Best NAS system for a small office of 10 artists

[Juan Mermot]

I´m the founder of a small studio located in Uruguay (DIM) with currently 5 artists doing everything related to 3D, video editing and graphic design. So far we have been using dropbox as main storage unit but we are starting to feel our internet bandwith is our bottleneck. I have been doing some research and I understand sooner or later I would have to buy a NAS for the office.

I´m inclined to Synology as a brand but I would love to know your thoughts on any other brands or on any specific model that can handle at least an office with 15 people working simultaneously with a solid bandwidth. 

Thank you all in advance. 

 

 

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

I am not a IT specialist, just an other old timer Arch Viz talking about experience.

When you ask about bandwidth, that is a little loaded question, because it not only depends on the storage part, but also depends on your networking type.  When you say that you are using Dropbox, do you mean that your team work remotely? or part of them are remotely? if that the case you need to put their internet connection in your equation.

If your team is the same building/room then a solid server may be a better option instead a NAS.  But again, what you are planning to use the NAS for?, as a bacupk (primarily design purpose of a NAS) or you want to have a central location to store working files such, 3D files, textures, XRef models etc.

If you need a central device that everyone will work on it, then a server would be a better option, because most NAS are design to work with minimal resources, this means smaller CPU and low RAM. Of course there are some exceptions to the rule but the majority of them, when you connect more than one or two machines with high demand of assets constantly reading and writing then those NAS do not perform as expected.

If you only need a Storage option for backups or some small file sharing then Synology should work just fine, same thing with Qnap. If you want to get fancy you can get one with an ssd on the main drive to have a faster cache for commonly used files, but again I would not recommend a NAS to work as a server. i know they ttry to seel it that way, but when you consider how much you pay for a high end NAS, server type of device, my as well buy a medium grade Server and you'll get way better performance for your money.

For instance even old Server will be multi-core ( 10 or more cores) you can load them with 64Gb RAM or more and put one of this babies in side (https://www.owc.com/solutions/accelsior-8m2)

That thing will just fly reading and writing working files, textures and others, you can always attach a NAS to do backups, which is very important, then connect your NAS to a cloud Backup service, such as Drop box and you are golden.