AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 Hi - I'm looking at having two Emby servers... I recall seeing a thread that you'd set one as a "read-only" for the metadata... I'd like to do this: MOVE data from my OLD Emby Server to my NEW server. Then, make the NEW one the production machine, and the OLD one the "read-only" one. Is this as simple as using the backup plug-in, restore on the new server, then going back to the old one, and changing the library settings and unchecking ALL the metadata sources and savers? Like so?
Carlo 4561 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 Hi, what exactly is the purpose behind doing this?
AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Author Posted May 14, 2021 18 minutes ago, cayars said: Hi, what exactly is the purpose behind doing this? Short: Lack of proper hardware. Long: Current Emby server is a VM running on a machine that was procured in 2010 (i7 960). "New" emby server is also a VM - but has iGPU passthrough for transcoding. I mostly want to test all my stuff on the new machine to see if it works as well as the old one used to. Also Old server has gobs more space, so it'll be the one that handles all my LiveTV recordings. New will handle the conversions of the recordings. I might eventually kill off the old server - but at least for the short term, need to run both side-by-side.
Carlo 4561 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 Couple of questions for you. Must you run Emby in a VM or could you use your old machine to run VMs and use the new machine as a dedicated Emby server? Where the space is allocated isn't that big a deal as you can use the old as a file server (storage wise) and access all storage as a mapped drive(s).
AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Author Posted May 14, 2021 3 minutes ago, cayars said: Couple of questions for you. Must you run Emby in a VM or could you use your old machine to run VMs and use the new machine as a dedicated Emby server? Where the space is allocated isn't that big a deal as you can use the old as a file server (storage wise) and access all storage as a mapped drive(s). Yes - they'd still have to be VMs (new and old). As for the space - the libraries would be all on an UnRaid - so that's fine. I thought for recordings, the local drive is used for cache as the recording itself is happening? but either way - i thought this was a supported scenario - having two instances at the same time? I know I saw a thread somewhere about it and that the license allows it, etc - but can't seem to locate it. Thanks
Carlo 4561 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 You can most certainly use your same license on 2 servers so that's not an issue. Ideally when recording you want to do that to a local drive as well. I'm not however behind the idea of one read and one write, but it depends how you plan to use these two systems. To give you an idea I presently have 4 Emby servers pointing to the same data, all with read/write permissions and have no issues in doing so. I keep the versions the same.
AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Author Posted May 14, 2021 6 minutes ago, cayars said: You can most certainly use your same license on 2 servers so that's not an issue. Ideally when recording you want to do that to a local drive as well. I'm not however behind the idea of one read and one write, but it depends how you plan to use these two systems. To give you an idea I presently have 4 Emby servers pointing to the same data, all with read/write permissions and have no issues in doing so. I keep the versions the same. Wait, do they all run media scans and attempt metadata fetch? Or do they recognize the metadata is there and just skip over it?
Carlo 4561 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 So I have my libs set to store NFO and graphics in the media libraries. So all instances will use the same graphics and pull in info based on the NFO file. Other than that they are independent system. Metadata isn't shared between servers so a refresh on one machine is just on that machine. Matter of fact I'm doing a full metadata refresh (not replacing images) as I type this.
AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Author Posted May 14, 2021 24 minutes ago, cayars said: Metadata isn't shared between servers so a refresh on one machine is just on that machine. Does that mean if you set something like custom parental rating you'd have to do it on all four instances? Or if you group movies into a collection you'd have to do it on each instance? I'm trying to avoid having to do that.
Carlo 4561 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 Yes you would. This is why I asked you what the purpose of running 2 installs is. Basically they are independent systems just pointing to the same media. What you want to do is twice as much work as everything is duplicated work from creating users to setting their permissions to password, etc. Ideally you have one Emby system but can have the storage any place.
AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Author Posted May 14, 2021 Okay but for the initial move/migration what's the best way to make sure that all of those kinds of settings and things are moved over to the new machine? Do I just move over the install directory or is it better to use the backup plugin?
Carlo 4561 Posted May 14, 2021 Posted May 14, 2021 Are all your library paths going to be EXACTLY the same?
AxeMan 25 Posted May 14, 2021 Author Posted May 14, 2021 Yes, everything is on the unraid array. Right now, even the recorded stuff goes over the network to the cache drive.
Carlo 4561 Posted May 15, 2021 Posted May 15, 2021 If that's the case you can essentially copy the installation from one computer over to the other.
AxeMan 25 Posted May 15, 2021 Author Posted May 15, 2021 Thanks Cayars - now, if you are still with me - the Gotcha! is that the old install is from the Media-Browswer days. Will that complicate anything? Or can I shed anything along the way?
Carlo 4561 Posted May 15, 2021 Posted May 15, 2021 Yea it does. In that case if it were me I'd grab the 4.6 Beta and install that fresh on the new system. If 4.6 is released (any day now) then use that or just install it over top the 4.6 beta. No sense install 4.5 at this point. Then just configure the new system as if it's a brand new system.
AxeMan 25 Posted May 15, 2021 Author Posted May 15, 2021 Thanks I'll probably do the Beta on new machine. How do I move over the users' watched statuses?
Luke 42079 Posted May 15, 2021 Posted May 15, 2021 https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159936-backup 1
AxeMan 25 Posted May 17, 2021 Author Posted May 17, 2021 Is there a clean way to move the custom parental ratings? Or a way to force that info to be saved into the media folders as well?
AxeMan 25 Posted May 17, 2021 Author Posted May 17, 2021 Yeah. After restoring and allowing library scan, I see the .nfo file modified dates were updated. Wondering if the new server created all new .nfos
Carlo 4561 Posted May 17, 2021 Posted May 17, 2021 It's going to depend on your library settings (each library is different). Use advanced options when looking at your libs.
AxeMan 25 Posted May 17, 2021 Author Posted May 17, 2021 I think it's the multi-version metadata problem that I reported a while back. Say I have a movie with 1080p version and a 4K version - metadata manager only allows me to set custom rating on the first version that was added to the library.
Carlo 4561 Posted May 17, 2021 Posted May 17, 2021 You can split the versions apart. Then edit individual files and then join them again. That's the only way to edit them right now.
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