How I: manage my media server
Previously, I mentioned that I had set up a Plex server at home. It is all very small scale and homemade, everything runs in Docker containers, isolated from each other but able to communicate when needed
this is the architecture I use:
- It all starts with a media manager. If you are dealing with TV shows, Sonarr acts as an assistant for organizing your files. It knows where media is stored on your disk, sorts episodes by season, and lets you know if any episodes are missing. Radarr does the same thing, but for movies
- This manager can connect to a torrent downloader, for example qBittorrent:
- If you already have the
.torrentfiles, you can provide them, and once ready, the system moves the files to the right folder and renames them - If you don’t have the files, you can set up a small indexing hub. I use Prowlarr, which connects to the main web indexers so you can find them
- If you already have the
- Sometimes some indexers are down, so having a FlareSolverr container in the middle helps reroute the requests
- In the end, all of this makes sure the final files are ready for Plex to stream the media smoothly on my TV without latency
Here is a diagram showing how it all works:
💡 remember: Always respect copyright