Hi. I currently run plex in a kvm VM. Have for years without any real trouble. I’m in the process of refreshing my homelab and replacing the plex VM is next on my list.
I’m curious if there are any pros or cons to running Plex in a docker container vs it’s own dedicated VM? Is there anyone here who’s done both and saw a difference?
Plex upgrades on my nas via docker are so easy, it’s just a container restart. I’d go docker.
If you have multiple media apps. Say radarr, sonarr. You will thank yourself later if you set up all of those in docker-compose, save the configuration to git, mount the storage to something like /media in the container. That means next time you have to set this up again it will automatically be ready.
I had previous work experience, but setting up containers vs VMs was way faster. The permissions of the media between multiple apps was never messed with which saved me from frustrating issues between applications.
Where does one learn how to work with containers this way? I have run Kodi and then Plex for over 10 years on SBCs, but I don’t know how to do any of this.
This is the way.
Real world actual difference? No, not much. The big benefit is in the updating of all the software. I run Plex, sonarr, radarr, jackett, qbittorent, Grafana, Prometheus, blackbox, nginx, and a few other Docker containers on a pretty plain Ubuntu server. One command to update the OS, another to pull new containers, a periodic reboot for the OS changes and Robert is your mother’s brother. Way easier than running all software independently on a VM.
Edit: oh, and suffer some type of catastrophic issue or have a software update go sideways? You are 30 minutes away from just reinstalling the OS, add docker and reapply your docker-compose script.
I appreciate everything you’re saying. Docker has only been in my toolbox for a month or two but I’ve had a lot of success so far in standing up new things using it. Now that I understand it better, I’m reassessing the things I’ve run in KVM for years and debating if it makes sense to switch any of them to containers. I’ve already moved some containers around so I can see the simplicity/convenience of it.
It sounds like, from the feedback I’ve gotten in this thread, that there’s no significant functional/performance difference between the two. It’s just going to be a matter of what works best for me.
I backup all my configs and their data daily. Last time I had to migrate hosts it took me 30 minutes of actual work to migrate over a dozen various self hosted apps, GitLab and Plex included.
it depends a lot on the rest of your setup. a dedicated VM just for plex brings a lot of overhead that might be unnecessary.
