Files

T

dohertj2 91ec7d1762 Migrate Plex from ESXi VM to Docker container

Plex ran on a dedicated Debian 11 VM at 10.100.0.24 until that OS reached
LTS EOL on 2026-08-31 and apt security updates started 404ing. It now runs
as a host-networked container on the Docker host at 10.100.0.35.

Adds plex-docker-migration.md: the decision record and the executed
procedure. The two choices worth knowing about are that media is bind
mounted at the paths the library DB already stores (/mnt/nfs/*) so the
migration rewrote none of its 32,262 absolute paths, and that the
container runs on host networking so Plex still sees real client source
IPs and does not throttle LAN playback as remote.

Preferences.xml was carried across, so the server kept machine identifier
7aa65063599874eac3d9a2f62df74c1816400c88 and Tautulli, seerr and existing
clients continued working without reconfiguration. Verified after cutover:
libraries 1959/421/146 and 11,481 history entries, all matching the
pre-migration baseline exactly.

Rewrites plex.md for the container, adds plex to docker.md, and updates
the component list in CLAUDE.md. The old VM is retained powered on with
plexmediaserver stopped and disabled as rollback, so docs for ESXi and
Veeam are deliberately left describing it until decommission.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-09-16 08:55:43 -04:00

3.4 KiB

Raw Blame History

Plex Media Server

Migrated to Docker 2026-09-16. Plex ran on a dedicated Debian 11 VM at 10.100.0.24 until that OS reached LTS EOL (2026-08-31). It now runs as a container on the Docker host. The old VM still exists, powered on but with plexmediaserver stopped and disabled, as rollback. Full procedure: plex-docker-migration.md.

Access

Host: DOCKER (10.100.0.35), container plex
Web UI (LAN): http://10.100.0.35:32400/web
Remote access: WAN TCP 32400 port-forwarded on UDM Pro → 10.100.0.35:32400 (rule PLEX, id 67ebfaef41b7da3e559ab08d). Public IP 208.161.27.232. Also reachable at https://plex.dohertylan.com (Traefik + Authelia SSO), but Plex does not advertise that URL (customConnections unset), so clients use the :32400 path.
Shell: docker exec -it plex bash (no separate SSH host any more)

Container

Image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest (running 1.43.4.10903-e5521bd8c-ls324)
Compose: /opt/plex/docker-compose.yml, rendered by the plex Ansible role
Networking: network_mode: host — needed for GDM discovery (32410-32414/udp) and real client source IPs, so LAN clients are not misclassified as remote
PUID/PGID: 1000/1000
VERSION=docker: pins Plex to the image tag and disables the in-container self-updater

Volumes

Host	Container	Notes
`/opt/plex/config`	`/config`	32 GB library (metadata, thumbnails, DBs)
`/opt/plex/transcode`	`/transcode`	Local-disk scratch, never NFS
`/mnt/share/Media/Movies`	`/mnt/nfs/Movies`	Legacy path — matches the library DB
`/mnt/share/Media/TV`	`/mnt/nfs/TV`	″
`/mnt/share/Media/Anime`	`/mnt/nfs/Anime`	″

Why the /mnt/nfs/* container paths look odd: the Plex library DB stores 32,262 absolute media paths from the old VM. Mounting the media at those exact paths inside the container meant the migration touched zero DB rows and could not trigger a library rematch. Do not "tidy" these to /data/* without rewriting section_locations, media_parts and media_streams.

Identity

MachineIdentifier: 7aa65063599874eac3d9a2f62df74c1816400c88 (preserved across the migration — Tautulli, seerr and all clients kept working)
No Plex Pass (PlexOnlineHome="0") — software transcoding only; there is no usable hardware encoder on this host (VMware SVGA / vmwgfx)

Libraries

ID	Name	Root path	Items (2026-09-16)
1	Movies	`/mnt/nfs/Movies`	1,959
2	TV Shows	`/mnt/nfs/TV`	421
4	Anime	`/mnt/nfs/Anime`	146

Updates

Managed by Ansible, not by Plex. ansible-playbook update.yml -e only=plex pulls the latest image and recreates the container; the full update.yml pass includes it. The in-container updater is disabled via VERSION=docker.

Integrations pointing at this server

Service	Where configured
Sonarr / Radarr	"Plex Media Server" connection (id 2), `updateLibrary: true` — stored in `sonarr.db`/`radarr.db`, not templated by Ansible
Tautulli	`/opt/tautulli/config.ini` (`pms_ip`, `pms_url`)
seerr	`/opt/seerr/settings.json` (`plex.ip`)
Uptime Kuma	monitor id 17 in `/opt/uptime_kuma/data/kuma.db`
Homepage	`/opt/homepage/config/services.yaml`
Traefik	`/opt/traefik/traefik/rules/external-services.yml` (file provider)

3.4 KiB Raw Blame History