Any advice on a mass internal storage solution for studio?

[nialldoran]

Hey guys just thought i'd ask and see if any of you guys have any advice or recommendation on what you are using for an in house storage system.

At the studio we are using a load of external hard drives which over six years has amassed to something ridiculous.

I know very little about stuff like this but is there a way to set up a mass storage system in house, that can be accessed and backed up to from two separate studios (within the same building) and maybe use a third computer or laptop to transfer from externals while the other studios are busy.

we probably need about 30Tb to safely back up everything that exists and keep us in storage for the next two years at least.

Any advice, recommendations or suggested reading welcome as i'd love to learn more about this sort of thing myself.

thanks
niall

 

[colonel_claypoo]

if you've got a network between the studios in the building, then you coud read up on NAS-storage systems: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Attached_Storage

 

[arvoitus]

Ten 4TB drive's in RAID6 gives you 32TB capacity + the capability of surviving 2 hard-drive failures.

Maybe something like this: http://www.synology.com/en-global/products/spec/DS2413+ (You can always add 2 drives later if you want more capacity).
Easiest and cheapest solution + Synology is a respectable brand in the NAS market.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

30tb fucking hell damn.

 

[aortizjr]

For that much space and what you are talking about a NAS is the only way to go. The problem is having that much active storage is going to be expensive.

Just keep in mind that RAID just means that you have some redundancy if a drive goes down and prevents you from having to restore. However, don't depend on it in lieu of backups! If your only copy is the on the RAID you must still keep a backup.

Or you can use the RAID as a backup but as your second copy. Ie backing up the daw, but the primary copy is on the DAW.

The reason is that RAID controllers can go bad, software RAID's are tricky to setup. The data on the RAID is striped in a way that recovering from individual drives due to a bad controller is nearly impossible. I have seen lightning storms fry RAID's and with most being proprietary, it is extremely dicey.

So what I did for my studio is set up the NAS for the daily backups of the DAW's and data exchange, archive, and regular access to shared files. Then I make a weekly backup of that on an external drive. But I am only at like 3TB for everything.

When a project is done, I use Cubase's Archive Project or Move Project which basically makes a new copy with only the files currently in use. Old takes and all that are deleted. Then I flac or wavpack all the media files. Then zip it all up. Reduces a project size by like 80% usually. So that save's me a ton of space with recovery options (just takes longer). In the old days, I would burn these do DVD's. I could get a whole album of sessions on 2 DVD's usually.

Unfortunately I can't recommend a product. I am a linux guy, so it is all home built with samba, rsync, tar, etc. and some scripts.

 

[abt]

You really need to tell us what sort of money you want to spend because once you start to get up into that sort of capacity it's not going to be cheap. I'm going to say avoid any NAS or SAS device, it will only end in tears. I've spent years doing this, backing up huge amounts of data on a daily basis. NAS boxes just plain suck. I've had boxes well into the six figure price range and they still suck. They are complicated and prone to screwing up.

The best solution I've come up with is to build a dedicated back up servers. I've been using Dell servers for the last few years without any problems. Currently I have two Dell Power Edge 720xds with 36TB on board plus two drives for the OS.

One of the biggest problem we've had with NAS boxes is that they are often complicated to setup. When anything goes bad no one has any idea how to fix it, or you've forgotten what you did when you set it up in the first place. With a dedicated backup server because its just storage there's no weird config. Files shares etc are simple and anyone can set it up for you.

Another thing for your consideration is how are you going to deal with off site backups in case the building falls down? For me I replicate the backup servers to another building about 4km away.

 

[nialldoran]

thanks for all the suggestions so far guys, i've got lot of learning to do, as for price i'm unsure what we would be willing to spend probably not six figures haha, and for off site back ups we are cool as all our external drives are in our third studio a mile away where as the server would be going into the site with two studios,

now to get reading

 

[Volcane]

Worth looking at the FreeNAS server OS. That's pretty expandable. the OS can be run from a flash drive, the processor requirements are low, and the OS is totally free. The downsides are that it is opensource - which has pros and cons - and it doesn't have as wide a userbase as other OS.

We have one in the office which is fine, and works really well, but it hasn't gone wrong, so I have no idea how easy it would be to fix.

Bottom line is, do you really need to store 32TB?

 

[arvoitus]

Worth looking at the FreeNAS server OS. That's pretty expandable. the OS can be run from a flash drive, the processor requirements are low, and the OS is totally free. The downsides are that it is opensource - which has pros and cons - and it doesn't have as wide a userbase as other OS.

We have one in the office which is fine, and works really well, but it hasn't gone wrong, so I have no idea how easy it would be to fix.

Bottom line is, do you really need to store 32TB?

I'm also running a ZFS storage server, but i can't recommend it for someone who doesn't have any PC knowledge.