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I'm investigating our options for having our server hosted in a datacenter and wondering about the implications of doing so. I'm also interested to know if anyone is doing anything similar?
Essentially, our server does nothing but store our day-to-day files and run MS Exchange which handles our email. We have our Vray dongles connected to it, and also, it runs BackBurner Manager 2008. The other task it has is the data backup routines - we have tried a number of systems over the years, from LTO to external USB drives. For one reason or another, we have always had issues with the method we use.
So, having our server off-site in a secure datacenter will theoretically solve stability and day-to-day backups, or at least, the responsibility will pass to somebody else. I *assume* the vray license server can run from it, and I also *assume* Backburner Manager can run from it so that our local workstations and any local render farm machines we have on-site can still talk to it.
The main - and pretty obvious - issues I can see are bandwidth, primarily our upload speeds.
At the moment, we have a reasonably good 17.5Mb download, but only 1Mb upload. Things are hopefully going to be upgraded soon around here, so we may achieve 60-100Mb down and perhaps 20Mb up.
I would imagine our daily backup is no different from many of you guys of a similar size to us - perhaps between 5-20GB a night depending upon workload and the type of work we are doing (images or HD animation for instance). Is it feasible to download our Photoshop files (for example), which can be over 1GB in size, from a remote server in order to work on them locally, before saving them back to the remote server later that day? Or, can we download PSD file from the server, work locally, and save locally, but overnight it automatcally gets sent back to the remote server?
If I were working on a Max file, with its various assets (textures/proxies etc) stored on the remote server, would the 'lag' of pulling them down be problematic? Are there any solutions to these kind of situations?
The default and traditional option is to have your own file server sitting in your office. If there are any problems, you can go and re-boot and get it going again. The downside is that, for a smaller company, maintenance and backup of the server system can be quite a task. Things can and do go wrong, and without dedicated on-site IT departments ready to help, solutions can take time, or workarounds become unreliable.
Cloud-based servers do solve a number of the problems, such as backup and resilience (as mentioned above), but it ain't so easy to just pop in and re-boot. Also, the file sizes we are dealing with, even as a small company, are huge. Bandwidth, and stability of the connection, becomes critical.
I have posted threads like this in the past, but that mainly concerned remote render farm setups. I wondered if any of you are working with off-site servers? What are the potential pitfalls?
Essentially, our server does nothing but store our day-to-day files and run MS Exchange which handles our email. We have our Vray dongles connected to it, and also, it runs BackBurner Manager 2008. The other task it has is the data backup routines - we have tried a number of systems over the years, from LTO to external USB drives. For one reason or another, we have always had issues with the method we use.
So, having our server off-site in a secure datacenter will theoretically solve stability and day-to-day backups, or at least, the responsibility will pass to somebody else. I *assume* the vray license server can run from it, and I also *assume* Backburner Manager can run from it so that our local workstations and any local render farm machines we have on-site can still talk to it.
The main - and pretty obvious - issues I can see are bandwidth, primarily our upload speeds.
At the moment, we have a reasonably good 17.5Mb download, but only 1Mb upload. Things are hopefully going to be upgraded soon around here, so we may achieve 60-100Mb down and perhaps 20Mb up.
I would imagine our daily backup is no different from many of you guys of a similar size to us - perhaps between 5-20GB a night depending upon workload and the type of work we are doing (images or HD animation for instance). Is it feasible to download our Photoshop files (for example), which can be over 1GB in size, from a remote server in order to work on them locally, before saving them back to the remote server later that day? Or, can we download PSD file from the server, work locally, and save locally, but overnight it automatcally gets sent back to the remote server?
If I were working on a Max file, with its various assets (textures/proxies etc) stored on the remote server, would the 'lag' of pulling them down be problematic? Are there any solutions to these kind of situations?
The default and traditional option is to have your own file server sitting in your office. If there are any problems, you can go and re-boot and get it going again. The downside is that, for a smaller company, maintenance and backup of the server system can be quite a task. Things can and do go wrong, and without dedicated on-site IT departments ready to help, solutions can take time, or workarounds become unreliable.
Cloud-based servers do solve a number of the problems, such as backup and resilience (as mentioned above), but it ain't so easy to just pop in and re-boot. Also, the file sizes we are dealing with, even as a small company, are huge. Bandwidth, and stability of the connection, becomes critical.
I have posted threads like this in the past, but that mainly concerned remote render farm setups. I wondered if any of you are working with off-site servers? What are the potential pitfalls?
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