Plex, the media player software company that allows anyone to turn their media library into streaming content, has taken things a lot further by releasing its new cloud-based media server that is available for public use. The service, dubbed Plex Cloud, has been under beta testing since September 2016, and is now available for all Plex Pass subscribers. It also supports cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.
Beta testing doesn’t seem to have gone that smoothly for the company as they faced several issues during the testing period. In its blog post, the company noted:
“The amount of technology behind this launch is quite awesome. It’s definitely not a trivial thing to take the best media server on the planet and make it work seamlessly as a scalable cloud service, load-balanced and clustered across multiple geographic regions.
It turns out a lot can go wrong. Sometimes the hamsters that powered our innovative cloud transcoder got tired, hopped off their wheels, and went looking for alfalfa. On more than one occasion, our elaborate system of smoke signals that we use to communicate between regions was taken out by solar flares and more exotic threats like a light drizzle.“
In the end, it looks like the company was able to overcome several hurdles to make the service available to the public.
What Does Plex Cloud Actually Do?
Most of us have GBs, if not TBs, worth of music, movies and other media content that we would love to access from wherever we are, and on any device we use. What if we could stream that content from our our virtual private server using the power of cloud? That’s exactly what Plex Cloud offers. The Plex Media Server organizes content from your library and streams it to any device you want, using only your Internet connection, the Plex Media Server and the Plex App on your device.
Source: Support.Plex.Tv
We’re all well aware of how fast cloud storage is replacing traditional storage systems. A lot of us still use hard drives, USB drives, SD cards and other portable storage solutions to carry our data, but we also acknowledge that the bulk of our storage needs in the future are going to be taken care of by cloud-based solutions.
Instead of waiting for that day to come, Plex has taken the initiative to take its media server to the cloud, simply because that is where the future is headed.
To access Plex Cloud, you need a Plex Pass subscription, which costs $4.99 a month or $39.99 for the whole year. A lot of cloud providers offer reasonably priced storage solutions, but Plex Cloud is more of a cloud-based streaming solution for your personal media, than merely a great way to access your data from anywhere.
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