aggregation over multiple sources (NAS systems)

[Marcus]

Hi all,

Like everyone I am in awe at the achievements Simon has made in the creation of Minimserver and its "offspring".
I have recently expanded my storage devices with an additional NAS (Asustore). With it comes a Minimserver version in the Asustore App Central. I needed an additional NAS because of space requirements.
I would like to use some sort of folder aggregation with 2 NAS systems. I have a couple of questions. How would Minimserver need to be set up to achieve this.
So for example there is a main category musicHD (share on NAS#1) and separate subcategories HD Jazz, HD Pop, HD Classical, all present in Mimimserver. However I am running out of space so I purchased a second NAS. I would like to carry on with the same folder sharing scheme, and thus on NAS#2.
1: Can I achieve this with only Minimserver running on NAS#1?
2: If not, an additional instance of Minimserver should be installed on NAS#2? But I would not want to switch between two instances of Minimserver with the control app (e.g. Cambridge Evo, or BubbleUPnP).

So how would the above configuration need to be? Is it even possible having 2 NAS systems aggregated on the one NAS? And can the same folder share names be used in a single system?

Now, I find it hard to explain what I am after with Minimserver, so sorry for that.
Cheers, Marcus

[Stake]

I haven‘t tried it myself but it looks like you can simply add a network folder to the existing one on the Properties tab. Seems trivial.

[simoncn]

This is the correct approach.

Before you can add the shared folder from the second NAS to your MinimServer library, you need to mount the shared folder on the first NAS (the NAS running MinimServer) by following the instructions in this section of the ASUSTOR online documentation.

After doing this, add a MinimServer contentDir entry on the first NAS for the mounted folder. The path for this contentDir entry is /share/sharename where sharename is the name you used when creating the network share on the second NAS. After adding this contentDir entry, do a MinimServer rescan to make the new folder contents visible in your MinimServer library.

The name you use for sharename needs to be different from your contentDir names on the first NAS. For example, if your top-level shared music folder on the first NAS is /volume1/musicHD, you can't have /share/musicHD as the path for the mounted folder.

[Marcus]

(04-06-2026 21:14)Stake Wrote:  I haven‘t tried it myself but it looks like you can simply add a network folder to the existing one on the Properties tab. Seems trivial.

Yeah. I just thought it can't be that simple because some mediaservers have special setups for aggregation with options and such.

[Marcus]

(Yesterday 10:55)simoncn Wrote:  This is the correct approach.

Before you can add the shared folder from the second NAS to your MinimServer library, you need to mount the shared folder on the first NAS (the NAS running MinimServer) by following the instructions in this section of the ASUSTOR online documentation.

After doing this, add a MinimServer contentDir entry on the first NAS for the mounted folder. The path for this contentDir entry is /share/sharename where sharename is the name you used when creating the network share on the second NAS. After adding this contentDir entry, do a MinimServer rescan to make the new folder contents visible in your MinimServer library.

The name you use for sharename needs to be different from your contentDir names on the first NAS. For example, if your top-level shared music folder on the first NAS is /volume1/musicHD, you can't have /share/musicHD as the path for the mounted folder.

Thanks for your quick response and instructions.

Aha, but that is the problem: the naming of the shares. Then I would have to "toggle" between folder views and not have just one "category" instead of two with the same "category" but under different share names. Or am I overthinking this?
If I remember correctly, Twonky used to have an aggregation mode, requiring each NAS to have Twonky running to use that function. I have no clue how Twonky does this or whether identical share names (like /share/categoryname) can then used, but I thought maybe Minimserver has the same function built in, that I don't know of. So by running minimserver on each NAS separately, I would be able to use the same share names, providing access to all similar content together, regardless of where the contents is stored.

A friend of mine has both twonky and minimserver running for some reason. So I'll go see him tonight to experiment with aggregation in his setup. I'll report back if anything interesting happens.

Cheers,
marcus

[simoncn]

If you are using tag view to browse your library, all content will be aggregated as you wish and you won't see which file is located on which NAS. The only constraint is that you need to use different filenames for the share and your top-level local folder (musicHD).

If you are using folder view to browse your library, you will see two folders at the top level, one named musicHD for the local NAS and one for the network share with a different name. It isn't possible to prevent this.

I notice that in your posts you have referred to there being two shares. Your MinimServer configuration should only be using one network share (for the second NAS). For the first NAS, MinimServer is accessing your audio files from a local folder rather than via a network share. The local folder could also be a network share but this is not visible to MinimServer.

[Marcus]

Ok, that was one of my questions, whether or not use on one or two NAS systems. If two, does that have implications for license (i.e. buying two licenses)?

Tag View: I'm sorry to say that I have never understood its purpose. Tag View is displayed at the top the sub screen en where the music folders (sub category) are displayed. When I select it on my controller, two folder icons appear: one is the top category (though one below main category) for the music folders sub are statistics and Artists, Date etc. tags, the other icon says >> Hide Contents

I actually have 8 top level categories, and many more subcategories; the reason is that I digitised my vinyl collection of thousands of LPs, i used different formats and all kinds of genres etc.

Anyway, tonight I'll be checking out other options. Tomorrow I'll post the results, if it yields any new ideas, possibilities or views.
Thank you so far.

[simoncn]

A MinimServer license allows you to run the full version of MinimServer on up to 3 devices at the same time.

MinimServer is designed for tag-based browsing. For this, the music category would be specified by a tag in the file instead of by a folder name. For your library, the tag name could be Category and the tag values could be HD Jazz, HD Pop and HD Classical. You would select Category followed by HD Jazz to see your HD Jazz music instead of selecting [folder view] followed by HD Jazz.

MinimServer supports folder view as an alternative to tag view but many features of MinimServer are not available in folder view. Also, the browsing experience isn't as smooth. An example of this is the >> Hide Contents selection at the top level, which is explained in this section of the user guide. If you always use folder browsing, you can remove this >> Hide Contents selection by setting the MinimServer showExtras property to false.

All your top-level categories and subcategories could be defined as tags with suitable names such as Subcategory and Format (although the latter might be redundant because MinimServer has a built-in special tag Audio Format for this). I understand that it would take a lot of work for you to move to this approach.

[Marcus]

Thanks for the info. The thing with "Tag View" is that the same categories are available "two levels" up so I was wondering what it brings.

OFF TOPIC: Speaking of tags, a while back I had an interesting exchange with Florian Heidenreichof mp3tag fame. He basically said that ONE can utilise any tags that takes one's fancy. So for instance, there are many many new tags to use in the Genre field. Apparently, meta data can also be used for royalty payments, stock holding, studio business, archiving, ecommerce etc. Is there a standardised list of "consumer" tags? Are those subject to change (some really weird Genre tags pop up now and again)?

Cheers, Marcus
BTW: we're now letting the aggregation scheme indexing our music libraries as a test. Looks to be interesting!