OpenMediaVault VS docker-plex

You might want to consider the previously mentioned MergerFS and SnapRAID, or MDADM and LVM for your setup. OpenMediaVault [https://www.openmediavault.org/ is a solid choice in this regard. Additionally, if you're planning to run something like Proxmox, you could look into deploying Starwind CVM on top of it. Pretty much like in this guide: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-virtual-san-vsan-configuration-guide-for-proxmox-vsan-deployed-as-a-controller-virtual-machine-cvm/ .

You would better to install OMV instead. It's a ready to use fileserver solution with web interface.

So I'm working on a similar setup with an ancient desktop my in-laws were getting rid of. I installed OpenMediaVault directly to the hard drive (it's so old that I assume it wouldn't work too well as a hypervisor), with a 4TB external HDD attached. OMV supports Docker by means of a plug-in and I'm running a Jellyfin container with no issues at all. I'm still manually downloading everything to the HDD but *arr containers are my next step, as well as setting up a gluetun container to route all that through a VPN.

That is possible (it's automated to a certain extent). It also depends on the NAS OS. Unraid, for example, can work with drives of different sizes while using the largest one for parity. TrueNAS uses ZFS so you won't be able to just add a drive to your RAIDZ and expand it. There's also openmediavault: https://www.openmediavault.org/ that uses Linux Software RAID and you can add a new drive there but you can't combine drives of different sizes. And there's also Starwinds NAS that supports both Linux Software RAID and ZFS: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas. Plus, I would avoid SMR drives in RAID: https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

I'd put it like that: if you have a spare PC, then it's definitely worth trying. I would also look into openmediavault (minimal RAM needs): https://www.openmediavault.org/ and Starwinds NAS (supports both ZFS and Linux software RAID): https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas

Your current PC looks very decent for a lab. Proxmox on it, then one Linux VM with Docker, another VM for NAS with something lite and easy like openmediavault: https://www.openmediavault.org/ or Starwinds NAS: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas and Plex separately. And other stuff in VMs or containers.

I've tried with couple of repositories but I'm mainly using this one now: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex I gave up on this sometime ago but would now like to get at least RAM transcode working for Plex. The GPU transcode can wait.

I found this, but don't see anything similar for ghcr.io in the images list in the docker UI.

I'm facing a similar issue. I reported it to the linuxserver team (publisher of that docker image), they think it's a plex issue. https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-plex/issues/357

I've messed with Plex in docker quite a lot though, so if you put your code in GitHub I should be able to point out an option for getting it done. Might not make sense for Plexamp for some reason, I've usually started with this repo https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-plex and forked when I was making my own Plex containers. I was thinking of doing that for Plexamp, but I've not looked at what's needed to map sound devices properly. It has an example of where to run a Plex claim script before starting up Plex to run as a service.

FWIW it's probably not a great idea to use the Plex or Jellyfin (or any really) images from lsio. They do stupid shit like this which is not needed with Kubernetes. You can add a security context with those GIDs as supplemental groups. Also all their containers start as root which is not considered best practice.

These are their historical container versions - https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-plex/releases

The linuxserver plex image can actually check for updates when the container starts. It's a bit of an anti-pattern. Here's the script: https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-plex/blob/master/root/etc/s6-overlay/s6-rc.d/init-plex-update/run