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Plex Media Streaming

Plex Media Server Architecture

Plex organizes personal media collections and streams video, audio, and photos seamlessly across home network clients and remote devices.

Library Architecture

flowchart TD subgraph Storage [ZFS Storage Mounts] Movies["Movies Directory"] TV["TV Shows Directory"] Music["Music Directory"] end subgraph PlexContainer [Plex Media Server Container] Scanner["Automated Metadata Agent"] PlexDB[("SQLite Metadata Database")] Transcoder["Hardware Transcoder Engine"] TranscodeBuffer["RAM Disk Transcode Buffer"] end subgraph AccessLayer [Private Ingress] Tailscale["Tailscale IP 100.64.0.10"] NPM["Nginx Proxy Manager Port 443"] end Movies --> Scanner TV --> Scanner Music --> Scanner Scanner --> PlexDB PlexDB --> Transcoder Transcoder --> TranscodeBuffer TranscodeBuffer --> Tailscale TranscodeBuffer --> NPM

Docker Compose Configuration

version: '3.8'

services:
  plex:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
    container_name: plex
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - VERSION=docker
      - PLEX_CLAIM=claim-xxxxxxxxx
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - /mnt/storage/media/movies:/data/movies
      - /mnt/storage/media/tv:/data/tv
      - /tmp/transcode:/transcode
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    restart: unless-stopped

Custom Network Settings

To allow Plex clients to connect directly over Tailscale without relaying through Plex cloud proxy servers:

  1. Open Plex Web -> Settings -> Network.
  2. Set Custom server access URLs to https://plex.lab:443, http://100.64.0.10:32400.
  3. Set LAN Networks to 100.64.0.0/255.192.0.0, 172.18.0.0/255.255.0.0.