5 Drive internal RAID/Storage or 2nd Pegasus2

[Cameron McKinlay]

Hey Guys,
I have a Synology 1513+ I am looking to get rid of as I need the speed of DAS. But currently, I am also slowly making my exit from Apple and looking at PC workstations like the HP z840, Boxx, or building my own and I wanted to get some feedback on the positives and negatives of taking the 5 drives from the Synology and just putting them in the HP tower and editing off of those and using my Pegasus2 R6 as my long term storage. or Vice versa? Pegasus as editing storage and internal as long term? Or the 3rd option would be to get another Pegasus2 R6. 1 for editing, 1 for long term storage.

 

[M.Halsell]

Hey Guys,
I have a Synology 1513+ I am looking to get rid of as I need the speed of DAS. But currently, I am also slowly making my exit from Apple and looking at PC workstations like the HP z840, Boxx, or building my own and I wanted to get some feedback on the positives and negatives of taking the 5 drives from the Synology and just putting them in the HP tower and editing off of those and using my Pegasus2 R6 as my long term storage. or Vice versa? Pegasus as editing storage and internal as long term? Or the 3rd option would be to get another Pegasus2 R6. 1 for editing, 1 for long term storage.

Is it just a speed issue with Synology as an appliance? or other - Reliability, sync issues, etc? From a workflow perspective, what type of data was the NAS being used for? Will you be looking to replicate that functionality in the hardware build? RAID, JBOD?

 

[Cameron McKinlay]

Is it just a speed issue with Synology as an appliance? or other - Reliability, sync issues, etc? From a workflow perspective, what type of data was the NAS being used for? Will you be looking to replicate that functionality in the hardware build? RAID, JBOD?

Yeah, I purchased the Synology when I was on tour with Cirque Du Soleil a few years back so I would have my own "dropbox" that I could dump my BMCC footage too anywhere in the world as I was on the road for 3 years straight. Now, I don't really need that application anymore since I am based in Vegas.
I have had no issues with it ever. It's been rock solid but now with the huge files from the Epic-w, I need something with a little faster read/write speeds.
I was hoping to still have some sort of RAID but if the drives are directly connected in the tower they will always be backed up offsite to backblaze so I am open to different types of configs.
I am trying to figure out the best and most efficient way to access and store my data now that I am doing the big transition to PC I figured now would be the best time to streamline everything.

 

[Edwin Perez]

One thing I think you'll have to consider if you pull the drives from the NAS and put them into your tower is that you'll probably want to connect them to a hardware RAID controller in the box (like an Areca or LSI card etc) You can attach them all by SATA and create a software RAID in windows, but controlling a RAID means more work for your CPU - and I think you'll need all the cpu you can get for .r3d's. I'm not sure what RAID options windows offers, but a RAID card will likely give you your standard video editing RAIDs like 0, 1, 5, 10 etc

 

[Cameron McKinlay]

That was my initial thought. Even if they are not in RAID, if I was to install the drives in the tower, the CPU will still be slowed down accessing the footage locally as well as running the OS and NLE.

 

[Alberto Guglielmi]

If you have no issues with the Sinology, why don't you keep it as a backup for older projects? I usually dump everything that it is a year old in it, and have it there in case I need it. Using the faster raid (or internal) for editing and short term storage.
I am currently setup with:
Immediate work - 2 External (RAID1 as 4TB each) drives thunderbolt. One is the main drive, the other one a mirror backup with ChronoSync backing up overnight.
Short Term backup - 2 External (RAID1 as 6TB each) drives thunderbolt. One is the main drive, the other one a mirror backup with ChronoSync backing up overnight.
Long term backup - Sinology with redundancy on cloud server.

It might be small in the long term, as Epic-W projects seems to be in the 1TB range...

 

[Cameron McKinlay]

If you have no issues with the Sinology, why don't you keep it as a backup for older projects? I usually dump everything that it is a year old in it, and have it there in case I need it. Using the faster raid (or internal) for editing and short term storage.
I am currently setup with:
Immediate work - 2 External (RAID1 as 4TB each) drives thunderbolt. One is the main drive, the other one a mirror backup with ChronoSync backing up overnight.
Short Term backup - 2 External (RAID1 as 6TB each) drives thunderbolt. One is the main drive, the other one a mirror backup with ChronoSync backing up overnight.
Long term backup - Sinology with redundancy on cloud server.

It might be small in the long term, as Epic-W projects seems to be in the 1TB range...

I currently use the synology for my long term storage and the reason I am thinking of getting rid of it was because the transfer times are really slow. And there is no way for backblaze to back it up as well. For backblaze to recognize the synology, it needs to be directly attached to the system (which you can't do with the 1513+). I tried remapping the drive so it would show up locally on my system, but Backblaze still would not back it up. But, you got my thinking of different ways of automating things, I am checking out chronosync for sure.
What cloud server do you run Alberto?
I use backblaze. $50/year and I can back up unlimited data, which was the real selling point for me.

 

[Alberto Guglielmi]

I am using amazon cloud drive. It is actually free with prime subscription.... Sinology has an app in the system (cloud sync) that backs it up directly to it. It is actually pretty nice, as it is independent from being mounted or attached to the computer.