Which NAS (if any) for my home storage disaster!

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Which NAS (if any) for my home storage disaster!

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  1. macOS
Mobile operating system
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Dear All


My home storage situation is in an absolute mess. I attached a flow chart of the current system. I've recently had a failure of both my iMac 27inch (graphics card) and subsequent Drobo Raid drive (may be recoverable at some point) which has potentially resulted in the loss of some precious family photos. This is all down to my failed back-up solution.

I'm now ready to spend "some" money on this - looking hopefully to keep this to below £1500. I have recently purchased a new MacBook Pro M1 - which has further added to my problems - as I'm having major compatibility issues with my Lacie drives - no Lacie software raid support at the moment, plus issues with thunderbolt 2 to 3 adaptors etc...

I also want to be able to set up a system where by the family photo's and videos can be held on a drive accessible (wifi) by my wife and daughter who run different platforms. Hence I'm looking a NAS solutions with Cloud back-up for Family Content and Important work images.

I'm a photographer by trade and run a busy "in-house" studio for a large publishing company. All our images are backed up by Synology boxes and other enterprise systems including cloud. Data transfer is done over a Gigabit connection which is quite slow but it's for back-up so acceptable.

I'm now looking for a robust system at home that has expandability and hopefully a degree of future proofing. I can totally see how a NAS box would work at home - but my issue is ultimately speed. In an ideal world I'd just chuck all my data onto a large NAS box and slowly sort through and catalogue everything over a period of time either from my home office or over wifi. Do I keep a DAS attached RAID drive like the Lacie and then just back-up to a NAS box or look for an all in one solution.

I probably have about 4-5tb worth of Data that needs sorting and then a whole load of jobs from work that I need to edit down and store long term. I Have been looking a something like the QNAP 453d and BTE that allow direct access as well as ethernet connection, but my gut tells me that I'd fit into the Synology space better.

Suggestions - thoughts appreciated.

Philip


Storage Current.jpg

This is how I have mapped out my potential solution - happen for any advice.


Storage - Solution?.jpg
 
Very good to rethink the storage strategy!

your proposal looks much better than the old setup, I will share some thoughts for your consideration, merely based on keeping a simpler setup.

I think you have to choose which device will hold the master data for your wife and daughter, In my view this should be the nas, not the macbook.
Then it looks like a complicated setup:
I fully understand the DAS, and the link from the DAS to the NAS.
The DAS to primary work disk to nas is not clear to me, it feels like " I have these drives and should use them", in stead of a full redesign how to store most effective.

Then backblaze is a good choice, I can also recommend iDrive for your wife and daughter as there are very good apps to backup mobile devices and PC in idrive and it may be wise to split family and business to reduce risks.
 
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Very good to rethink the storage strategy!

your proposal looks much better than the old setup, I will share some thoughts for your consideration, merely based on keeping a simpler setup.

I think you have to choose which device will hold the master data for your wife and daughter, In my view this should be the nas, not the macbook.
Then it looks like a complicated setup:
I fully understand the DAS, and the link from the DAS to the NAS.
The DAS to primary work disk to nas is not clear to me, it feels like " I have these drives and should use them", in stead of a full redesign how to store most effective.

Then backblaze is a good choice, I can also recommend iDrive for your wife and daughter as there are very good apps to backup mobile devices and PC in idrive and it may be wise to split family and business to reduce risks.
You're right - it's clunky, to be honest - if I could chuck everything onto 1 box and just back that up it would be my preference. I'm guessing you're saying - ditch the the extra direct attached back-up and just back up everything to the NAS box. Could then use the extra drive as a back-up to the NAS?
 
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That is exactly how I should do it. Have a nas with 4 or 6 bays, and centralise the storage in a raid 5 or 6.
The DAS, I can fully imagine you will need this because of the speed and daily business. But then, I would push all data to the NAS and make a daily backup to the cloud or your second DAS, but off site is obviously better.
 
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So any recommendations? I'm thinking either DS1520+ or DS1621+
I suppose I'm worried about speed constraints of 1 gigabit - the DS1621+ would allow for some future proofing.
I still haven't fully understood whether Link Aggregation has any speed advantage for a solo user or if it just helps with bandwidth when more users are connected?
 
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So any recommendations? I'm thinking either DS1520+ or DS1621+
I suppose I'm worried about speed constraints of 1 gigabit - the DS1621+ would allow for some future proofing.
I still haven't fully understood whether Link Aggregation has any speed advantage for a solo user or if it just helps with bandwidth when more users are connected?
I would go with DS1621+ ... I have one and I added the 10g card to enable it to connect to my iMac Pro at 10g. You might want to consider getting a second NAS and mirroring the NAS as a backup. Once you have your initial backup done, move it out of your home and back up overnight using a 3rd party program, I use Chronosync and it backs up to my daughter's house every day. Do NOT keep the master on your computers. Use Synology Drive to synchronize, with the master copies on your NAS.
 
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I'll leave the recommendations to the people who own one and can advise.

You are spot on regarding link aggregation: no benefit for single user, extra bandwidth for multi users.
If you need more speed, prepare for 10GBe, which can be costly as infrastructure like switches and cabling need to be on par as well. Your DAS will at least remove your 1GBe limit for daily high demanding work.
 
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better, must say, that it’s structural. good job

Q re your common workload:
1. RAW photos from your Camera SD cards to “somewhere” for a Cleaning and Separation:
1.1. How much files in single copy in such batch?
1.2. common RAW file size?
1.3. your current common target (from SD to somewhere, through...). Device and Size. Is the size sufficient for next 3Y?
1.4. Final store of the Clean catalogue? Size. Is the size sufficient for next 3Y?

2. Common catalogue operation (Lacie 12TB?):
2.1. Do you really need single catalog (all the photos in single place)?
2.2. What about an archive of really unused photos for less performing store? But available for simple “restore” to primary catalogue?
Then you can build up tiered catalogue:
a) fast for current jobs (when you lose some photos, you can simple restore them from the Archive)
b) stable for Archive (no need a speed of light there), trust is first
To be sure 12TB just for the Sorting and Culling is really heavy capacity. In case of the Raid degradation, it will take Days for a rebuild.

Then your Backup policy:
- target for the Long term store is just 8TB store
- working store is about 12TB
+ additional NAS store for the Primary and Secondary NASes
+ additional for your family
+ backup versions and increments
+ what about computer backups?

All of the rest data for your family and some expected NAS services you can split for:
- pls describe some high level segments here

please, redraw these info to your concept + prepare some answers
 
Upvote 0
better, must say, that it’s structural. good job

Q re your common workload:
1. RAW photos from your Camera SD cards to “somewhere” for a Cleaning and Separation:
1.1. How much files in single copy in such batch?
1.2. common RAW file size?
1.3. your current common target (from SD to somewhere, through...). Device and Size. Is the size sufficient for next 3Y?
1.4. Final store of the Clean catalogue? Size. Is the size sufficient for next 3Y?

2. Common catalogue operation (Lacie 12TB?):
2.1. Do you really need single catalog (all the photos in single place)?
2.2. What about an archive of really unused photos for less performing store? But available for simple “restore” to primary catalogue?
Then you can build up tiered catalogue:
a) fast for current jobs (when you lose some photos, you can simple restore them from the Archive)
b) stable for Archive (no need a speed of light there), trust is first
To be sure 12TB just for the Sorting and Culling is really heavy capacity. In case of the Raid degradation, it will take Days for a rebuild.

Then your Backup policy:
- target for the Long term store is just 8TB store
- working store is about 12TB
+ additional NAS store for the Primary and Secondary NASes
+ additional for your family
+ backup versions and increments
+ what about computer backups?

All of the rest data for your family and some expected NAS services you can split for:
- pls describe some high level segments here

please, redraw these info to your concept + prepare some answers
To be honest - this exercise is not convincing me that a large NAS box is the answer. I simply don't need to have 20-30 tb of data running continuously. Thinking of just getting a small basic NAS - for family photos and sticking with DAS solutions for my work.

Most of my jobs are done on a Nikon D850 with 40mb raws shot in Capture One. Some of my sessions are 80gig a pop. I'm working for a company so all this data held with them. But I need copies to cull and archive for myself and portfolio.
 
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