I think im looking for a NAS but not sure, I have an archive path that works to a thunder blade X8 and then gets backed up over thunderbolt to a 192TB raid - which then gets backed up to LTO9. anyhow im about to embark on a bigger job that will have a few machines accessing the same sort of project clips and things (not just for flame for everything else too) NAS over 10gig seems to be the answer. if so. whats the best one (on a budget ish) I already have the 10gig network. I was looking at the Ugreen solutions. im thinking 48Tb sort of thing. I would also arrive and backup all machine over night to this same central storage.
Not sure there is a simple answer, as there are many options to choose from.
Some of the parameters are whether you want to buy off the shelf or build a TrueNAS server. What are the expansion options over time, do you stop at 10GbE or keep headroom. What the minimum performance? SMB vs NFS.
It may be best to have a conversation with someone you talk all this through in detail, more than this post will illuminate.
I’m happy with my 8yr old Synology. Served me well, but that might not be an equally good fit for others.
I have two Flames and a Windows-based workstations with NVME storage doing nightly archives of selected projects via 10Gb (Fiber) with an inexpensive QNap switch to a Synology 1819+ NAS with 8 Hard Drives (spinning iron). The NAS then archives selects to external hard drives as necessary for delivery.
The Synology has proven to be a reliable, cost-effective NAS that has run perfectly for me for over five years. While it wouldn’t be good for any type of real-time guaranteed playback, it’s perfect as a centralized hub for this type of workflow. They can scale, but I don’t think the smaller systems (such as mine) would be good for multiple workstation sharing large dataflows at once. I manage that by making a lot of the NAS operation ‘sequential’, i.e. Backup to the NAS, then make any clones, then archive to hard drives, etc. I’m sure you could do a lot more work in parallel if you used SSDs instead of HDs, but for me the cost savings was worth the decreased speed.
I like TrueNAS and some of the other robust NAS devices out there, but in my current setup this is perfect a I don’t have any time for management. The Synology in a closed environment is pretty straightforward. I’ve never tried to connect a tape drive directly into it–only via 10 GB connection to an external PC.
One quick thing to flag - something that happens with my Synology, and I heard from others as well. Actually not Synology’s fault but rather Apple’s drama cycle. Under heavy use the Synology will disconnect from the Mac.
Usually would happen if I have footage on NAS and render back to NAS (so read+write). Then render fails because NAS disconnects temporarily.
I’ve looked into it, and it has something to do with instability in Apple’s SMB stack. Doesn’t happen from Linux. There are some things to tweak, but doesn’t seem to help. Also hasn’t been a problem in the past, but only more recent MacOS releases.
Two work-arounds. Read footage from NAS, but render to another drive (generally a good idea anyway to never read/write from the same spinning drives). Or cache the footage in Flame onto local NVME and render back to NAS. The latter is a good strategy anyway. Leave the main copy of your footage on the NAS and create temp cache copies while working. Flame makes that very easy. Can be done for other apps with a bit of help of a sync tool. Keep file life cycle nice and tidy.
The other option is to use NFS, but doing that on Apple is it’s own drama cycle too.
im not going to render to this ive got two X12s locally on all machines for cache and local storage. this is for archives /backups and central storage of footage for people to draw down. any one used the Ugreen ones? theyre cheaper.
The exact same thing happened to me this morning…
@allklier I’ve also heard that about disconnects. I use only SMB and fiber and I’ve never had a disconnect from the Synology, even during multi-day transfers and mild simultaneous copies. I can’t speak for heavy, multi-user access with Hard Disks.
I will say that 8 spinning irons slows down quickly during simultaneous access. But the BTFS has been solid as a rock and never lost a drive in 7 years, even with upgrading some drives over time (which is a bit of a sluggish process, to be sure).
It seems well documented. Something that must timeout and then Apple goes the sledge hammer approach instead of just stalling the I/O request. Recent MacOS versions do the same with monitor signal negotiations. On my KVM every so often one of the two will not re-sync, and it happened after MacOS ‘tighthened’ one of the DP port signal windows. And I have to run a utility to re-initialize the display for it to play again. Happens on warmer days. I guess some cable or component gets a bit warmer, and it messes with the signal. Once it happens, it stays for the rest of the day over an over. Next day all good again.
Apple endlessly tinkers in the name of customer experience. But it’s not always a good result for everyone. Anyway, that’s a separate debate.
I never see the NAS disconnect if I copy large amounts in one direction, even multiple copies. Where I can readily reproduce it is if I have a Flame render with 4K or other big files, and the render both reads from the NAS and writes back to the NAS volume. Something in that combination that triggers the timing issue.
I’ve looked it up and there are some tweaks about signing of requests, and some other details. But only so many hours in the day to chase this. So now I just render to a local drive, and then move them afterwards if I need to keep them in the job folder.
Have none of these problems (the NAS disconnect or the monitor sync) on my various non-Apple systems. Just saying…
Is everyone using smb/cifs? I’m over nfs and rarely is ever has issues.
Yes, I’m still on SMB. I may need to bite bullet and change. Back to ‘only so many hours’.
The problem is with Apple’s ‘new’ implementation when they divorced from Samba.
Go with Truenas. I love my x2 Truenas Mini Rs. Got 'em both with x12 28TB. Solid. Silent. Cool. That an a Truenas MCP server and Cursor is a dope way to spend not much time and effort building good storage.
Be ready for stick shock. Hard drive prices are 3-5 times what they were a few months ago.
Buy used.
Truenas over proxmox is what i use and is great. choose your hardware - can be an older dell R740 or anything newer if your budget stretches. Nfs to flames and macs, very robust with ZFS like Randy suggests is great with the snapshots and backing up. its very configurable. I started with spoinning disks to save money then swapped some for faster SSD. split the volumes of course. very cost effective and you can upgrade exactly where your bottlenecks are. If you have the money go all SSD or nvme for even faster access.
so looks like its a bit of a pain in the ass! so you need a server and all sorts of things to make it work. as I’m only using for central storage I can hook a thunder 5 raid to a Mac mini and share the files. wouldn’t that be a lot simpler.
There are definitely easier ways of sharing your files.
You can also just share a folder from your Mac with the other users, and they can transfer over the network, as long as they don’t do it while you work on something. TB5 has faster transfer rates, but you’ll double copy potentially.
Depends on your circumstances. But setting up NAS and shared storage definitely is a project in itself.
A step down from an actual server is a PC with a bunch of drives in it. I use an older ubuntu/ can be any OS/ with 6 drives for my colder storage before final archive. file share on your network just like you do now. this way you can upgrade easily the cpu/the network/the pc as step ups. Simpler still get a U green or synology with 10gig like you mention if you dont want the hassle in setting up an actual server. but ur stuck with that box and synology uses kinda older hardware usually. but really really stable. have had my synology running 24/7 for years
@allklier Regarding your mentioning of monitors and KVM…I’ve been using KVMs for years but only recently on Macs. Since adding a Mac, I’ve had monitor ‘blanking out’ issues since day one. I’ve tried various KVM, DisplayPort, HDMI, proper cabling that is short enough for spec, and different monitors all 4K). The Mac Studios and Macbook Pros never like being on the KVM if the refresh is set to 60HZ or higher. If I keep it to 50 HZ, I only get an occasional blank out of the monitors. Sometimes this would cause the mouse/keyboard to lock as well. None of the KVM manufacturers could ever explain it, so I’ve had to accept it as part of using the Macs with KVMs. But it doesn’t seem to be related to traffic/copying in my case.
@sam.marrocco not related to disk traffic; related by Apple’s design principles. There’s a technical explanation why Macs don’t get along with KVMs, which is rooted in Apple’s design principles.
Mine actually works perfectly most days, but occassionally goes on the fritz with the Mac Studio. And it’s always one of the two monitors, never both. But not consistently the same. I’ve since found the BetterDisplay tool that sits in the systray. It has a button I can push to reinitialize the display, when it blanks. It comes back 100% of the time after that. So it’s a small inconvenience in the bigger picture, but a reminder that Apple wants to be more special than we asked for. Just like with SMB, or a few other things.
My KVM has 2 DP monitors, and 4 systems (Mac, 2x Linux, Windows), Keyboard, Tablet and generally works really well. EID emulation is good enough that windows remain in their place, even with a temporarily blanked display. Way better than all the alternatives.
I’m team Synology, I use Synology Drive to share everything like a personal cloud and my MacBook as a portable Flame with a local NVME framestore and cache of the NAS projects share… The only data I handle wired in is archiving. I also tap into client/colleague Lucid Links for different projects.
I had a Synology rack die once but have never lost any data. On a 1618+ and it feels like overkill
