Sia S3 Integration: Plex

What is Sia?

Sia is a decentralized data storage network that allows users to rent affordable cloud storage. Data uploaded to Sia is encrypted and stored on dozens of storage providers (hosts) around the world. The data is encrypted and under the user’s control. The user must run the renterd software to maintain the data as hosts come and go; this removes the dependency on any one cloud vendor like Amazon or Google and allows the user to optimize the many vendors (hosts) over time based on qualities such as price, speed, and geographic location. With some tuning, a Sia user can end up with reasonably affordable storage that is fast enough for use cases like streaming movies.

What is Plex?

One of the best ways to use Sia as a media server is with software like Plex. Plex is a media server software that organizes video, audio, and photos from a user’s server and streams it to player applications on mobile devices, smart TVs, streaming boxes, and web apps. In 2019, Plex also includes an ad-supported streaming service of movies, television shows, and music accessible from its applications.

Why combine them?

Sia and media streaming are a good fit because Sia can be a cost-effective way to store and stream a library that is many terabytes in size.

With Sia, data is typically stored at about 3x redundancy, similar to having three backup copies. Users can expect each terabyte of data to cost about $5 USD/month at this redundancy. Although riskier, some users have succeeded at closer to 2x redundancy, which would cost closer to $3 USD/month. This may be worthwhile for data that is convenient to have in the cloud but could be restored from some other even cheaper backup.

Sia cloud storage can be added to a Plex to give it flexible capacity at the above pricing. The Sia software used to rent storage is called renterd and can manage at least 50 terabytes or more, depending on the configuration.

Another reason Sia and media streaming fit together is because systems like Plex are typically run on a server or computer that is always on and connected to the internet. So that users can continuously stream videos and music from their other devices at any time of day from anywhere. This is the perfect environment for renterd because it must also stay online to upload and maintain existing data in the cloud.

This guide will explain how to set up Plex with the renterd storage software.

Step 1: Setup renterd

Start by setting up renterd on the system you plan to use as your always-online media server. Follow the setup guide for your operating system.

Step 2: Install Plex

Follow the official installation instructions:

For Ubuntu, this would be the following:

# Add the Plex APT repository to your system and import the repository’s GPG key
curl  | sudo apt-key add -
echo deb  public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

# Once the repository is enabled, update the apt package list and install the latest server version
sudo apt update
sudo apt install plexmediaserver

# To verify that the Plex is running, check the service status
sudo systemctl status plexmediaserver

Plex is now running on your system. To complete the setup process, open the address https://localhost:32400/web in your web browser and follow the steps on the screen.

⚠️ If you are trying to access the Plex interface from a different network, you must follow the “On a Different Network” section of the official docs. The initial Plex setup process can only be done from the “local network”.

You will be required to create a Plex account and choose a name for the server. It will also ask you to add your media library. Go ahead and add any folder here, as we will set up our media from the main menu.

Step 3: Mount renterd as a filesystem

To use your renterd storage for Plex media, it must be accessible via the filesystem - we can use rclone to achieve this. Set up rclone using the following guide.

Plex media is typically stored in the following directory: /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/. We can adjust our rclone mount configuration to mount our renterd storage in this location. Feel free to adjust the bucket and the exact path mapping.

#            remote:bucket/*path /filesystem/mountpoint
rclone mount renterd:/default /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/files
	--allow-other
	--vfs-cache-mode full
        --daemon

You can now add media to renterd by copying it anywhere inside this directory. It is common to use sub-directories with names like media, videos, movies, TV, and photos and to use these when setting up your Plex libraries.

Media can also be added through other means, such as the renterd API or UI. Note that it will take approximately 5 minutes to show up by default, but this rclone configuration value can be adjusted: -dir-cache-time.

Step 4: Add renterd media library

We can now add media from our renterd storage directories. Navigate to Plex Settings and then to the Manage Libraries tab.

Add a new library and give it a name, then select /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/files or any specific sub-directory. For example, we have downloaded videos from the Internet Archive MIT Open Courseware collection into renterd’s default bucket in a directory called mit_ocw. This directory is on the filesystem at /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/files/mit_ocw. Save the new library and give Plex a few minutes to find and process the files.

Navigate back to the home page and select the newly added library, MIT_OCW in our case. You should now be able to see and play the media you added!

You are now ready to stream

In this tutorial, we explored how to combine Sia, a decentralized data storage network, with Plex, a media server software. By leveraging Sia’s affordable and secure cloud storage, users can store and stream large media libraries with ease.

We started by setting up the renterd storage software, which allows us to manage our Sia storage. Then, we installed Plex and configured it to work with renterd. We mounted renterd as a filesystem using rclone and added our media to the Plex library.

By following these steps, you can create a powerful media server that is cost-effective and scalable. Enjoy streaming your favorite movies, TV shows, and music from your Sia storage with Plex!

Remember to regularly maintain and update your setup as new versions of renterd, Plex, and other related software become available.

If you have any questions or encounter any issues during the setup process, don’t hesitate to reach out to the Sia community for support.

Happy streaming!

Sia S3 Integration: Plex was originally published in The Sia Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.