Running a Public and Private Jellyfin server with same userbase and media

[vandorb12]

I'm mulling over options regarding how I would like myself and my family to experience the Jellyfin library I've curated. My family is not too tech literate and I don't want to spend a lot of time as support desk if I can. I'm patient, but I can't constantly step my parents through connecting to a VPN when they want to watch a film at 10PM when I'm going to bed.

With the swath of options available, I'm lost in the sauce, and still relatively new to homelabs since I now have the ability to administrate my own home now. Guidance appreciated.

My thought is to have a either containerized or virtualized Jellyfin servers, where one is public facing and forces password authentication to view and the other for local viewing where no passwords are required. I want to have an experience almost Netflix-y, in where with mobile and desktop platforms you authenticate in Jellyfin first, it caches your credentials, and you're basically in, but at home on the Roku you have to select what user profile you want (I already have a rule in the house to log out of your profile when you're done watching).

I'd like those servers to have the same media database, and have everybody's watch history sync'd between the two.

If there's a way to axe the public/private dual server setup, it'll save me a ton of CPU and RAM on my measly HP Mini Proxmox server. I wonder of nginx would possibly be my savior, but I don't know how mobile phone apps like the native Jellyfin Android app, and especially the Roku app will handle that extra layer of authentication.

I'll clarify when I can. I hope there's a more simple solution.

[Venson]

Hey @vandorb12

No jellyfin is not really designed with that in mind.

I can only recommend getting a Domain and reverse proxy and setting that up for your external access.
Its the way i got my parents to use Jellyfin which worked out better then expected.

[yshi]

I've done something sort of similar to your end goal.

It's a single server, and I have local use of PIN enabled, and set up a whitelist of IP addresses for my family members.

As Venson mentioned, I also have a domain set up (in the past a free subdomain from no-ip, for the last few years I'm renting from formerly Google Domains), but you can also have your modem's external IP plugged in at family's locations (though you'll likely have to visit to update whenever your IPA changes).

This has worked out for me so far, and I've also not had to change my whitelist yet (I keep KeePass credentials for each user's seven word password and a note with their IPA so I can easily tell what to replace should theirs change).