Hey Hosters!
Just wanted to share that I got Jellyfin installed and set up on my Windows 2022 Server, and it’s working great! I didn’t even know there was a version for WIndows. How do you like that?
I know this is probably “the usual” for everyone here, but I’m genuinely excited that I managed to get it all running smoothly.
After getting the server up, I went through the basics (users/permissions, library paths, and making sure everything was reachable on the network) and it all just worked. The interface is super clean, playback is nice and responsive, and it feels like I’ve been missing out on this until now.
Huge thanks to the Jellyfin team and the community! This project is awesome!! If anyone is stuck, please don’t give up. keep poking at the configuration and it’ll pay off. Now I just need to spend some time organizing my libraries!
Happy Hosting!
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How do you like that?
Thanks, I hate it.
its kinda crazy having your own personal netflix, right?
i originally used it so my kids could watch cartoons in school
Yeah, I keep a “Kids” profile on my server, specifically so I can throw Bluey, Mr Rogers Neighborhood, Miss Rachel, etc on and not worry about it. The Elsagate thing with YouTube means you can’t just put on YouTube kids and expect auto-played content to stay safe. But with my server, running solely on content I have curated, I know that everything in that “Kids” profile is going to be safe.
its kinda crazy having your own personal netflix, right?
It truly is!
Personally, I think that installing it on a bare metal Windows Server system is quite an achievement.
I have it installed using docker compose on Linux. So my setup is rather unspectacular.
Hey you can always set up GPU rendering and like a tmpfs transcoding cache volume if you want your compose to look a little more complicated
tmpfs is overkill. I just use a crappy old 128G SSD and it’s still way faster than needed for all of my transcodes combined.
Anyway just my 2 cents.
Frequent write/deletes of so much data would be rough on my hdds, and I’ve got a couple hundred gigs of RAM, why not tmpfs it?
I’ve been using the same 10+ year old 128G SSD for transcoding, cache, and metadata storage for like 6 years now across multiple tiny servers (as I’ve upgraded) with limited RAM. My current one has 16G of RAM, which is more than enough for JF, but not enough to store a whole movie transcode, let alone multiple at once. Refycled small old SSDs are a lot cheaper and easier to come by than RAM these days, that’s all I’m saying. No hate of course, your setup makes sense for what you have, I’m just saying my way is cheaper and more than fast enough for people just building their servers now.
I’m always going to say Windows is too heavy to be placed in a server environment, simply wasn’t designed for it, but congrats nonetheless.
Congrats on your successful install! It feels good to take control of your media, doesn’t it? I found it a great project for growing my confidence in deploying my own services. Happy hosting!
Windows can run docker, so there’s versions of most things that will run on windows.
JellyFin has a native windows version.
Yes, but not everything does. But luckily, Docker exists on Windows. So anything that runs on Docker can be run on Windows.
Given, Docker’s implementation on Windows is… Uhh… Not GreatTM. Because it’s basically using WSL to trick Windows into supporting a Linux file system. So it has some quirks. But it does technically work.
No sane person runs docker on windows. They will run wsl or a Linux Hyper-V vm to do docker.
Asking out of curiosity: is there a specific reason you’re running Windows on your server? I used to do the same on my home servers because that’s what we used to have at work, and I wanted to learn and test some stuff. But it was a difficult road, to put it mildly. Simple things, like getting Docker autostart on boot seemed almost impossible. At some point I just gave up and switched to Linux.
You have trouble getting Docker to auto-start on Windows? I thought that was the default behavior… Hell, even if it’s not, you can just add a Docker shortcut to the Startup folder.
It works great when you log in as a user like you normally would on a Windows pc. But on a server you want it to run as a service, starting automatically in the background and/or being managed by the failover cluster without requiring a user to log in.
The solution back then was to use
netplwizautologon. Obviously a hack and bad for security, but fine for a homelab. After googling it now, it looks like some other “solutions” are documented in the GitHub issue about this.
Time to setup an arr stack.
Just when you think you’ve got all the arrs you need, you find another that could benefit your stack.
Congratulations! I’ve been using Jellyfin for several years now and the quality has consistently improved. It’s a great tool.
I know this is probably “the usual” for everyone here, but I’m genuinely excited that I managed to get it all running smoothly.
Heh! Don’t let anyone dampen your enthusiasm. It feels great when I am toiling away at something and finally all the pieces click together. I might have to walk away a few times and put the project on hold, but I keep whacking away at it. When it does work, it’s always a childish joy that comes over me and always gets a fist-pump.
What equipment are you running that Windows Server on?
Right now its a Thinkpad T480 with 64G ram and 1tb ssd. If it turns out we use Jellyfin enough I plan to get something more powerful for it.
Honestly thats already plenty - 8th gen intel igpu is pretty solid, about the only reason to change from that is going to be native AV1 (enc/dec added at meteor lake, tiger lake for dec only).
My setup is basically the same chip thats in my t480, but in a lenovo tiny. Family and friends make use of it, and it doesn’t break a sweat with 6 streams going.
Right on that’s great to hear
64g of ram is pretty darn powerful already!
Nice! Rock on with yo’ bad self.
Jellyfin is great! Glad you got it up and running!
My journey began with windows, Jellyfin, and qbit. Nice you have done the same! Only reason I switched to Linux is because I wanted servers and hated unraid
You have breached the start of an arrStack. A beginning of a rabbit hole
Soon you will lie awake at night thinking “what else can I docker”
How did you handle the reverse proxy in Windows for remote access?
I didn’t. I don’t need remote access. We don’t watch TV outside the house.
Wouldn’t Kodi be better suited then? Jellyfin’s strength is its ability to transcode
Why not both? I use kodi when possible because it runs circles around the mostly dogshit Jellyfin apps for various platforms. Jellyfin for kodi and the kodi queue sync plugin import my library and watch status. I still have the option to use Jellyfin apps or web on devices that can’t run kodi (or when remote) and as a result can have all of my media accessible from all my devices without needing multiple copies and centralized metadata administration
Again, given that OP claims limited expertise, Kodi is a good starting point because of its simplicity.
I’ve mostly stopped using it because I find the Jellyfin apps adequate.
For me Jellyfin’s strength is that it can keep track of my wife’s place in her shows independent from mine, and also that the metadata and watched state and progress is synced between phone, tablet, and TV.
I mean, I’d still prefer Jellyfin as its a server (we actually use Kodi for playing the content).
Even within the house, you could stream to multiple different devices. If you use something like Findroid you could download stuff for playing offline on your phone, no external access needed.
Well, I do use Jellyfin for in-home streaming as my TV has issue with HDR content tinting, and Jellyfin fixes that on-the-fly, but it’s certainly more complex setup than pointing Kodi at a network share
Oh for sure Kodi would be easier, I was just clarifying that there are reasons to pick Jellyfin over Kodi even if it’s only ever internal to your network.
Wait I don’t have a reverse proxy because I don’t need one. I just installed the jellyfin for windows version and then you just connect to it.
Did you set up up the arr suite too? They run the background services for tracking and pulling titles, and qbittorrent downloads the files. They are all docker images and should be able to run on Win. I like Caddy as my reverse proxy, super simple to point router port 80 & 443 to the server ports for Https.
Did you?
Holy shit man.
Caddy runs on Windows so someone could use it for reverse proxy.
Well, you can just run a reverse proxy container with docker
Jellyfin is great for single-file movies, but sadly can’t play DVDs properly, unless you rip the movie out into a single file first. I hope they add proper DVD/BlueRay support with menues etc at some point. Because where do you get legal movies and shows other than on DVD or BlueRay?
Interactive media like menus is a nightmare to support. Kodi has some support but only on pc. Also to your last sentence it’s a grey area, if you rip the disk to any format you’re essentially violating copyright because making a copy requires circumventing encryption, which violates the dmca (assuming USA). Might as well just use makemkv then, unless you’re real serious about archiving literally everything
In Germany, creating safety copies of media that does not have copy protection is perfectly legal.
This isn’t really the usecase, you’d be better off just playing it with VLC from a BD/DVD drive with the menu plugins. Netflix won’t have DVD menus either. Ripping is necessary for this to make your physical copies accessible via Jellyfin. May want to check ARM (Automatic Ripping Machine) to streamline the process. Legally, this is perfectly fine in most jurisdictions, because you are creating a backup of your purchased property.
unless you rip the movie out into a single file first
I don’t see the problem with that. It’s what I’ve done with every single disk I own. Why would I bother with badly-written menus, pointless extra content and tons of ads and copyright warnings I need to sit through before I can watch what I paid for?
Even with all the right hardware and community-recommended open source software, there are still plenty of unique hostile choices made in BluRay publishing that means playing my stuff in realtime from the disc before ripping has about a 75% success rate. Many of them scramble playlists and bend the standard to make it unplayable without using their official license.
And that’s if you know where to get the legally grey key files to decrypt them in the first place.
DVDs should be possible in this day and age though.
