pooling media libraries - like distributed storage
I run a full media server, as well do a few friends. Now we had the idea to share our media libraries. In a first quick attempt we, mounted each other's library folder via an smb share and imported those in jellyfin (all servers connected by VPN) Works quite well, but is kind of cumbersome the more people get in. I had the following idea: distributed storage, not as in redundancy, but more like mergerfs. Each "node" allocates a certain amount of storage, say node A, B and C provide 1TB each, these get fused into a singe mount that shows up as 3TB volume. If one node goes offline, the volume will only be 2TB and all files on the offline node will of course be unavailable.
Did a bit of research and found stuff like ceph,.glusterfs or seeweedfs, all of which I guess have a lot more functionality and thus are quite complicated and a little over my head.
Do you do something like that or have any good ideas how to do that easily?
I use Plex instead of jellyfin, but there's the ability to just add a friends library and it pulls in without mounting anything. I thought Jellydin had that as well?
plex uses a centralized service for this kinda of nonsense. most of us are using standalone server products.
this use case calls for either centralized storage (s3 bucket) or access mechanism(all them vpns) to distributed channels (ala plex)... but friends dont let friends use plex.
im curious about ipfs as distributed file systems sound like a new kink i should have
I would love to get rid of Plex, but jellyfin failed the spouse test last summer and it never really liked my GDrive mount
Plus, Plex clients are everywhere, so it's all but guaranteed that whoever I decide to onboard is going to have something compatible. I've even had early smart TV's from like 2013 with that weird Yahoo app store thing that had a Plex app that still worked even when the Netflix app didn't lolol
Funnily enough, my wife is the only person who likes jellyfin. It works perfectly for her. Everyone else? I've never had it work even once. And I have no damn idea why.
Jellyfin is nice but has a long way to go to replicate the features of Plex [like PlexAmp and Sonic Analysis] and features that are “Plex adjacent” [like Tautulli].
I'm surprised the client doesn't support switching between servers. When I had jellyfin running I exposed it through traefik to allow external playback. Figure it would make sense that you could just show multiple servers in the UI. Add several reverse proxied addresses and boom.