Provisioning vmdk for Ubuntu Server VM

[IamSpartacus]

I'm setting up an Ubuntu Server VM to run all my media server applications in dockers. Most notably, my Plex docker/database, is roughly 200GB right now and will continue to grow over time. Would it make sense to thin provision the disk and just let the vmdk grow in real time or should I just pick a large number (say 300GB), thick provision the disk, and then I can worry about increasing the size of the disk as it gets filled.

I've never run a Linux server in a VM longer term (only done testing) so I'm pretty noob with regard to the best way to set this up.

 

[pricklypunter]

I don't know how good or bad this plan is, but I have mine set up both thin provisioned:

Storage VM: Debian 8 with ZoL using iSCSI to share a ZVol to my Multimedia VM
Multimedia VM: Debian 8 with Plex server installed using iSCSI to access media storage ZVol. SAMBA provides a quick and dirty windows share.

I don't store any media on the Multimedia VM, its only job is to serve up that media from my Storage VM. That way I can completely blow it away and start over if needed without interfering with any of my media.

 

[IamSpartacus]

I don't know how good or bad this plan is, but I have mine set up both thin provisioned:

Storage VM: Debian 8 with ZoL using iSCSI to share a ZVol to my Multimedia VM
Multimedia VM: Debian 8 with Plex server installed using iSCSI to access media storage ZVol. SAMBA provides a quick and dirty windows share.

I don't store any media on the Multimedia VM, its only job is to serve up that media from my Storage VM. That way I can completely blow it away and start over if needed without interfering with any of my media.

I won't be storing any media on this VM either but I do want to put my Plex database files (and other docker configs) on it so that it's redundant on my vSAN datastore and Plex is pretty large.

My plan is to use mergefs to merge the NFS shares off my main bulk media array and my backup bulk media array so that I can take either down without it affecting Plex.

 

[T_Minus]

I plan to use Plex... but have not set it up yet so forgive the n00b question.

Why / how is your Plex "database" 200gb if that excludes any media? What exactly is 200gb? Is that meta-info / covers for all your shows, movies, music, etc... or does it store other info in the database? 200GB seems like a ton of meta data so maybe I'm missing what it all is

 

[IamSpartacus]

I plan to use Plex... but have not set it up yet so forgive the n00b question.

Why / how is your Plex "database" 200gb if that excludes any media? What exactly is 200gb? Is that meta-info / covers for all your shows, movies, music, etc... or does it store other info in the database? 200GB seems like a ton of meta data so maybe I'm missing what it all is

It's partly metadata/movie posters but it's mostly all the thumbnail previews that are generated for my Movies and TV Shows libraries. These are used when fast forwarding / skipping ahead. You can choose not to enable these which will keep your database A LOT smaller.

 

[T_Minus]

@IamSpartacus oooooh ok that makes sense Thanks! Good to know.

 

[whitey]

I plan to use Plex... but have not set it up yet so forgive the n00b question.

Why / how is your Plex "database" 200gb if that excludes any media? What exactly is 200gb? Is that meta-info / covers for all your shows, movies, music, etc... or does it store other info in the database? 200GB seems like a ton of meta data so maybe I'm missing what it all is

I know right, I have a HUGE media collection and my plex server is 30Gb or so, all tagging/metadata fits fine but he may be doing something special that I am unaware of. Been using plex for years w/ 20-30 GB VM's and just hook them to ZFS NFS server export, rescan, smash CPU for a few hours, done when I do rebuild plex out of OCDness, most of the time i am upgrading several releases (5-10) before I do a wipe/reload...usually w/ a major distro uptick.

 

[whitey]

It's partly metadata/movie posters but it's mostly all the thumbnail previews that are generated for my Movies and TV Shows libraries. These are used when fast forwarding / skipping ahead. You can choose not to enable these which will keep your database A LOT smaller.

Ohh that's right, I don't do that madness :-D

I forget what feature that was but it looked intense. (some deep metadata caching insanity)

 

[IamSpartacus]

Ohh that's right, I don't do that madness :-D

I forget what feature that was but it looked intense. (some deep metadata caching insanity)

This is why it's so big .

 

[pricklypunter]

That's a crazy amount of TV shows. On my best day I think I could muster up about 85, but then I actually watch most of them, so I'm pretty choosy I have just about 1/2 of that amount of movies and about 1/3rd of the TV shows on my Plex, and my Multimedia VM is sitting somewhere around the 18GB mark, out of the 30GB I initially thin provisioned. I haven't done anything special, other than edit a few wrong posters, tweaked how I like the look of things etc, I usually just leave Plex to get on with it, but I have all the posters, thumbnails and episode guides etc for the content I do have

 

[IamSpartacus]

That's a crazy amount of TV shows. On my best day I think I could muster up about 85, but then I actually watch most of them, so I'm pretty choosy I have just about 1/2 of that amount of movies and about 1/3rd of the TV shows on my Plex, and my Multimedia VM is sitting somewhere around the 18GB mark, out of the 30GB I initially thin provisioned. I haven't done anything special, other than edit a few wrong posters, tweaked how I like the look of things etc, I usually just leave Plex to get on with it, but I have all the posters, thumbnails and episode guides etc for the content I do have

I'm probably only interested in 1/3rd of them myself. But I have a lot of family members that use this server so...that happens. I also have users who do a lot of mobile syncing for travelling so my transcode folder gets pretty large.

 

[whitey]

Holy sh|t, and I thought my media collection was impressive.

 

[IamSpartacus]

I plan to use Plex... but have not set it up yet so forgive the n00b question.

Why / how is your Plex "database" 200gb if that excludes any media? What exactly is 200gb? Is that meta-info / covers for all your shows, movies, music, etc... or does it store other info in the database? 200GB seems like a ton of meta data so maybe I'm missing what it all is

I know right, I have a HUGE media collection and my plex server is 30Gb or so, all tagging/metadata fits fine but he may be doing something special that I am unaware of. Been using plex for years w/ 20-30 GB VM's and just hook them to ZFS NFS server export, rescan, smash CPU for a few hours, done when I do rebuild plex out of OCDness, most of the time i am upgrading several releases (5-10) before I do a wipe/reload...usually w/ a major distro uptick.

@T_Minus @whitey Hey guys, just wanted to shoot you guys a quick update that I decided to offload a lot of the data (Transcode and Media folders) that was previously sitting in my Plex appdata folder and store them on the cache pools on my bulk media arrays. Doing this has dropped my Plex appdata folder from 180GB in size to under 40GB .

 

[T_Minus]

Nice! @IamSpartacus now that's a reduction

 

[rubylaser]

I don't store the image previews in my Plex library and I'm currently at 57GB in my appdata folder. Big libraries lead to big app data folders.

I know there are users without image previews that have a 200+GB library, so they can get WAY bigger than 20-30GB