Media/Assets/Backup server?

[Vizioen]

Hi folks,

I'm looking for ways to have a central storage/backup system/ media server at my place. At the moment I have almost no (automatic) backup whatsoever and I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable with this. Here's my situation.

I have my workstation which holds 8 harddrives at the time:

-2x SSD in raid for my OS, programs and cache ( 512GB total)
-1x SSD for my latest work (acad, skp, max, psd, meshes,...) (256GB)
-1 normal HD for old work / backup (I have to copy it manually at the time) (512 GB)
-3 x normal HD for media files (music, movies, games,...) (4,5 TB)
-1 assets drive (textures, HDRI's, models,...) (2TB)

So in total I almost have 8TB in my workstation.

I have another computer that I use sometimes to watch movies, series, play a game, in my sofa. This one is connected with my workstation through Homegroup (but this sucks as it loses connection sometimes for no reason and I have to reconnect).

I'm looking for a central system so I don't have that much harddrives in my workstation anymore and I have a backup for ALL of my files on those drives. I would also like to divide them into 4 network drives. Being MEDIA, WORK, TRAINING and ASSETS. I think I woud start with 16 TB in total, being backup on another 16 TB (because they're all almost full)

So 4 questions:

-Is NAS a good system for this? Or do I need like a server? What is recommended
-Can this system automatically shut down when nothing calls for it (my computers are off?)
-Can I connect to this system with a tablet or smartphone to (for instance) watch a tutorial series on a tablet.
-I have 32 GB RAM on my 'media' computer, which I think is too much (because it's an older working station and it's unstable because of the higher RAM I think), can I use a few of those RAM sticks in this system
-What kind of backup is recommended. Personally I think only the files that are modified, or newer should get an update. Deleted files for instance, should maybe be deleted with some sort of delay (a day or so?)

Thank you!

[glorybound]

You can add carbonate into your mix. Unlimited storage for $55 per month.

[Vizioen]

You can add carbonate into your mix. Unlimited storage for $55 per month.

As much as I like progress, cloudstorage isn't one of them (yet) .

[joconnell]

Synology do really nice nas systems, incredibly useful features for access over the internet or from mobile apps for media and streaming purposes too. A lot of creatives like drobo as they're easy to expand also.

[Vizioen]

Synology do really nice nas systems, incredibly useful features for access over the internet or from mobile apps for media and streaming purposes too. A lot of creatives like drobo as they're easy to expand also.

Say I have a synology NAS. Is it possible to use a few of the drives as storage, and the other ones as backup of said drives? Or do I need two NASs for that?

[alexyork]

Say I have a synology NAS. Is it possible to use a few of the drives as storage, and the other ones as backup of said drives? Or do I need two NASs for that?

They automatically set up RAID when you install the drives. So whatever is on drive 1 will mirror to drive 2 (in a 2-bay NAS). Same for 4 bay etc.

[Vizioen]

They automatically set up RAID when you install the drives. So whatever is on drive 1 will mirror to drive 2 (in a 2-bay NAS). Same for 4 bay etc.

So if I understand it correctly. If I buy an 8-bay NAS I can only use 4 bays for actual storage, the rest of the bays are backup?

[joconnell]

It depends on what way you want to use it. My nas has 4 bays, 2 drives and at the minute they're just individual disks being used as dumb network storage. If I wanted I could set up a striped raid for one big fast volume or a mirrored setup for security. A lot of places will use a raid 5 which means that you have the majority of your drives striped into one big fast setup, and a single "parity" disk which adds in error checking and security. Say you've got drives in a stripe for speed and one for redundancy, what the redundancy / parity disk will do is see what zeros and ones are saved on the same section on each stripe disk, add up the total and then record that total on your parity disk. So say you've three disks and one safety disk and you've got 0 on one disk, 1 on the second and 1 on the third, the parity disk will store 2 as you 0 + 1 + 1 = 2. So if one of the disks goes down, all the software has to do is check what the total was on your parity disk and then see what amount was missing to make the total. It'll be able to rebuild the missing disk this way - you're fucked if more than one drive goes though. If you've got stuff that's mission critical then you might be safer with a total mirror of your drives rather than just a single parity disk. The cloud backup option is damn cheap too - I use crash plan as it's only about 5 dollars a month so why not.

[Vizioen]

It depends on what way you want to use it. My nas has 4 bays, 2 drives and at the minute they're just individual disks being used as dumb network storage. If I wanted I could set up a striped raid for one big fast volume or a mirrored setup for security. A lot of places will use a raid 5 which means that you have the majority of your drives striped into one big fast setup, and a single "parity" disk which adds in error checking and security. Say you've got drives in a stripe for speed and one for redundancy, what the redundancy / parity disk will do is see what zeros and ones are saved on the same section on each stripe disk, add up the total and then record that total on your parity disk. So say you've three disks and one safety disk and you've got 0 on one disk, 1 on the second and 1 on the third, the parity disk will store 2 as you 0 + 1 + 1 = 2. So if one of the disks goes down, all the software has to do is check what the total was on your parity disk and then see what amount was missing to make the total. It'll be able to rebuild the missing disk this way - you're fucked if more than one drive goes though. If you've got stuff that's mission critical then you might be safer with a total mirror of your drives rather than just a single parity disk. The cloud backup option is damn cheap too - I use crash plan as it's only about 5 dollars a month so why not.

Oh boy, that just sounded like Chinese to me haha. I will have to re-read this 10 times first. Thank you

edit: alright I get it now. What I understand is that RAID 5 allows you to have a backup if one of the drives fail but without the need for just as much drives. That leaves me with more questions now then I had haha

[joconnell]

Yeah so you've got either a stripe for speed where all drives get a tiny bit of a file but if one drive goes you're fucked, a mirror where every drive has a total mirror so you've got safety, then you've got a parity setup with all drives striped and a parity disk that's keeping tabs on the total sum of the striped drives - you've security for one drive to go but not more.

It's your call as to how you set up the drives but I'm very impressed with the synology software as regards media streaming and connectivity - you can easily connect to it from outside of your house or network and there's lots of very friendly apps available to expand it's functionality.

[Vizioen]

Yeah so you've got either a stripe for speed where all drives get a tiny bit of a file but if one drive goes you're fucked, a mirror where every drive has a total mirror so you've got safety, then you've got a parity setup with all drives striped and a parity disk that's keeping tabs on the total sum of the striped drives - you've security for one drive to go but not more.

It's your call as to how you set up the drives but I'm very impressed with the synology software as regards media streaming and connectivity - you can easily connect to it from outside of your house or network and there's lots of very friendly apps available to expand it's functionality.

Is this situation possible:

- an SSD in my computer is mirrored to a NAS HDD
- multiple HDDs in the NAS containing music, series, etc.. are seen as 1 drive with different folders in windows explorer, and are set up as a RAID 5
- 1 HDD drive also mirrored but seen as 2 different drives in windows explorer (for instance VIZ ASSETS and TRAINING)

This might seem a bit complex but to me it sounds logical as I have way more data that is less important (the media files) and if I have to have a mirror backup of those I need too much HDDs.

[Vizioen]

Is this situation possible:

- an SSD in my computer is mirrored to a NAS HDD
- multiple HDDs in the NAS containing music, series, etc.. are seen as 1 drive with different folders in windows explorer, and are set up as a RAID 5
- 1 HDD drive also mirrored but seen as 2 different drives in windows explorer (for instance VIZ ASSETS and TRAINING)

This might seem a bit complex but to me it sounds logical as I have way more data that is less important (the media files) and if I have to have a mirror backup of those I need too much HDDs.

Anybody?

[joconnell]

Is this situation possible:

- an SSD in my computer is mirrored to a NAS HDD

No, I don't think so since it's two totally unrelated machines trying to pair up. You're better off just mirroring in your computer as trying to mirror over a network might kill the speed of the ssd. I think you can do this in software in most motherboard's bios these days.

- multiple HDDs in the NAS containing music, series, etc.. are seen as 1 drive with different folders in windows explorer, and are set up as a RAID 5

Yep definitely - standard in the synology stuff anyway.

- 1 HDD drive also mirrored but seen as 2 different drives in windows explorer (for instance VIZ ASSETS and TRAINING)

Yep again just a normal raid 1 but with two partitions on it.

You should be able to do the two raid things in the same synology nas, you get the option of which type of raid you want each time you make a group of disks. That said the safest thing to do is send them a quick message on twitter to confirm which nas you'll need to do an independent raid 0 and a raid 1 setup in the same box.

[Vizioen]

No, I don't think so since it's two totally unrelated machines trying to pair up. You're better off just mirroring in your computer as trying to mirror over a network might kill the speed of the ssd. I think you can do this in software in most motherboard's bios these days.



Yep definitely - standard in the synology stuff anyway.



Yep again just a normal raid 1 but with two partitions on it.

You should be able to do the two raid things in the same synology nas, you get the option of which type of raid you want each time you make a group of disks. That said the safest thing to do is send them a quick message on twitter to confirm which nas you'll need to do an independent raid 0 and a raid 1 setup in the same box.

Thank you John;

As for the SSD for my work, is it safe to mirror it on the same computer?

[joconnell]

Absolutely - nearly every mirror is done in real time using the exact same disk controller. Mirroring as something is written across a network doesn't sound very efficient, the network is going to be way slower than the internal speed of an ssd so either it wouldn't work at all or you'd have your internal ssd slowing down to match the speed of the network. As I say I don't think it's even really possible. For something like that I reckon an offsite backup solution is worth it too - something like crashplan, you can just leave it running and syncing continuously outside of your own data.