What kind of setup for storing projects and assets? Workstation, NAS, dedicated file server?

[Alex_M]

Hey guys,

I was wondering what kind of setup is more appropriate for assets storage in a studio with 2 workstations and another 2 render nodes. Currently all projects, textures, renderings etc. are stored and accessed from an HDD in one of the workstations and all 4 PCs access this HDD through the gigabit local network whenever they need to read or write any project related data and assets. The workstation hosting this HDD is also used on a regular basis for 3ds Max, rendering, Photoshop etc throughout the day.

Is the current setup fine or is it a horrible idea? Maybe it's better to move all projects and assets on a NAS or a dedicated file server? Which would be the more professional way to go and which is better for transfer speed, ease of management and expandability in the future?

[Morbid Angel]

Hey Alex,

Nothing wrong with what you have setup right now, but one thing. If that HDD or workstation fails, do you have a fail safe in place? I was running the exact same setup for a few years and knowing that all hdd's and workstaitons eventually fail I moved to NAS and was right to do so, because with in next year both the primary hdd and its backup hdd failed almost at the same time.

When you go the NAS route you automatically ensure you are protected to a certain extent. Most NAS support 1-2 hdds which can fail without loss of data, you can even keep working with the failed hdd. So that's great and it also happened to me. But at that point you need to make sure your have a decent nas, which can handle large amount of traffic. Also a nas is just a computer and computers can fail too, so I ended up buying a nas, then a year later buying exact same nas and using it as a redundant mirror and guess what - after a bios update the primary nas started rebooting every 10 minutes and I couldn't work so with a flip of a switch I continued to work from backup while I resolved the issue with bios in the main nas. But eventually we outgrew that nas capability (I had a qnap pro) it only had 2 gigabit network ports and even bonded they only output about 150 M/ s and it was not enough for a large scene it would slow the network to a crawl during rendering, with for example phoenix caches.

So I consulted some friends and got a 10 gig switch and also a synology nas with 10 gig capability, though I only use its 1 gig ports it has 6 of them and bonded they output about 800 M/s which is enough for what I need and the farm and others who use it. I keep the old nas as a mirror still though its a great way to protect your data from accidental loss.

Hope that helps a bit!

[Alex_M]

Thanks for chiming in, Dmitry. Yes, there are backups kept on external USB HDDs in a remote location if an accident may happen. I'm also thinking about cloud storage as a 2nd backup option in case something happens with the external HDDs. I had a case of one failing years ago and it was hardly even used. Good thing I didn't have important data on it.

[cheerioboy]

I'm a fan of Synology, after having a total garbage Western Digital NAS. I've been using a DS1515+ with 5x 4TB WD red drives. Synology has a 'Hybrid RAID (SHR)' mode which is suppose to allow for 2 drives to fail without data loss. I haven't had any issues for 3 years with this setup. I don't keep any other backups so if all the drives go down I'll have to quit and find another career... maybe become a plumber.

The NAS does have a hibernation mode to help rest the drives - so when you get to work and it needs to wake up there's a small hiccup before gaining access. I wonder if using a PC for the file storage removes that issue.

[ijzerman86]

We have what Dmitry Vinnik haves too,
One 2414+ Synology nas, it comes with 4 gigabit ports running raid 6. We can have four 125 mb/s connections simultaneously. We have a off site mirror to a less expensive 4 bay synology which backups every night through the hyperbackup functionality. Also, on our local license server/render manager we bought a x TB disk that does a local backup of the projects disk every 3 hours with Goodsync.
This setup wasn't very cheap(allthough a lot cheaper than buying a server grade storage solution) but very easy to setup and it saved our asses more than once
Hope this helps!

[bildform]

Hi, at the moment I am using a self-build server, a Dell PowerEdge T20 with windows server 2016. It works well enough and I still have 2 TB free.

The next upgrade will be something like this: QNAP Turbo Station TS-1677X (you can install VMs for the license server and other things), Netgear ProSAFE Plus XS700 10g switch and a few of those Intel X540-T1 (or get a mainboard with 10G included).
But this is not a cheap upgrade for my storage. With a few HDD and SSD it would be around 5-6k €. But it should be good for a long time and a few more users and rendernodes.

[cmjohncheng]

4 computer data in one hdd too risky(if without backup)
we using synology nas, it got at Drive function, can auto sync your computer data to NAS(like dropbox/goole drive). so NAS and your computer got same asset.

[Alex_M]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Much appreciated. I'll look into that NAS stuff.

[werticus]

Depends how big your scenes are - a NAS is going to be slow but hold a lot of stuff. I used to have everything on nas but then i started working on very large civil projects and ended up moving everything to a very fast m.2 drive instead. I have to move projects on and off this drive as needed but I avoid 30 min load times.

[bildform]

werticus If your Nas and your workstation have 10gb lan and the Nas has a few ssds or nvme ssds in a raid and if you use link aggregation it could be difficult to saturate you network. It is a more expensive solution than on nvme drive, but it is a lot more comfortable to use, especially with more than one user or a few rendernodes that have to access the same files. It is easier to backup, too.

[dean_dmoo]

Does anyone have experience with cloud storage as back-up and sharing between 2 locations?

At the moment I have a very basic, insufficient backup set up of a couple of extra hdd's in the WS and from time to time a copy to usb hdd's. So this needs to be improved. Last week lightning struck a nearby building and caused a fire, which highlighted how easily I could lose my data.

However from January I will likely be working from 2 locations (home and office) and am looking into a setup that enables me to share data efficiently. And by that I mean somehow have the libraries from both locations sync, maybe via a cloud service, to the local hdd's/nas/or whatever would work best.

Any ideas, recommendations?

[Alex_M]

dean_dmoo, I've heard good stuff about Sync. I haven't used their services yet but I'm planning to do so soon. They provide 2 TB of data storage, unlimited data transfers, real-time sync and backup, desktop app, mobile app and end to end encryption for only $8 a month. A really good deal IMO.

[dean_dmoo]

Hey Alex, thanks for the suggestion. Will check it out.

Did some looking around, 2 synology's can sync between themselves with their cloud app so you could by-pass a cloud service. For extra backup synology have their own cloud backup system aswell. Although from what I could read you cant copy at folder level so needed their hyperbackup software.

Still wondering how it would work in regards to max asset links. Ie, giving the synology's or similar the same name/unc adress in each location would enable a projectfile to read the same jpg's automatically, no relinking. But not sure whether that would break the nas link. Will read up on it some more.

[piotrus3333]

Qnap NAS, 6 disk raid 5, 2x 1Gb ports. around 12 PCs. started to slow us down.

[Morne]

Hey Alex, thanks for the suggestion. Will check it out.

Did some looking around, 2 synology's can sync between themselves with their cloud app so you could by-pass a cloud service. For extra backup synology have their own cloud backup system aswell. Although from what I could read you cant copy at folder level so needed their hyperbackup software.

Still wondering how it would work in regards to max asset links. Ie, giving the synology's or similar the same name/unc adress in each location would enable a projectfile to read the same jpg's automatically, no relinking. But not sure whether that would break the nas link. Will read up on it some more.

Use Synology's Cloud Station Drive (their sync software) and setup sync between the devices. No matter their names
Then setup mapped network drives for the shares, whcih will always be the same

So at site 1 the synology1 could be called: \\SITE1SERVER and the files can be located at for example \\SITE1SERVER\folder1\somestuff\servershare\mystuf f\max\Projects

A mapped network drive could point to that and you could map the drive as "P:"

Then at site2 the device could be called \\WHATVER\simplerpaths\projects

And also setup a mapped "P:" drive for that

Anything accessesed from P: drive from either site will be exactly the same