Plex metdata database location

  • I understand how omv takes up the entire system volume and that means the Plex database needs to be located elsewhere. I also understand that the main system drive could be partitioned to keep some space available for Plex. But…


    Can anyone comment on using an SSD to house the Plex database, whether that be a system drive partition or any other drive/partition? Since this database constantly gets written and rewritten, does that not present longevity problems for an SSD which has a limited lifetime with regard to writing? This would suggest the database would be better located on an HDD, but then you lose the speed advantage - or with heavy caching is this not a factor?


    I've not yet set up my Plex Media Server on omv (currently it's on a Mac) and I'm just fishing here for ideas about how best to set it up on omv, so would appreciate what others have to say on this matter.

  • I see no meaningful advantage of of placing the database on a SSD.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • My boot drive on my Dell T30 is a 250GB M.2 drive(WDS250G3X0C by Western Digital 3100 MB/s). I have my PLEX DB in /home/, along with all my configuration files for Docker. I just let the installer partition the boot drive and leave it as is. By the time 250GB is not enough I will come up with another plan. I also use the very fast M.2 drive as the location of my transcoder temporary directory. Less than half of the drive is used. PLEX DB is tracking 5000+ Albums, 2000+ Movies, the episodes of 150+ TV shows, and years of images.


    At one point I had figured out how to store my PLEX DB on my data drives, which are pooled with the Unionfilesystem plugin wrapped in SNAPRAID. It was done by editing /etc/fstab, but if all drives in data pool are formatted Btrfs the need to customize /etc/fstab is removed.

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  • Interesting replies, thanks. But leaves me with 2 questions still:-


    Would having the Plex database on an SSD not make for faster operation (of PMS)?


    Would the continuous writing and updating of that database reduce the life expectancy of e.g. an M.2 drive?

  • Interesting replies, thanks. But leaves me with 2 questions still:-


    Would having the Plex database on an SSD not make for faster operation (of PMS)?


    Would the continuous writing and updating of that database reduce the life expectancy of e.g. an M.2 drive?

    What portion(s) of PMS do you find slow?

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • What portion(s) of PMS do you find slow?

    Well, not that I can specifically attribute to reading and/or writing to its database, but then I don't know in total what it stores in there - apart from the metadata of course. Where does it store the EPG when it eventually downloads it? That is always slow. Select Guide in the LiveTV/DVR section and it takes a while to populate the table and it takes that long every time you go to the Guide so the whole usability is impacted by this. Compared to using just a TV where the Guide display is almost instantaneous, every time it needs to be displayed. It's a general gripe I have with Plex that it provides a worse TV viewing experience than simply using the TV. However, it also records for me (well, sometimes) and can handle all my music etc. as a far better central server than iTunes ever could be. So I want to persevere with Plex and hope it will improve in those area where it needs such improvement. I'm going to throw it on a fast media server (using omv of course) and want to optimise it wherever I can. Hence my thoughts about possibly speeding up its operation by having its database on an SSD.


    I realise that may not be a bottleneck, but just exploring possibilities at the moment and still unsure whether continuous reading and writing of the database files will wear out an SSD/M.2 to a significant extent. Having said that, is M.2 storage the same in this regard to a regular SSD or is it more/less robust?

  • Having now installed OMV on the M.2 SSD I can see my fundamental misunderstanding. OMV doesn't take over the entire drive and I was subsequently able to also install other stuff (and Plex) on the same partition as per any other *nix.


    That means Plex's database is on the M.2, but that shouldn't be a problem and all is running fine.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    That means Plex's database is on the M.2, but that shouldn't be a problem and all is running fine.

    Plex’s database can grow quite large, quite quickly, depending if you have all the bells and whistles turned on and depending on how big the M.2 is.

    System Backup Typo alert: Under the Linux section the command should be sudo umount /dev/sda1 NOT sudo unmount /dev/sda1

    Backup Data Disk to Backup Disk on Same Machine: In a Scheduled Job:rsync -av --delete /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-f8814ed9-9a5c-4e1c-8830-426968c20ea3/ /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e67439d5-00a3-4942-bd5f-b84ab86aa850/ Don't forget trailing slashes, and BE CAREFUL. (HT: Getting Started with OMV5)

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