Plex in Docker

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Plex is a client-server media player system and software suite comprising two main components (a media server and client applications)

Plex Screenshot

Plex Requirements

Ingredients

Already deployed:

Docker swarm cluster with persistent shared storage
Traefik configured per design
DNS entry for the hostname you intend to use (or a wildcard), pointed to your keepalived IP

Traefik Forward Auth or Authelia to secure your Traefik-exposed services with an additional layer of authentication

Preparation

Setup data locations

We'll need a directories to bind-mount into our container for Plex to store its library, so create /var/data/plex:

mkdir /var/data/plex

Prepare Plex environment

Create plex.env, and populate with the following variables. Set PUID and GUID to the UID and GID of the user who owns your media files, on the local filesystem

EDGE=1
VERSION=latest
PUID=42
PGID=42

Plex Docker Swarm config

Create a docker swarm config file in docker-compose syntax (v3), something like the example below:

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version: "3.0"

services:
  plex:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex
    env_file: plex.env
    volumes:
      - /var/data/config/plex:/config
      - /var/data/media:/media
    deploy:
      labels:
        # traefik common
        - traefik.enable=true
        - traefik.docker.network=traefik_public

        # traefikv1
        - traefik.frontend.rule=Host:plex.example.com
        - traefik.port=32400     

        # traefikv2
        - "traefik.http.routers.plex.rule=Host(`plex.example.com`)"
        - "traefik.http.services.plex.loadbalancer.server.port=32400"
        - "traefik.enable=true"
    networks:
        - traefik_public
        - internal
    ports:
      - 32469:32469
      - 32400:32400
      - 32401:32401
      - 3005:3005
      - 8324:8324
      - 1900:1900/udp
      - 32410:32410/udp
      - 32412:32412/udp
      - 32413:32413/udp
      - 32414:32414/udp

networks:
  traefik_public:
    external: true
  internal:
    driver: overlay
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 172.16.16.0/24

Note

Setup unique static subnets for every stack you deploy. This avoids IP/gateway conflicts which can otherwise occur when you're creating/removing stacks a lot. See my list here.

Serving

Launch Plex stack

Launch the Plex stack by running docker stack deploy plex -c <path -to-docker-compose.yml>

Log into your new instance at https://YOUR-FQDN (You'll need to setup a plex.tv login for remote access / discovery to work from certain clients)

Chef's notes 📓

Plex uses port 32400 for remote access, using your plex.tv user/password to authenticate you. The inclusion of the traefik proxy in this recipe is simply to allow you to use the web client (as opposed to a client app) by connecting directly to your instance, as opposed to browsing your media via https://plex.tv/web ↩
Got an NVIDIA GPU? See this blog post re how to use your GPU to transcode your media! ↩

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