Network file server advice

[Drawehn]

Hi guys,
our office is growing and the little NAS that we store our files on, is getting a bit slow.

I was wondering what kind of file servers you guys use?

I am particularly interested in servers that don't take up huge amounts of space (and require no extra room) but can deal with 3 - 10 people using its files at the same time.

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Cheers,

[Donald2B]

The type of server really doesn't matter too much. You just need to look for a server / NAS device that has better networking capabilities to allow for more bandwidth due to more users trying to hit the server all at the same time.

In my experience, the weakest link for most servers is the network port speeds. Most RAID arrays can handle much more bandwidth than what the single 1GbE network port can I/O. So if you can find a server with 4 x 1GbE network ports for better load balancing capabilities. Or better yet, find a server with 10GbE port.

In our office I have several servers, each with a 10GbE connection directly to the network switch. This helps me spread out the bandwidth usage across multiple servers. I have a server dedicated for files coming off of the render farm, another server for projects files and then a 3rd server with all of the asset libraries and support files used across multiple projects.

I would love to hear what others are using in their studios.

[Drawehn]

Hi Troy, thanks heaps for the advice.
I was wondering about the 1 GbE being the bottle neck actually. Our server can do 4 x 1 GbE. Might try link aggregation and a better switch and see if things improve.

[Donald2B]

Yep! Definitely worth looking into!

Let us know how it goes!