Keeping the Same Metadata Across Multiple Emby Servers – How Are You Doing It?

[Azra3l 6]

I’m running three Emby servers (one for each family group) and I’m starting to hit the usual pain point:
same media, different metadata… and three slightly different personalities

Posters don’t match, collections differ, and every now and then one server decides a movie needs a completely new identity. It works, but it’s messy.

Am using the AcDB plugin to fetch posters and RPDB plugin for overlays.

What I’d like is pretty simple:

• One consistent set of metadata (posters, backdrops, titles, collections)

• All three servers using that same metadata

• No surprise re-scrapes or random changes after library scans

The direction I’m leaning toward:

• Using local metadata (NFO + images) as the main source

• Letting Emby read from that instead of pulling stuff online repeatedly

• Basically treating Emby as a player + organizer, not a metadata decision-maker

Before I go all-in, I wanted to see how others are handling this.

• Anyone running multiple Emby servers with shared metadata?

• Any issues with multiple servers reading the same NFO/artwork?

• Any “yeah, don’t do that” lessons learned the hard way?

Not looking for perfection — just consistency.
Would love to hear what’s actually worked for people.

Edited January 5 by Azra3l
Updated a detail

[Happy2Play 9780]

Collections are created from item metadata but get their own metadata/images outside your media ie in Emby programdata/metadata/collections and the same with People programdata/metadata/people.

But you can't point multiple servers to the same metadata folder though as the programdata/metadata/library folder info will not be the same across all servers.

I guess all the servers would have to be clones with different serverids to have all the same itemid but creates a real issue of adding content.

[Luke 42077]

I would also make sure that only one of the servers is configured to write the nfo files.