Jump to content

Emby with two Unraidservers and SMB Sharing


Pixelpaule

Recommended Posts

Pixelpaule

Hello everyone,

I have a question about using Emby and media data on a separate network storage. I use two Unraid servers. The first Unraid server (further: NUC server) is an Intel NUC with i5 processor and 16GB RAM. It stores all of my wife's and my personal files, as well as our music collection. Some Docker containers and services (smarthome, backup tool, etc.) run on this server, which should be accessible 24/7.

The second Unraidserver (further: media server) (i3-10100 CPU, 16GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics, NAS HDDs) serves as media and backup server. All our photos, films and series are also stored here. Since this server is not as energy-efficient as the Intel NUC, it goes into sleep mode after 30 minutes of IDL.

For this reason, I currently have two Emby servers running parallel. The first is on the NUC server. This is only responsible for the music collection. For films, series and photos, Emby is also running on the media server (second Unraid Server). I would like to run Emby only on my NUC server and also integrate the films, photos and series on the media server. The films & series are available as Bluray untouched mkvs. These are uncompressed and the original sound tracks (Atmos, DTS-HD etc.) are used. The films are played via Nvidia Shield (Kodi / Emby), FireTV Cube (Emby), FireTV Stick 4K (Emby). All servers and playback devices are connected via a 1GBit LAN network. Mobile phones via WiFi 6.

In Unraid there is the option to add SMB shares (see screenshot). So I would mount the media server on the NUC server and give the Emby Docker container access to these SMB shares.

However, I am wondering if this will cause any performance issues? Can the media players still play the data "directly" from the second Unraid server?

 

Screenshot 2022-08-02 133048.png

Edited by Pixelpaule
Link to comment
Share on other sites

pwhodges

I think maybe some clients can take the media directly from the storage server*, but the usual arrangement is that it is routed via the Emby server.  When the server is direct playing (i.e. just passing on the file exactly as received) there is no appreciable overhead - and your network has ample bandwidth to handle it as well - so any benefit of bypassing the Emby server is trivial.  Of course, when direct streaming (i.e. re-muxing into another container for compatibility) or transcoding (re-encoding using a different codec) is required, the Emby server is inevitably involved.  Note that direct streaming is also a negligible overhead on the transfer, and so also nothing to be concerned about.

Paul 

* The recent major update to the Shield's firmware caused problems with this, but I haven't really followed how this stands now, as I don't have a Shield.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pixelpaule

Hey @pwhodges, thanks for your reply. I hope i understand you correctl :) I think my use case is surely not unusual?

Would it be better to include the SMB shares directly in the Emby libraries? Or does it make no difference if I mount the SMB shares from Unraid 2 in Unraid 1 and then mount them in the Emby Docker container?

 

 

 

Screenshot 2022-08-02 151711.png

Edited by Pixelpaule
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would suggest mounting them first in either docker or the OS because the implementation there will likely support more smb features then our embedded one.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

rbjtech

You need to be careful on how you add these SMB shares - as if I understand your first post, the 2nd film server is not necessarily connected to the i3 NUC all the time.

Thus emby will 'see' the smb shares - and add the items just fine.  But if during a scan it no longer has access to those shares - then it will remove them all again...🙄

You may have to turn off the 'scan library' schedule - and manually fire the scan when the film server is available for updates.

 

  • Agree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pixelpaule

Hello all,

unfortunately I have a problem with my config. When my data server (Unraid Server 2), which stores all movies and series, goes into sleep mode, the two drives "Movies" & "Series" from my Embyserver (Unraid Server 1) are unmounted. This is actually how it should be, since the data server is supposed to be off all day unless I need the data or backups are being run. My Emby server on the other hand should run all day.

But if the library is scanned in Emby and the two drives "Movies" & "Series" are not mounted, the information is removed from the Emby database. After the two drives are then mounted again, the entire movies and series library is rebuilt.

Is there a way around this? For Movies & Series all metadata is stored in the media directories. For music and everything else under "metadata".

EDIT:

sorry I missed the replies above, so the actual post is obsolete.

@rbjtech: thanks for pointing it out. That's exactly the problem I had, which is why I wanted to get back to you. I think you have solved my problem though! I will test it and give feedback again!

Edited by Pixelpaule
Link to comment
Share on other sites

rbjtech
3 minutes ago, Pixelpaule said:

Hello all,

unfortunately I have a problem with my config. When my data server (Unraid Server 2), which stores all movies and series, goes into sleep mode, the two drives "Movies" & "Series" from my Embyserver (Unraid Server 1) are unmounted. This is actually how it should be, since the data server is supposed to be off all day unless I need the data or backups are being run. My Emby server on the other hand should run all day.

But if the library is scanned in Emby and the two drives "Movies" & "Series" are not mounted, the information is removed from the Emby database. After the two drives are then mounted again, the entire movies and series library is rebuilt.

Is there a way around this? For Movies & Series all metadata is stored in the media directories. For music and everything else under "metadata".

See my post on 2nd Aug - directly above this - I mentioned this EXACT issue you are having and a way around it... ;)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pixelpaule

Yes, sorry I had overlooked the answer! You had already brought it exactly to the point! Is there any way to turn on library scanning by schedule for selected libraries only?

Edited by Pixelpaule
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Pixelpaule said:

Yes, sorry I had overlooked the answer! You had already brought it exactly to the point! Is there any way to turn on library scanning by schedule for selected libraries only?

Currently you can only adjust the schedule for the scan of all libraries, but this topic has come up before and more control is certainly possible for future updates.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pixelpaule

@Luke Thanks for the Information. I'm not wondering that a missing Feature is implimentated in the future. 😅 👌

Hey guys,

unfortunately my configuration is not running clean yet. I now have the following problem. When my data server goes into sleep mode and the SMB shares are no longer accessible, the Emby Docker container crashes after some time (this can be a few hours) and can no longer be restarted. Only after the data server starts from sleep mode and the SMB shares are mounted in the Unraid system (on which Emby is running), Emby can be started again.

Is there a solution for this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Pixelpaule said:

@Luke Thanks for the Information. I'm not wondering that a missing Feature is implimentated in the future. 😅 👌

Hey guys,

unfortunately my configuration is not running clean yet. I now have the following problem. When my data server goes into sleep mode and the SMB shares are no longer accessible, the Emby Docker container crashes after some time (this can be a few hours) and can no longer be restarted. Only after the data server starts from sleep mode and the SMB shares are mounted in the Unraid system (on which Emby is running), Emby can be started again.

Is there a solution for this?

Hi there, please attach the emby server log from when this happened. Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
Pixelpaule

Sorry for the late feedback, but the last time was a bit stressful and then I was also on vacation. Parallel to this thread I have opened another one in the Unraid forum. Here we also found the cause of the problem. I made the mistake of assigning the library folders individually (see Screenshot) in the Docker container, which I guess the Emby Docker container can't handle. After I used the default /mnt again and assigned the folders individually in Emby, everything works.

This ist not working

1926276036_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-08um07_38_44.png.5fa3c1e5c6da0a07743b83bb329ca081.png

359809464_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-08um07_41_22.png.3f92e3c444cbdeb1105f0ca8374b2ca6.png

 

This ist working:

image.png.9052f6f05e330a69f372d02f30b5b527.png

image.png.0eee52201a068d99cfb6bd63c4e104c6.png


But now I have another question: Currently I store all metadata in the media folders directly. When the remote share is not accessible because the server is idle, the movie database is of course not displayed properly anymore (details of movies etc.). What is best practice here?

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Pixelpaule

Hey, sorry @Luke for my late feedback. Unfortunately, I only got around to putting the info together yesterday. I'll try to describe the problem in a bit more detail.  @Happy2Play

When the remote shares with my movies and series (Unraid Server 2) are not accessible, because the server is in standby, the pictures and graphics of the movies and series are partly not displayed. 

Remote share is offline (stand by)
1454256229_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-23um08_31_26.png.6415a336c9f1c44f0331ff415fe44179.png

Some movies are displayed correctly, many are missing images.
1463011952_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-23um07_29_14.thumb.png.ad32cfa79202968434874ac542a7f518.png

1305601639_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-22um17_34_26.thumb.png.0f33cc9e76ef8b941a881262e69c2acf.png

125020393_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-22um17_36_47.thumb.png.777111135608891e2676b2af743d20a6.png

Descriptions, actors and other data remain visible.
919034023_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-22um17_37_01.thumb.png.0888a5f263ad23ab0aad88459ebd00fc.png

Collections are always displayed correctly.
1693262953_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-22um17_37_17.thumb.png.46c0ff41238ffe6ba760af31e4164e1b.png

Genres are always displayed correctly.
1443356349_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-22um17_37_24.thumb.png.78b31be22600583fad842fb03760e1ba.png

Only after I click "Update metadata" + "Replace existing images" the images are displayed again. But for this the remote share must be reachable! If the share is not available (because in standby), all movies & series are removed from the library. The images are not displayed if the remote share is online and I have not executed "Update Metadata"!

I store all media data (covers, fanarts, logos, etc.) for movies and series in the media folders on the remote share (//data-storage/movies - as you can see in the first screenshot). As it is described in the documentation of Emby.
890476711_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-14um07_52_15.png.ec7506a2e09b849c147524a12a2324fc.png

1510867906_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-14um07_52_43.png.dfa1f587b9e3d86eb58e27276014e539.png

The rest of the metadata is stored in the default directory.
1248941175_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-23um07_48_29.png.cd6524ec4ac64a3169738276831b6684.png

So these are stored in the appdata folder of the Docker container. This folder is located on the Unraid Server 1 on which Emby is running. This is online 24/7.
621429875_Bildschirmfoto2022-09-23um07_49_35.thumb.png.05e54c8b4dc0bca9a73dde0a1d57b27f.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...