I just got my server up and running. Have been pumping all my media into. I am very new so still have a lot to learn about the apps, etc.
But I had read that it is difficult to make a VPN work with flex swimmingly? Is this still the case. I have ExpressVPN. and before I just went and screwed things up I wanted to make sure this is fine to do. Or if there is something I have to set up or configure first for this to work for me and the people I am sharing my libraries with…thanks for any help and I hope my question is clear.
Also apologize if this has been asked a bunch. I couldn’t find any clear info on the internet. Again…a bit computer illiterate when it comes to this stuff.
I need to get a bit broader to explain a few things.
While you have your own plex server at home (or wherever else), you are still connected to the authentication servers of plex (the company).
This feature is very convenient to share your server because all you have to do is to invite a plex user to your server and share a library with them and they can directly see and access that library when they open the plex app. Without that, you would have to share your WAN IP (the one you get from your ISP) or set up a domain to do that.
To realize that, the Plex server needs to talk to your own plex media server and be able to establish a “direct connection”.
That will only happen if you have forwarded the (default) Port 32400 on your router.
However, VPNs are more restrictive because of their security aspects. Most VPN providers either don’t allow port forwarding or only when you request it (and some only assign a random port for you to use).
That is why Plex and VPNs don’t really work together because you would have to open the port on the VPN so that remote clients can establish a direct connection to your server.
On the other hand, Plex already uses SSL for any traffic running from your server to the client, even the plex servers only know about your library names so that you can share them with users. That means that your traffic is already encrypted and can’t be “looked into”.
I’ve never run a VPN on any of the Plex servers I’ve had over the years, so I can’t speak to that. However, I’m curious why you do want to run a VPN. I’ve always tried to make my Plex media server as simple as possible only running what is absolutely necessary like Tautulli for example.
I do run a VPN on certain servers like my torrent server which has access to the Plex server via network shares. I don’t see the need to run a VPN on Plex though because it is only ever used for Plex itself. Everything else is done on different servers securely and then moved to Plex. By doing this, it is pretty unlikely that anything would corrupt the Plex server.
Yeah others have said it before. Plex doesn’t need to be behind VPN. Ideally you should run your download client in a docker container with vpn just for that. I tried for so long trying to get split tunnelling working to just use the VPN for downloads but never had any luck with express. But once I set up docker containers everything ran smoothly and I could access plex from outside the network!
Just my personal anecdotal experience. I also don’t have much knowledge with connectivity solutions. But with that said I always have a VPN on with my desktop whether or not I’m torrenting. Plex still connect just fine to my desktop server. I’m sure someone here might point out I’m doing something wrong, but based on my experience you should be fine.
If you are using your VPN for downloading then use a virtual machine for that if your running windows or a docker if your using Linux.
Some clients offer split tunneling now, i have only the downloading go over the VPN and nothing else, so no headaches with anything else from the VPN or captchas or anything.
I have sonarr, radarr, nzbget, plex all dockerized. Right now, no VPN at all. How would I set up just the sonarr, radarr, nzbget to go through VPN (PIA in this example)? And if these services are reaching out to usenet only, do I still need VPN?
I use NordVPN. I took the opposite tack. I have everything on my server machine going through VPN except Plexserver. That allows Plexserver to be available outside my network while protecting everything else that accesses the internet.
No need to have sonarr/radarr through vpn. Get yourself a docker container with download client and vpn combo. I don’t use newsgroups so don’t know much about nzb but I’m sure there is containers out there similar to haugenes qbit/open vpn container for them. That container also includes privacy which you can then setup to have jackett/requestrr run through.
I used to run the VPN for everything besides plex but it got worse and worse and before PIA added split tunneling at bad times on some exit nodes i was having to do a half dozen captchas for a google search, and i had to turn a bunch of shit off if i wanted to game online or even access my bank website or pay my energy bill… just got to be not worth it for stuff that didnt really need to be on a vpn.
