Reply to: NAS vs SAN for picture and video

[Einstein Jnr]

It had been years since I bought any IT gear so decided to treat myself - I got a 1 TB Samsung SSD and 3 x 4TB Hitachi Ultrastars for the server. Since I didn't want the 4 x 1TB drives I am removing to waste away, I got a Synology DS916+ to throw them into. I think that should give me another 5 years before I need to buy gear again. It's to preserve the family photos...at least that's what I keep telling the Mrs...

[sal]

This is what I have started leaning toward. I use the free Cisco router from Meraki (someone posted here if you take their webinar you get one free). Solid piece of kit and get good throughputs. Might be the way to go - at the end of the day that's what I really needed but wanted to try something abit fancier.

You can still have the fancy stuff, just run FreeNAS or xPenology(Synology DMS port) on a VM on your server. Although I would recommend you to get an HP micro server for £100ish and stick it there it's a brilliant piece of kit, quiet and draws less than 100W of power

[Einstein Jnr]

If you already have a server that's running 24x7 and don't need the fancy stuff most NAS offer, but only basic fileshare your best bet is to just upgrade the storage on the server with larger drives, as for working over WiFi is your WiFi Router 802.11ac or 802.11g and does it have 1gig connection to your server? A decent 802.11ac WiFi should get you in the gigabit range.

This is what I have started leaning toward. I use the free Cisco router from Meraki (someone posted here if you take their webinar you get one free). Solid piece of kit and get good throughputs. Might be the way to go - at the end of the day that's what I really needed but wanted to try something abit fancier.

[bobspud]

I aslo have an IBM DS3400 SAN, 24tb's, that only draws 285w, not bad really, but a bit old hat now. I use it for serving boot disks on various Unix metal, SPARC, HP RISC and Itanium, ESX, POWER and even ALPHA, hardly need it now tho, that part of my life is over I think!

At one point I had 4 sun E4500's plus A5000 disk arrays sat spinning in my garage

Then I got the electric bill and discovered VMware fast

I just uninstalled my copy of VMware when my upgrade to macOS destroyed something in my windows image and I decided to say sod it.

[stek]

The lights probably dim every time you reboot that

At the moment the (new build) house leccy is running off a huge diesel generator until they hook up the proper supply. Free leccy!

it's 700w normal draw, sure my Son's gaming PC draws about that with all the super-dooper GFX cards in it......

I aslo have an IBM DS3400 SAN, 24tb's, that only draws 285w, not bad really, but a bit old hat now. I use it for serving boot disks on various Unix metal, SPARC, HP RISC and Itanium, ESX, POWER and even ALPHA, hardly need it now tho, that part of my life is over I think!

[scooterscot]

Very nice, thanks for sharing.
Have you ever shot it somewhere where it can been seen really well, maybe Maldives or somewhere else?

I really liked the ones from Peru, as I said earlier, especially the train ones.

The shot was taken from the channel islands, very dark. The Maldives, and other Pacific islands I've found not that great unless you can get above the heat.

[bobspud]

Unified Storage?

Like my Oracle 7100 in the garage!

The lights probably dim every time you reboot that

[scooterscot]

Nice picture... mind sharing the technical aspects - ISO, A,S, etc. I see you tone mapped - what did you do with the post processing of the raw image?

ISO 2500 (Can go higher but no need with the tracker)
f/2
using 23mm lens (35mm eq)
20 second exposures

Also use the star tracker on the tripod, just point at the northern star and fix your camera to it. Almost never any star drag.


Yes, tone mapped. This final image is the result of a six shot composite. RAW's were put together with photomatix Pro 5.


You can see more of my stuff on here: https://justfraser.smugmug.com

[MrMarkyMark]

Took over a 200 RAWs I'm sure the other month when snapping the milky-way. Now down to 4 files!

Very nice, thanks for sharing.
Have you ever shot it somewhere where it can been seen really well, maybe Maldives or somewhere else?

I really liked the ones from Peru, as I said earlier, especially the train ones.

[jonnyboy]

Nice picture... mind sharing the technical aspects - ISO, A,S, etc. I see you tone mapped - what did you do with the post processing of the raw image?

[sal]

If you already have a server that's running 24x7 and don't need the fancy stuff most NAS offer, but only basic fileshare your best bet is to just upgrade the storage on the server with larger drives, as for working over WiFi is your WiFi Router 802.11ac or 802.11g and does it have 1gig connection to your server? A decent 802.11ac WiFi should get you in the gigabit range.

[scooterscot]

Which means either, he is extremely fussy what he keeps, or he is totally useless at photography.

Took over a 200 RAWs I'm sure the other month when snapping the milky-way. Now down to 4 files!

[stek]

I guess my original post may have been abit confusing ie storage vs editing, but i was looking to use it similar to what jonnyboy has described. I use lightroom to edit photos and sometimes I find myself going to photos 2 years old to reedit using new skills and they come out really well. So I don't want a place to "dump" data per se, but need to be able to work ideally from the "store". I have a 2014 Mac book pro with flash memory and local editing is enjoyable, but only have 256GB on there. Working from the server on the files over wireless can be abit of a drag sometimes. Maybe I should just replace my 4 x 1 TB drives with 4 x 4 TB drives and forget the NAS. From the costs it looks like it would be about £500 for the NAS and another £500 for the 4 x 4TB disks. A grand seems much to spend on a local storage solution.

Go for a Thunderbolt 2 external, I've got 2 12gb ones, pretty nippy (and full already)...

LaCie something I got....

[Einstein Jnr]

I guess my original post may have been abit confusing ie storage vs editing, but i was looking to use it similar to what jonnyboy has described. I use lightroom to edit photos and sometimes I find myself going to photos 2 years old to reedit using new skills and they come out really well. So I don't want a place to "dump" data per se, but need to be able to work ideally from the "store". I have a 2014 Mac book pro with flash memory and local editing is enjoyable, but only have 256GB on there. Working from the server on the files over wireless can be abit of a drag sometimes. Maybe I should just replace my 4 x 1 TB drives with 4 x 4 TB drives and forget the NAS. From the costs it looks like it would be about £500 for the NAS and another £500 for the 4 x 4TB disks. A grand seems much to spend on a local storage solution.

[jonnyboy]

I have a setup at home with twin QNAP Ts410 NAS boxes - box 1 has all my movies on it (ripped from BR and DVD and 'other' sources) and box 2 has all my photos and music (mine and families) on it. In my movies I have 4 x 3Tb drives and on my photos I have 4 x 1Tb drives. Both are set up to run RAID 1 (mirror) - for no other reason than drives fail from time to time, so the videos and pictures are protected.

For watching movies (streaming via Twonky or Plex) the drives are perfectly fine. And for viewing pictures or attaching to emails, the 2nd drive is again way fast enough.

But for editing, whilst it is fine for a single picture (processing HDR, general CS6 work, etc) when you go into review mode (for selection, reviewing, deleting etc) it grinds.

My setup tends to be.... take the photos, SD into laptop, copy the SD contents onto laptop, work on photos on laptop (mostly when I am on the train), when done, copy from laptop back onto NAS (2) for backups and streaming to photo frames dotted around the house. I keep a separate directory on my laptop for a few thousand hand picked photos for my laptops screen saver (good holiday photos, memories, etc).

I dont stream movies from the cloud, or store my photos on the cloud, or store my music on the cloud. I am old school - I like to own my content and have it local. I am old school, I hate relying on a cloud based service which may (a) be hacked, (b) go bankrupt or (c) do something with my photos/content that I dont want them to.

Just to complete the picture, my photos and music is backup up once a month to a portable 2GB drive (runs overnight, I dont have to do anything other than plug the disk in) which I keep in my car. I dont backup my movie collection as its too big - the only thing that would mean I lost the movies is either (a) burglers stealing the whole NAS units or (b) a house fire, and I have the original DVD/BR and could rip them again (but it would take ages, as there are thousands of them).