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====== Plex Media Server (Bare-Metal Engine) ======

The Plex Media Server is the core delivery application. It is installed directly onto **Physical Host 2 (The Brawn)** to ensure it has unfettered, un-virtualized access to the discrete NVIDIA GPU for hardware-accelerated transcoding.

===== 1. Repository Installation =====
Add the official Plex repository to your bare-metal Ubuntu instance:

<file bash>
echo deb https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list
curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update
sudo apt install plexmediaserver -y
</file>

===== 2. NFS Permissions Mapping =====
Ensure the `plex` system user is added to the shared media group, granting it read-access to the `/mnt/data/media/` directory mapped in the [[storage:nfs_fabric]] phase.

<code>
sudo usermod -aG media plex
sudo systemctl restart plexmediaserver
</code>

===== 3. Hardware Transcoder Initialization (NVIDIA NVENC) =====
Hardware transcoding is the defining feature of "The Brawn." It offloads the massive CPU overhead of converting media formats to the dedicated NVIDIA RTX 3050 GPU.

Navigate to **Settings → Transcoder** in the Plex WebUI:
  - Check **Use hardware acceleration when available**.
  - Check **Use hardware-accelerated video encoding**.
  - **Hardware transcoding device:** Explicitly select your discrete NVIDIA GPU from the dropdown list (do not leave this on Auto, as it may attempt to use inferior Intel QuickSync CPU graphics if present).

===== 4. Transcode Cache Re-Routing =====
Transcoding generates massive temporary files. If written to the OS drive, it will rapidly destroy the NVMe's read/write endurance limits. 

In the same **Transcoder** menu:
  - Locate **Transcoder temporary directory**.
  - Change the path to `/mnt/plex_cache` (The secondary, dedicated NVMe cache drive partitioned during the [[compute:media_engine]] deployment).

**Next Step:** Deploy the automated hardware optimizer in [[services:unmanic|Unmanic Engine]].