Ultimate Media Server Setup (My Current Setup)

Good Day,

I thought that I would share my current setup that I am using for my media server, there are a few main components that is critical to my setup, they are namely: Plex Media Server, Sonarr and Jackett.

I will create an in-detailed guide below that I can assist other users with, I have used several sources and combined them into one guide.

Sources used:
***.howtogeek.com/252261/how-to-set-up-plex-and-watch-your-movies-on-any-device/
***.smarthomebeginner.com/install-sonarr-on-windows-10/
h***s://tricksty.com/tricks/sonarr-how-to-add-good-public-indexers

Step One: Consolidate and Organize Your Media

Plex works best if all your media content is well organized and in the same place. To that end, you should have all your media on the same device you’re installing the Plex server software–whether it’s an old desktop computer, a dedicated storage server in your basement, or a NAS device, all your media should be on it.

Further, you want to organize your media into a clean folder structure that keeps major media types separated and easy for both you and Plex to parse through.

If you’ve already invested any time in organizing your media, especially if you’ve used media center software like XBMC/Kodi in the past, then there’s a good chance you’ve already got a perfect (or nearly perfect) folder structure in place.

Here’s a simple example of a best-practice directory structure for Plex:

Code:

---


/Media/
    /Movies/
        /MovieName (Year)/
            MovieName (Year).ext
    /Music/
        /ArtistName - AlbumName/
            Track# - TrackName.ext
    /TV Shows/
        /ShowName/
            /Season 01/
                ShowName - s01e01.ext
    /Photos/
        /Album Name/
            Image.ext

---

In the above directory structure, you see that the major media categories are separated into distinct sub-folders (like Movies and TV Shows) and that each media type has a pretty straight forward naming convention. Movies go in folders named after the movie; best practice is to include the year in parentheses to cut down on confusion. Music is organized in a straight forward Artist Name/Album Name format. TV shows are organized by the name, season, and episodes are tagged with both stats with the “sXXeXX” format. Photos are even easier–Plex just reads the album name off the folder and loads up the images inside.

Step Two: Install Plex Media Server

The foundation of the setup, beautifully organized media aside, is the Plex Media Server application. For our tutorial today we’ll be installing it on a Windows machine but, small nuances aside, the installation process is practically identical across all platforms as the majority of the process is done from within the Plex web-based control panel.

Head over to the downloads page and grab a copy of Plex Media Server for your platform. Run the installer and relax for a minute. When the installer is complete, Plex will automatically launch, and should load the web control panel for you. If it does not, open your web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:32400/ on that computer. (Alternatively, you can access it from another computer on your network by replacing the 127.0.0.1 address with the local network IP address of your computer or NAS device).

After accepting the user agreement, you’ll be prompted to sign into your Plex account. On the off chance that you have an old Plex account from previous experiments with the platform, sign in. Otherwise, click on the “Sign Up” link and sign up for a new account.

After your first sign in, you’ll get a rundown of all the features of the Plex Pass premium service. While we happen to think the premium service is pretty great, let’s not get ahead of ourselves–use Plex for awhile to determine if you want to invest in it. Close out the popup window to return to the server setup.

The first step is to name your server. By default, the server is named after the network name of the machine upon which it is installed. You can change the server name to something more exciting than say “Dad Office” or leave it as is.

Next, it’s time to add media to our library. Select “Add Library”.

Here you can add many different library types: movies, TV shows, music, photos, and home videos.

Let’s start off by adding some movie files. Select “Movies” and then, in the drop down menu that appears, name your movie library and select a language. For most people leaving the default name of “Movies” should suffice. Click “Next”.

Now it’s time to point Plex at the actual files, select “Browse for media folder” and select the folder that houses your movie files. Once you’ve selected the folder(s), click “Add library” to complete the process.

Repeat these steps for TV shows, music, and/or photos. It isn’t necessary to populate all the libraries, ofo course–if you’re using Plex solely for TV shows, then go ahead and ignore all the other library entries.

The final step of the initial server setup is to allow remote access to your media server and send anonymous data to Plex. Both are checked by default, and we recommend you leave them checked unless you have a pressing reason to uncheck them. Select “Done”.

At this point you’ll be kicked into the web-based control panel for your Plex server. Depending on how quickly your machine is working, you may see “Updating libraries…” or you may already have content to display.

Note, for the first few hours or even for the first day, the “recently added” section isn’t particularly useful as everything was recently added to the library. Things will calm down shortly and recently added will become useful again over the coming days.

And that’s all there is to it! If you have local media and a desire to watch that local media anywhere in your house (or even away from home) and on any device, Plex Media Center is an all-in-one solution that makes enjoying your movies, TV shows, and even family photos and videos, an absolute breeze.

Step Three: Installing Sonarr

Sonarr is used for tracking and automatically gathering torrents for tv shows available from TheTVdb.

Download Sonarr from the site here

Next, we will need to go to C:\ drive, and create a new folder named Sonarr. Please note that you can use any drive, but it is important that the Sonarr drive should have write access on your chosen drive.

Copy the previously downloaded file named NzbDrone.master file in the Sonarr folder you just created, right click on the file and click on “Run as administrator”. This step is important because by running the installer as administrator, the port and URL will be registered with Windows, which is required for remote access.

The Sonarr Setup Wizard will start, and you will need to click next to start the Sonarr setup with the default settings.

Make sure that the option Install as a Windows Service is ticked in for the Sonarr service to be started automatically after a reboot.

After Sonarr Windows setup finishes, a Sonarr shortcut will appear on your desktop. You can double click on the Sonarr shortcut , or you can go to http://localhost:8989 in order to open the Sonarr homepage in order to start the service configuration and begin creating your library.

There you have it! Now you can start configuring Sonarr with your Torrent Client GUI setup so that Sonarr can communicate with your Torrent Client, this usually involve setting up a username and password on the GUI setting on your torrent client.

I have not added the part on how to setup the torrent client GUI with Sonarr, Google this part as it differs from Clients. - Critical part to make this working!

Step Four: Installing Jackett and Setup Sonarr

You can get the latest version here: https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett/releases
It’s best to download the installer: “Jackett.Installer.Windows.exe” and install it directly.

Once you have jackett installed just open it’s Web UI.
By default it is here: http://127.0.0.1:9117/Admin/Dashboard

At the very top right you will see your API key which is important to set it up in Sonarr.
Click on the “Add Indexer” button.

Note that the green lock symbol means a public tracker and the red lock means private.
Orange is semi-private.

Now one by one keep adding your favorite public or private trackers by clicking on the plus ‘+’ icon.

Once you have a good enough list, it’s time to configure Sonarr with all these trackers.

Open Sonarr.

Let’s try adding the public Tracker KickassTorrents (KAT)

In Sonarr go to Settings -> Indexers

Click on the Add icon (+ icon)

Then in torrents section click on Torznab

Go to Jackett and click on “Copy Torznab” button for KickassTorrents

Come back to Sonarr and paste the URL you just copied in the URL textbox

And copy the API key in Jackett (remember top right corner) in the API textbox in Sonarr.
Click on Test button to test your settings and finally click Save. And that’s it. Indexer added.

That is it guys!

I hope this helped!

Have Fun!

Kind Regards,
SpiderCrawler :P