Advice needed for Network Storage

[Archiform 3D]

I know I am heading out of a different branch here but I am wondering if you should just do this properly and get a server. I am very happy with mine and it is a little unusual compared to most.

 

It's a Mac OSX server with SATA RAIDs connected to it, separating project files and all the libraries. I run the net server software on it too (C4D) and have two gigabit cards in it to break the load - similar to what has been mentioned here. Now, I am guessing C4D network rendering is different to yours, because we save off a whole project with textures and then let it run, so one big lump of data to each render node up front and then little pieces of data during the rendering.

 

The two cards separate the network traffic for the render farm, which is sporadic traffic but can be intense, and the the actual 3D artists who require plenty of bandwidth for the libraries, which might be your issue too.

 

I have another RAID for a time machine backup too.

 

OK, you are going to spend more this way but you get a lot of flexibility with this kind of solution.