🛠️ Why I Built This
This project started with frustration: Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, and all the other media tools were installed individually on a Windows desktop environment, each with its own startup quirks, update annoyances, and performance issues. Over time, I found the system growing unstable and increasingly annoying to manage.
I decided to rebuild the entire thing from the ground up using Docker. It gave me portability, isolation, performance — and most of all, maintainability. What used to be a headache is now a self-healing stack I can scale, tweak, or back up easily.
My goal with this article is to document the entire system for future reference, help friends replicate the build, and guide Plex users to tools like Overseerr to request new content easily.
🔩 The Hardware
This server is a beast from another era, but it still runs like a champ with a few upgrades:
- Intel Core i7-7700K
- 32GB DDR4 RAM
- GTX 1080 GPU (for Immich's CUDA acceleration)
- Windows 10 Pro running Docker Desktop with Portainer
Storage is a blend of old and new: an 8TB WD external holds the current Plex library, while a RAID 5 array of 4x16TB SAS drives (via an expansion card + Rosewill front bay) supports Immich and acts as backup storage for Plex content if the WD ever fails.
🔗 How It All Works Together
Each stack is deployed via Portainer and lives in its own YAML file. Services communicate using shared volumes and bridged networks, with traffic securely routed by Nginx.
Flow:
Overseerr ➝ Sonarr/Radarr ➝ NZBGet ➝ Plex Library
↳ Requests auto-download via indexers
Prowlarr ➝ Controls all indexers
Jackett ➝ Adds compatibility for niche/private trackers
Gluetun ➝ Wraps Qbittorrent traffic in VPN
Immich ➝ Full photo backup + GPU AI tagging
Nginx ➝ Subdomain routing w/ SSL (e.g. immich.[domain].duckdns.org)Each piece fits like a cog in a wheel — media gets requested via Overseerr, found by *arr apps, downloaded via NZBGet or Qbit (through VPN), and ends up in Plex for everyone to enjoy.
📜 Sample Stack Configurations
Plex Stack (Redacted)
services:
nzbget:
image: linuxserver/nzbget:latest
container_name: nzbget
ports:
- "6789:6789"
environment:
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/New_York
- NZBGET_USER=<REDACTED>
- NZBGET_PASS=<REDACTED>
volumes:
- nzbget-config:/config
- C:/Users/Eldradia/Downloads:/downloads
restart: unless-stopped
sonarr:
image: linuxserver/sonarr:latest
container_name: sonarr
ports:
- "8989:8989"
environment:
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/New_York
volumes:
- sonarr-config:/config
- C:/Users/Eldradia/Downloads:/downloads
- E:/:/media
restart: unless-stopped
... (radarr, readarr, prowlarr, jackett, overseerr, flaresolverr follow similar structure)Immich Stack
version: '3.9'
services:
immich-server:
container_name: immich_server
image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:release
ports:
- "2283:2283"
environment:
- TZ=America/New_York
- DB_HOST=database
- DB_PORT=5432
- DB_USERNAME=immich_user
- DB_PASSWORD=<REDACTED>
- DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich
volumes:
- P:/immich:/usr/src/app/upload
- P:/immich/data:/usr/src/app/data
depends_on:
- redis
- database
restart: unless-stopped
runtime: nvidia
deploy:
resources:
reservations:
devices:
- capabilities: [gpu]
immich-machine-learning:
container_name: immich_machine_learning
image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:release-cuda
environment:
- TZ=America/New_York
- TRANSFORMERS_CACHE=/cache
- ONNXRuntimeExecutionProvider=CUDAExecutionProvider
volumes:
- P:/immich/data:/cache
runtime: nvidia
deploy:
resources:
reservations:
devices:
- capabilities: [gpu]
restart: unless-stopped
redis:
container_name: immich_redis
image: redis:6.2-alpine
volumes:
- P:/immich/data/redis:/data
restart: unless-stopped
database:
container_name: immich_postgres
image: tensorchord/pgvecto-rs:pg14-v0.2.0
environment:
- POSTGRES_USER=immich_user
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<REDACTED>
- POSTGRES_DB=immich
volumes:
- P:/immich/data/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
restart: unless-stoppedValheim Stack
services:
valheim:
image: lloesche/valheim-server
container_name: valheim
cap_add:
- sys_nice
ports:
- "2456-2457:2456-2457/udp"
volumes:
- C:/Valheim Server:/config
- C:/Valheim Server/configs:/home/steam/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim
environment:
- SERVER_NAME=Eldradia Reborn
- WORLD_NAME=Eldradia
- SERVER_PASS=<REDACTED>
- SERVER_PUBLIC=false
- BEPINEX=true
- TZ=America/New_York
restart: unless-stopped