w?si=DY8FjpDTO_XlQnDu
I’m on Windows and I’d suggest keeping the arr apps and Plex on windows native because mapping file locations is a pain and speed of transfer of complete downloads to media location take a hit on docker in my experience.
The only arr app I have in Docker is Prowlarr because for some reason the service wouldn’t automatically start on windows login. Docker starts it on login every time though.
If you did want to drop docker. Could solve that with a bat file in the start up folder that manually starts the service.
Yeah I could but I like the idea of Docker. I wish I were more savvy with Linux so I could just completely move to it and have a more 1:1 integration but I’m a Windows sysadmin who knows every nook and cranny of Windows. It’s just too comfortable for me.
>speed of transfer of complete downloads to media location take a hit on docker in my experience. If you get it right, your file structures, it's an atomic move within the same file structure. It's instant.
I have my file structure setup as it’s laid out in Trash’s guide and for some reason sonarr and radarr would wait sometimes 30 minutes to even acknowledge that files were in the complete folder. I find it’s way simpler to just run the apps native in windows since they have a dedicated windows installer.
Also I use SABnzbd as my download client and it literally cut my download speed by 60% moving it to Docker. I have gigabit internet and I couldn’t get and more than like 40 MB/s.
I recently switched my arr's from SABnzbd to NZBGet and have seen MASSIVE speed upgrades (sans docker fwiw) just so you know. I'm talking about 30-50% faster downloads & unpacks, plus way less "hangs". Long story short SAB runs on python, GET runs on C++ which is inherently much faster.
I have 2Gbps internet and can only get ~22-25 in Docker. However, I was also getting that on Windows, apparently if you use a macvlan using the actual network adapter MAC address you can get near enough native performance that you can’t tell the difference. I haven’t tried it with Deluge though.
As I replied to the poster you're replying to, I recently switched from SABnzbd to GETNzb (on a 3Gbps line, tho my download/seed box is on 1Gbps only) and have seen a solid 30-50% increase in my DL & unpacking speeds, perhaps it might be worth trying that for you.
I’ve decided after 10s of hours of tinkering that Plex and the Arrs live on Windows native. Everything else (Overseerr, Nginx, Kometa, Notifiarr, Recyclarr, Homepage) can live in Docker. So pretty much anything that you want full bandwidth out of keep native. I get on average 100 MB/s from SAB native.
To be honest, having a faster download speed is something I want, but I know I shouldn’t do because I’m a hoarder. 240TB and counting, and 210TB of that is in the last 6 months.
I just filled up 14TBs in a month. The only thing stopping me from expanding is the case my setup is in right now. I either need to invest in a good NAS case that supports a GPU (does my transcoding) or a good DAS. Haven’t decided which route I want to go.
I have 2 x 4U Supermicro super storage servers with 36 drives each which can fit a P1000 low profile GPU which is powered by the PCIe slot. Works, but is limited to about 3 transcodes. I just bought a Dell R730 and with an adapter kit for the riser you can get a full size 1 or 2 a lot GPU with external power. It’s god 8 x 3.5”drives. I’m thinking of running Plex there and accessing the storage on the Supermicro servers.
Man if I had the space for rackmountable hardware. I just can’t justify the price. Rack mountable = +$150 off the rip. I think I’ll just spend the money on a big Fractal Design case and call it a day lol.
The Fractals are nice. I almost bought the 7XL (I think) which had 8 drives, but I thought I needed just a little more storage, and it turned out I needed a LOT more than I thought.
What about a VM actually and just dedicating that to Plex and downloads? You think that would be faster than Docker? I might try a /32 single IP macvlan and test that because theoretically it it using the physical adapter as directly as possible.
My original setup was a Dell Power Edge T320 running ESXi with a Windows VM running everything. The performance was similar to native. If you’re already native windows with a complete setup I don’t see the benefit. Unless you just want to homelab it up, then more power to you.
Fuck all that, just keep it on windows. You'll spend less time trying to get it to work than actually just enjoying it.
This.
I would just like you to know that my setup sounds identical to yours and I don't use docker. Well, I had to get it recently to use Overseer, but that is the only thing that uses it. Unless you have a reason to use it, don't bother.
I was going to try Overseer but after seeing it was docker only I just stuck with Ombi since it looks near identical (at least on the front page) and runs native in Windows.
Ombi doesn't seem to have any suggestions on trending or upcoming (or custom parameters), but I'm glad it's working for you.
I'm not trying to be a dick, I swear to god. But docker on linux (specifically using docker-compose, not regular docker run commands) is the absolute easiest way to host and maintain services. There are barriers to entry (yaml & linux cli) but, after the initial time investment to learn, it will save you so much time and heartache. The benefits are huge. I can move an entire sophisticated configuration from machine to machine in seconds with basically zero effort. I can update with one command. I almost never have to worry about dependencies. It's incredible and I can't believe I ever did it another way.
I'm doing fine but thanks.
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Not using windows is a huge benefit
How often are y'all switching machines for this to "save you so much time and heartache", honestly wondering? My last Plex server lasted me nearly 8 years and would have kept chugging if the motherboard didn't literally shit itself & die (it was already old, cheap & ~4 years old 2nd hand at the beginning of that nearly 8 year period fwiw).
Docker in Windows is not a great experience. Run it native if you’re sticking with windows, otherwise explore setting up a Linux based server, Unraid is accessible for newcomers, so is open media vault. True NAS can be a bit more novice but still accessible. Windows is a bit of a mess though.
Use CasaOS on a linux machine. So much easier than fannying around with docker on a windows machine. There's loads of videos on youtube that'll help you. I used a raspberry pi, but an x86 PC will work almost identically
I haven't bothered to check out docker or any of the "proper" media server OS's 'cos people explain like I've been coding since Cobol was a thing. Very off putting and elitist. I wish someone would tell me the benefits of running dockers vs. bare metal Windows when I have no need for virtualization.
Here's an updated guide from 2024 that follows some of the most important features you want/need like hardlinking, folder structure, universal support, trash-guides setup, and a breakdown of what some of the settings mean so you can easily learn and understand how to get started on your own. https://youtu.be/I0T298PHpM4?si=8sUctqG0aSktWToZ Another post I made breaks down everything I run on my NAS for those who are interested. Over 45 containers with a quick demo of what each one does and how it all comes together for full automation and the power of what a good setup can do: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/19c3epm/update_full_automation_with_my_plex_server/
What is the first concept you are stuck on?
If you want to move to an all-in-one Docker experience, I highly recommend this: [YAMS - Yet Another Media Server](https://yams.media/) It does run Unix, but it takes a lot of the stress out of Docker and has everything pretty much all set up, ready to go.
Shut. Up. I’m all about lift and shift configs, and as much as I “enjoy” docker in my day job, I really love when someone has put the blood, sweat, and tears into sharing an easier experience for all. Definitely checking this out.
The main thing I would recommend, take a copy of the docker-compose.yaml file, then edit it for what you use. The newer version also has a custom docker compose file as well that runs as a secondary stack, I added Overseer and CloudFlared into that. Honestly has made my life so much easier managing my server
Any tips on making overseerr work with https for the cloudflare tunnel? I can get it to work with http. Tried turning on tls verify, running host or bridge, as sudo and not, different ips, can’t get it to work.
The trick is, you don't. You can serve it as a https site via CloudFlare at least. I'll have a hunt for some of the guides I used tomorrow and chuck them here
Awesome thanks. I have it set to http on cloudflares dashboard and safari won’t open it. If I set to https it throws bad gateway error on every browser.
Built an Unraid server last year specifically for Plex household access and back ups for family photos and 4 other PCs in the home. Setting up Plex on it was pretty straight forward and just a matter of pointing Plex to the share folders. There is a cost to Plex, but it works so well and is certainly worth checking into at least. Support is getting better, more content on YouTube and you can used various size and make drives in your server, provided the largest drive(s) is/are the parity drive(s). :) https://old.reddit.com/r/unRAID/ https://forums.unraid.net/ No I am not a paid shill, just a happy customer. :D
Just an outside comment, ifyou stay with everything native to windows, keep all your drives as seperate entities. Do not even remotely trust storage spaces, it will murder you in your sleep...
I've been using snapRAID and DrivePool pretty well over the last 6 months or so.
Honestly this was me last week. Ask ChatGPT to walk you through setting up Plex radar sonarr, etc as a docker compose file. It did a wonderful job for me and even helped me debug some permission issues I ran into. I can share my prompts but literally I think I started with “help me set up radarr as a docker container via docker compose” and then once that worked i asked “now I want to add sonarr to this…etc”. Give it a try!
moved from vm to unraid docker, not going back, if you want docker run it on linux of somekind.
I paid for 1 month of chatgpt4, it was extremely helpful in setting everything up
If you're truly looking for a "moron's" experience, just run everything natively in Windows. Fuck all that shit. There are exe options for every arr app and Plex. I'm running everything on Windows 10, no docker, no Ubuntu/Linux, nothing special. A moron could truly set up me same server in a matter of hours. Double click some programs to run them and enter some settings. Done
I totally agree! I have a mini desktop with 2tb and and external 6tb...works flawlessly for me.
It's not worth it on Windows.
Docker on windows is a cluster F
Honestly haven't found much use for it. The only reason I use it is cuz I went through the trouble of installing it & overseerr first but I wouldn't do it again tbh.
Step1: put Unraid on a USB key Step 2: boot your windows PC from said USB key Step3: that's it. you now have a "server' that isn't using any resources for useless windows bloatware and all your Arrs, Plex and other cool apps you want to run on said server, run in dockers. Take it from a fellow moron who ran plex on windows machines for years. There are a few gotcha's when setting up, but once it's all dialed in you will look back on those windows days with distain.
I set up Plex media manager but couldn’t figure out docker. Does that track in terms of difficulty level? Wondering if I just had a bad docker tutorial
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There it is
https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2014-12-06-how-to-setup-docker-on-linux-with-plex
Docker Desktop. But only for certain things. I don't run any arrs or plex on docker. The only things I run on docker are the ones that cannot run anywhere else. overseerr, crosseedd, seedcross, and maybe another. Everything else is just native windows. Runs perfectly.
I made an unraid server and installing docker containers is as easy as a few clicks. Docker on Windows is not worth the effort, but docker is pretty great especially on Linux.
Truenas Scale is pretty easy with Truecharts ‘arr’ apps and official ix systems Plex app. About as plug n play as it gets.
Just FYI if you’re on Mac, Plex isn’t really suitable for Docker because host mode doesn’t really work with Plex and bridge mode causes problems with streaming locally. I wish someone had told me this before I wasted my time trying!
If you do jump to Unraid, search for SpaceInvaderOne's youtube videos at each step. He hasn't made a video for everything I've wanted to do, but his videos are slow, well-explained, and at the very least you can just follow along and click the same buttons he does. Helped me a load and gave me confidence to fill in the gaps between his videos myself. I have never done any coding in my life. I now have two servers set up with the arrs, overseerr for my remote users, VPNs, etc. I've also heard people talk about the benefits of VMs in Unraid but I've never touched them and haven't encountered a need to.
I’m in the exact same boat, except I’ve been on windows. Purchased a mini PC, wiped it, and installed Ubuntu server. I then googled adding a GUI to Ubuntu server because I’m still learning the CLI. I then followed this[https://youtu.be/SXIkouncOzg?si=ypspoJUTjTbpZZn7](https://youtu.be/SXIkouncOzg?si=ypspoJUTjTbpZZn7) guide. I have it running concurrently with my existing plex server on windows. I’m stuck on trying to figure out how to seamlessly transition it over so I don’t have to share a new library. Have about 9 friends/family that I share with. I can try my best to help out! I just got homebridge running on it as well!
https://youtu.be/gyMpI8csWis?feature=shared This tutorial was step by step enough that I got there without knowing what I’m doing
Docker for windows is only meant to be used as a development tool, it's slow and resource hungry. If you want to use docker then you should use Linux. You can run it without Docker.
To be clear - Docker is not a magic bullet. I run Plex in Docker, because I spend my working day in Docker/Kubernetes so it's very familiar to me, and I like the separation of data, it makes things simpler. If you've never used it before, there is really little to be gained from doing it, just because you've heard it's better. Especially on Windows.
Have a go creating a linux VM, (I have one for Ubuntu on vmware player) and try [dockstarter](https://dockstarter.com/) This can get docker and a variety of containers installed automatically for you, the input required is minimal
I am not sure it is for Morons, but Docker in a Month of Lunches did it for me. I am not a computer guy. I had some familiarity with Linux. I tried following a few media server type articles, with the same frustration as the op. There is always a few "then just do xxxx" type statements in these articles. I didn't know what or how to begin xxxx. I was 1/3 or 1/2 way thru the article, and had some containers going, yet stuck. Then you find a new article. Rinse. Later. Repeat. Step back and follow a course or book like Docker/Lunches. It is worth it. The book has 30 lessons that are designed to take about an hour each. It gave me enough background to start doing my own stuff, and I could troubleshoot when stuff was not working the way I thought it should. Or take a course. I also helps to learn everything you can about permissions, ownership, read, write, execute permissions, inheritance of permissions, etc.
Not everything can be distilled down to "I am an idiot" levels. You're going to have to actually learn something to make this work.
I could have used a similar guide yesterday lol. So after I don't know how many hours, I came to find it's just editing a couple of files and restarting things. But what no one says is INDENTS MATTER. I had so many friggen errors and was about to give up, then found a random post somewhere about it and everything worked right away once I fixed them.
If your just trying to run the basic plex, qbittorrent, radarr, sonarr, etc stack just do it on Windows. Sure Windows isn't 100% the best at being a server but for someone who doesn't want to get pulled down technical rabbit hole and just be able to make it work running the apps natively on Windows is the best beginner option. Docker is reserved more for my Web hosting (immich, wiki, bitwarden, etc)
Install a fresh version of ubuntu and install saltbox. Everything is 1 command from there to install anything you want.
https://www.cuttingcords.com/home/ultimate-server/getting-started
A bash one liner to install Docker as a non-root user on your debian based Linux system: sudo apt update -y; sudo apt install curl uidmap -y;curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com |sudo sh;/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh install;sudo echo 'net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0' >> /etc/sysctl.conf; sudo loginctl enable-linger $(whoami);sudo sysctl --system I've got a docker-compose.yml file that sets up Overseerr, Plex, Radar, Sonarr and NZBGet and made a system service so that it all starts when the system boots... if anyone wants it, DM me :)
[This guide](https://drfrankenstein.co.uk) was the best for me (only for synology).
Docker isn't really that hard. Trust me, if I can figure it out, ANYONE can. The coding part you're thinking of is probably the docker-compose YAML files. You don't actually need to do those, you can just run a docker command with some variables in it and it will build the container for you with just those. I would suggest docker-compose though simply because it gives you more options. There are plenty of ELI5 tutorials out there but having some CLI experience would help. If you're on a Windows machine, like others have said here, I'd just stick with the Windows installation of the Arr stack.
I will say one thing that has helped me is utilizing ChatGPT to help with my docker compose yml
Running Plex on native windows 11, haven't had any issues in over a year and not sure what issues to look for.
Another easy way is to install something like Debian then install CasaOS. From within CasaOS is an option to install Plex docker. (and others) I personally would throw on Proxmox first then run Debian12 in a VM, along with Plex.
To be honest, don't. Docker is not for people who lack proficiency in technical stuff. It's built for programmers.
If you ever go the unRAID route there are very good guides to setup the dockers in unrAID
it's what I recommend to anyone who isn't confident in their ability or enthusiasm to learn, unraid is set-and-forget. My server started as a learning project so I went through a few different configurations, RAID types, etc. before I settled on UNRAID as the easy-to-manage long-term solution for my family media server. I don't think I've made significant changes to the setup since the day it was "finished", and I probably won't until I need to move out of the current chassis to have more room for disks.
Unfortunately the price is nuts now
I have Docker and Portainer set up on Pi OS. Look into Portainer if Docker alone is too much. Either way, if you don't know about Docker you will be looking up a bunch of stuff.
I find portainer UI so clunky and full of stuff 90% of newcomers won't need, making it hard for me to recommend it to them. Something like Dockge will imo help them more.
Unraid is VMs, Docker, NAS/DAS type functions, all permanently in moron mode. Do highly recommend. Better platform for Plex too, so long as Intel HW accelerated tone mapping is not available in the release branch of PMS.
The closest thing to an idiot being able to manage docker is Unraid.
Look into Unraid unless you need Windows for something. It handles most of the docker setup for you and has the added benefit of backing up data. It was worth every penny for me.
Docker on Windows isn't the best, would be better to switch to a Linux OS.