Deploying Plex Home Media Streaming on Ubuntu 24.04

Plex is a personal media server that organizes and streams your movies, TV shows, music, and photos to clients on every major platform, with metadata, transcoding, and remote access built in. This guide deploys Plex using Docker Compose with Traefik handling automatic HTTPS, claimed against your Plex account at first run, following home media streaming deployment practices documented in Vultr Docs.

Prerequisite: Get a Plex claim token from plex.tv/claim. It's valid for 4 minutes, so generate it just before starting the stack.

Set Up the Directory Structure

1. Create the project directory structure:

mkdir -p ~/plex-media-server/{config,transcode,media}
cd ~/plex-media-server

2. Create the environment file:

nano .env

TZ=YOUR_TIMEZONE
PLEX_CLAIM=YOUR_PLEX_CLAIM_TOKEN
DOMAIN=plex.example.com
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=admin@example.com

Deploy with Docker Compose

1. Create the Docker Compose manifest:

nano docker-compose.yaml

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.6
    container_name: traefik
    command:
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
      - "--entrypoints.web.address=:80"
      - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.to=websecure"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.scheme=https"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge=true"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge.entrypoint=web"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.email=${LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL}"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - "letsencrypt:/letsencrypt"
      - "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"
    restart: unless-stopped

  plex:
    image: plexinc/pms-docker:latest
    container_name: plex
    hostname: plex
    expose:
      - "32400"
    volumes:
      - "./config:/config"
      - "./transcode:/transcode"
      - "./media:/data"
    environment:
      - TZ=${TZ}
      - PLEX_CLAIM=${PLEX_CLAIM}
      - ADVERTISE_IP=https://${DOMAIN}:443/
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.plex.rule=Host(`${DOMAIN}`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.plex.entrypoints=websecure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.plex.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
      - "traefik.http.services.plex.loadbalancer.server.port=32400"
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  letsencrypt:

2. Start the services:

docker compose up -d

3. Verify the services are running:

docker compose ps
docker compose logs

Configure Plex Media Server

1. Open https://plex.example.com in a browser.

2. Sign in with the Plex account that generated the claim token.

3. Name the server and add libraries pointing to folders under /data (your ./media mount).

4. Let Plex scan and fetch metadata. Install client apps on your devices to start streaming.

Next Steps

Plex is running and streaming securely over HTTPS. From here you can:

• Add Movies, TV, Music, and Photos libraries with custom agents and scanners

• Enable hardware-accelerated transcoding with a Plex Pass subscription

• Set up managed users and parental controls for shared access

For the full guide with additional tips, visit the original article on Vultr Docs.