Migration of Emby Server (Premiere) from ReadyNAS to Windows Server OS

[szalkerous 1]

Hi all,

 

I've finally gotten fed up with the constant transcoding woes I run into running Emby on my Netgear ReadyNAS 3304 rackmount NAS unit. It just doesn't have the encoding performance necessary to run my HDHomeRun live TV feeds or my media library to my (late model) Roku players throughout the house. I had hoped for the slim chance some sort of external transcoding offload support for Emby would come along but nothing seems to have popped up. So I'm going to move my entire installation over to my Windows Server 2019 rack unit that has a much more powerful Xeon CPU and discrete nVidia GPU. It's in the same rack as the NAS and has a 10G fiber link to it. I have full administrator rights to all devices. I am professionally familiar with both the sysadmin and software engineering aspects of these environments.

However, in trying to do such, I've encountered some confusing points along the way....

On the Windows system, I do not want Emby installed in the App Data tree. So I downloaded the "portable" version and placed it on a discrete D:\EmbyServer drive and location.
I created D:\EmbyData to house all of my library/cache/metadata/config information. I did a backup of the data off the NAS, and moved it into this spot.

Problem #1:
However, it seems there isn't a way to tell Emby Server that ALL of it's data is in D:\EmbyData. It creates a new setup in D:\programdata every time, which is not acceptable for my environment and I have to manually purge out. Even going in and setting the custom Cache folder didn't seem to fix it, and I can't seem to find where Emby stores it's path configuration. I checked the install folder tree, the registry, appdata, etc. None of the online docs or forum posts seem to discuss this.

Problem #2:
My library, plugins, configs, users, userdata, and premiere key need to get migrated off the NAS. However the original media files (movies,music,etc) will remain there. I have gone through all the libraries and adjusted the path from a local Linux path to a reachable SMB network path. I assume this will work? However I noticed that the server backup plugin doesn't seem to back up everything. What else will I need to manually migrate to recreate my setup on the Windows system? Will the Emby phone-home call to validate my license key cause problems coming from a new system? I don't want my lifetime license to become blacklisted because I was forced to migrate my setup to different hardware just to get it to work smoothly.

Thank you for your help.

Edited February 16, 2022 by szalkerous
typos

[pwhodges 2014]

9 minutes ago, szalkerous said:

Will the Emby phone-home call to validate my license key cause problems coming from a new system? I don't want my lifetime license to become blacklisted because I was forced to migrate my setup to different hardware just to get it to work smoothly.

Your Premiere licence can be used on multiple servers of yours without restriction, so there is no danger of this causing a problem.  The usage restrictions for Premiere are based on number of clients (not servers) in active use.

Paul

[Happy2Play 9784]

16 minutes ago, szalkerous said:

Problem #1:
However, it seems there isn't a way to tell Emby Server that ALL of it's data is in D:\EmbyData. It creates a new setup in D:\programdata every time, which is not acceptable for my environment and I have to manually purge out. Even going in and setting the custom Cache folder didn't seem to fix it, and I can't seem to find where Emby stores it's path configuration. I checked the install folder tree, the registry, appdata, etc. None of the online docs or forum posts seem to discuss this.

In Windows the install is self-contained installfolder/system and installfolder/programdata, same concept on with a portable/custom install.  

So you cannot change the self-contained "programdata" location on Windows install.  I guess you could create symbolic link to somewhere else.

24 minutes ago, szalkerous said:

Problem #2:
My library, plugins, configs, users, userdata, and premiere key need to get migrated off the NAS. However the original media files (movies,music,etc) will remain there. I have gone through all the libraries and adjusted the path from a local Linux path to a reachable SMB network path. I assume this will work? However I noticed that the server backup plugin doesn't seem to back up everything. What else will I need to manually migrate to recreate my setup on the Windows system? Will the Emby phone-home call to validate my license key cause problems coming from a new system? I don't want my lifetime license to become blacklisted because I was forced to migrate my setup to different hardware just to get it to work smoothly.

The backup plug only does configs nothing else.  There are some outliers list scheduled recordings if you do recordings.  As for SMB paths they are questionable as there are issues with them in dozens of topics.

As for key that is not an issue.

Can I use my Emby Premiere Key on More than One Server : Emby

[szalkerous 1]

15 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

In Windows the install is self-contained installfolder/system and installfolder/programdata, same concept on with a portable/custom install.  

So you cannot change the self-contained "programdata" location on Windows install.  I guess you could create symbolic link to somewhere else.

This is interesting. I'd ask you to expand on this. So since I'm using the "portable" version, I extracted it to into "D:\EmbyServer", which we can call the "install folder". However the "D:\programdata" is not under the "install folder" like you pointed out, and it's created automatically.

We have the ability to specify a custom Cache folder, so I must assume these paths are stored somewhere.

Is there possibly a command-line argument I can use? A JSON file I can create? I can't imagine the Emby team would hard-code a path like this without the ability to override, that doesn't make any sense. If that is the case I would submit a bug/feature request on the subject, I really don't want to start creating symbolic links all over my server just to compensate for poor design choices. But I'm going to assume the team thought of this. Maybe Luke can put in his 2 cents.

[Happy2Play 9784]

Wherever Emby System folder exists is the install folder.  As a portable is just the system folder that once run will generate Emby programdata folder.

 

4 hours ago, szalkerous said:

We have the ability to specify a custom Cache folder, so I must assume these paths are stored somewhere.

Things that are customizable have a config file and are in the database.  So I guess edit the database.  But if something ever happens to the database this is something you will have to remember to do on a new install.

4 hours ago, szalkerous said:

Is there possibly a command-line argument I can use? A JSON file I can create? I can't imagine the Emby team would hard-code a path like this without the ability to override, that doesn't make any sense.

Nope there are really two options here as my really old install was before programdata.  So in an install folder uncontained and contained in programdata folder.  But these are not interchangeable.  

Still don't really understand what you are trying to do.  You want Emby configs in a different location then the Emby installation?

[Luke 42085]

@szalkerous?