Studio Network Storage Solutions

[andYz00m]

Curious what others are using for long term storage that is accessible to multiple engineers.

We’re nearly done with a new studio that will used by many different engineers and I want to set up a network storage system that allows for back up and retrieval of samples, sessions, mixes, listen files, etc.

I have an old Synology NAS that is actually quite awesome and still works but it’s kinda slow.

What are y’all using?

 

[totoxraymond]

I always upcycle my old motherboards for use as home servers. Stack a few disks in there for some redundancy (raid5) and then you can chose between a few distros. I use Open Media Vault but Freenas seems also quite popular.

TMI:
Actually i recently installed an hyperviser and then OMV as a Virtual Machine. But unless you want to instaml some more VMs like your own Nextcmoud instance or anything, ypu might not want to go that route.

My old and slow synology NAS is now used as a backup server for all my servers and computers. My only concern now is that bot machines are side by side so in case of a fire or a flood, i'm not covered. (Though my sinology already survived a flood while running).

Cheers,

Thomas

 

[cyrano]

I always upcycle my old motherboards for use as home servers...

I did that too, but there's one major drawback: power consumption. I'm currently using a Raspberry PI. The first one, with only 256 MB ram... 5W full power, less than 0.5W idle. The PC motherboards ran from 15 to 50W idle. Admittedly, these were old (Win 2K era) server mobo's.

 

[totoxraymond]

True, but rpi is a bit limited regarding SATA connectivity or netwotk speed. As far as i know, only rpi3b+ and for have Gb ethernet and they don't reach the full 1Gb/s top speed.

Apart from new disks I also invested in a 80+ "gold" psu. I have yet to measure power consumption though.

Ymmv

 

[andYz00m]

Interesting. I do have a ton of old components and could easily put together a box but I’d like to keep things small and tidy if possible.

I’ll do some more thinking and research. I may also look into newer NAS boxes and see if the performance is better.

 

[ccaudle]

It might help by defining your "must haves" and your "nice to haves" to point in the right direction.

For example, do you need a studio to be able to run a session directly from the NAS (i.e. play back from and record to)? Or is it acceptable that sessions are only local, and get synchronized back to the NAS at the end of the day?

If running from the NAS, what is the track limit you need? If synchronizing is OK, how long is acceptable to wait for a session to copy over to a studio computer to get started, or how long will you be willing to wait for it to copy back at the end of the day?

Will multiple studios be accessing the storage simultaneously, or is it more likely to be a one at a time situation? Or did I misunderstand, and this is not multiple control rooms sharing storage, but a single control room, and you just want a network storage solution for backup, or because the studio computer has less storage space than you want?

Are you limited on network technology? Do you have 1Gb only, or can you run 10Gb or 25Gb if needed?

Do you have strict cost limits? I am working with a customer now on a system which can sustain nearly 10GB/s (using multiple 25Gb RDMA network controllers) onto 300TB of solid state drives. Probably overkill, but in case you were thinking of getting into video production....

 

[andYz00m]

Great questions.

It might help by defining your "must haves" and your "nice to haves" to point in the right direction.

For example, do you need a studio to be able to run a session directly from the NAS (i.e. play back from and record to)? Or is it acceptable that sessions are only local, and get synchronized back to the NAS at the end of the day?

If running from the NAS, what is the track limit you need? If synchronizing is OK, how long is acceptable to wait for a session to copy over to a studio computer to get started, or how long will you be willing to wait for it to copy back at the end of the day?

Will multiple studios be accessing the storage simultaneously, or is it more likely to be a one at a time situation? Or did I misunderstand, and this is not multiple control rooms sharing storage, but a single control room, and you just want a network storage solution for backup, or because the studio computer has less storage space than you want?

Are you limited on network technology? Do you have 1Gb only, or can you run 10Gb or 25Gb if needed?

Do you have strict cost limits? I am working with a customer now on a system which can sustain nearly 10GB/s (using multiple 25Gb RDMA network controllers) onto 300TB of solid state drives. Probably overkill, but in case you were thinking of getting into video production....

Great questions.

For example, do you need a studio to be able to run a session directly from the NAS (i.e. play back from and record to)? Or is it acceptable that sessions are only local, and get synchronized back to the NAS at the end of the day?

There are two tracking/mixing rooms (control rooms) and a mastering room.

I think the best cost/workflow solution is a networks storage system that can be used as a central storage to push and pull shared content from. So it doesnt need to run sessions but ideally it wouldnt take 20+ mins to push/pull a large session. (Time is money and right now my current NAS is slow af)

Are you limited on network technology? Do you have 1Gb only, or can you run 10Gb or 25Gb if needed?

Do you have strict cost limits? I am working with a customer now on a system which can sustain nearly 10GB/s (using multiple 25Gb RDMA network controllers) onto 300TB of solid state drives. Probably overkill, but in case you were thinking of getting into video production....

Definitely not limited to 1Gb and we have a 10G router, but I dont want to spend more than I need to hit to above needs.

Thanks for the consideration!

 

[cyrano]

I'd go for a Synology. The rest is either way more expensive, or has less features and/or stability.

Even if you're an experienced system builder, it will take a long time to do better.

Something like a FS2500? Just over three grand...

https://www.synology.com/nl-nl/products/FS2500
24 drive bays to be filled with affordable SATA SSDs. With 1 TB disks @80$, you get 24 TB for 2 grand.

 

[TomKelly]

I'd be wary of Synology - their hard-drive compatibility list only includes Synology-branded drives (which are 3-4x as expensive per TB than other drives) and they provide no support once they determine you are using "non-compatible" drives. (I should also add I run a Synology NAS as a home server, so it pains me not to recommend them, as in every other respect they're brilliant. In a production environment, though, you need that warranty support...)

That said, a turnkey solution is exactly what I'd recommend as well. Qnap make very solid NAS appliances as far as I know. Or you could go for one of the Truenas systems. Both of these will meet your core requirements (fast, reliable networked storage) very well

 

[cyrano]

I've probably installed hundreds of these. I can only recall 1 compatibility problem and that was with Western Digital spinning rust. That drive formatted and tested 100% OK, but at the next power-up, it was completely dead. Didn't even spin up. A problem that WD recognized immediately and granted warranty return for. Fortunately, I hadn't wrecked all six drives, only two, so I exchanged the remaining four working drives for another type of WD. My distributor told me later WD wanted all remaining drives of that type back.

This wasn't on a Synology NAS, but it wasn't the NAS that caused it either.

In the beginning of the SSD era, I saw compatibility problems. But these were ironed out pretty quickly.

So I wouldn't worry too much about compatibilty. I've never bought Synology drives, or any other "prescribed by the manufacturer and overpriced" drives either. Hasn't been necessary since the early SCSI days.

Qnap has always been my second choice for SMB too. Reliable, but a little different in features. If you've worked with one Synology, you 'll get along on any other without RTFM. Qnap has (had?) different series with different software. A little less elegant. Back when I was doing this, you could ruin a Qnap with user error. Never seen that on a Synology.

 

[andYz00m]

Great points and suggestions. Sounds like I’ll start looking newer more modern NAS boxes. I have a ton 4TB drives but it might be time to build one around SSD.

Thanks!

 

[TomKelly]

I've probably installed hundreds of these. I can only recall 1 compatibility problem and that was with Western Digital spinning rust. That drive formatted and tested 100% OK, but at the next power-up, it was completely dead. Didn't even spin up. A problem that WD recognized immediately and granted warranty return for. Fortunately, I hadn't wrecked all six drives, only two, so I exchanged the remaining four working drives for another type of WD. My distributor told me later WD wanted all remaining drives of that type back.

This wasn't on a Synology NAS, but it wasn't the NAS that caused it either.

In the beginning of the SSD era, I saw compatibility problems. But these were ironed out pretty quickly.

So I wouldn't worry too much about compatibilty. I've never bought Synology drives, or any other "prescribed by the manufacturer and overpriced" drives either. Hasn't been necessary since the early SCSI days.

Qnap has always been my second choice for SMB too. Reliable, but a little different in features. If you've worked with one Synology, you 'll get along on any other without RTFM. Qnap has (had?) different series with different software. A little less elegant. Back when I was doing this, you could ruin a Qnap with user error. Never seen that on a Synology.

Sorry - I wasn't clear. Nothing wrong with non-Synology branded drives, but anecdotally Synology support reps will sometimes (always?) refuse to support a Synology box with "non-compatible" Synology hardware (SSDs, HDDs, RAM, NICs etc.), even if it's clearly a hardware issue (failed PSU etc.) until all of the "non-compatible" hardware has been removed.

My RS1221 at home runs fine with a selection of Seagate/Toshibas and a "non-compatible" RAM stick or two.

 

[KA-Electonics.com]

The concern I've always had about using a NAS is the file system readability in a Windows or Linux environment in the event the NAS controller fails and the drives need to be unmounted and read in a PC. Most NAS that I've looked into in the past used odd-ball - even for Linux - file systems.

It seems like there's all this RAID-5 redundancy but no hardware controller redundancy. If the controller fails your data may be RAIDED in an unreadable file system and your boat sunk.

My strategy is to mirror secured backups to other workstations on the network with an additional offline air-gapped backup stored offsite.

I haven't looked at it in awhile but whose NAS systems use NTFS or common Linux file systems?

 

[totoxraymond]

This might differ from one machine to another but my synology ds411j raid5 mounted fine under linux OMV distribution after its morherboard got flooded.

Thomas

 

[doorunrun]

A good cost effective solution is Unraid. I've been using their software with hardware I've put together for more than 10 years.

Their support and community support has been great!

 

[cyrano]

Sorry - I wasn't clear. Nothing wrong with non-Synology branded drives, but anecdotally Synology support reps will sometimes (always?) refuse to support a Synology box with "non-compatible" Synology hardware (SSDs, HDDs, RAM, NICs etc.), even if it's clearly a hardware issue (failed PSU etc.) until all of the "non-compatible" hardware has been removed.

My RS1221 at home runs fine with a selection of Seagate/Toshibas and a "non-compatible" RAM stick or two.

Support is always a guess. One day you get the guy who knows everything, the next day it's an intern. Or something like it. I had that with A&H, some years ago. The knowledgeable guy had put in so many hours he took a vacation from end of june till beginning of september...

Since i RTFM, I've had very little experience with support. Synology or other. In fact, since I was in the IT game before people knew what the word "computer" meant, I've dealt with some very good support from the likes of IBM and HP, fi, just to see it evolve into the mess it is these days. I've also had an inside look, as I've done support myself.

It's kind of ironic, cause I've just dealt with getting my father's wheelchair repaired...

A four week ordeal with phone numbers that never answered, the health insurance that paid for the wheelchair having to admit they too were helpless when it came to dealing with this particular service center.

The problem with that service center was that they've just announced they're gonna sack 300 persons. So some employees have lost all interest, and some others are trying hard to fight for their jobs. And those who try are almost sabotaged by the others...

I'm sure it's necessary for the survival of the company. Still, I blame the top, cause they've been buying competitors to monopolise the market. They're obviously better at spending fortunes than managing people. I see a lot of that since we stepped into the 21st century.

A long way of saying YMMV...

 

[cRiTza]

I record directly into Dropbox. 100% backup and 100% avcessible to anyone with an internet connection.

 

[grid_stopper]

I actually just completed this, Originally I was gonna go a rPi 4 compute module with PCIe expansion for better SATA/ethernet performance, but by the time I added up all the costs involved I realized I could do something that performs better for cheaper by cannibalizing parts from redundant PC's at work. running trueNAS on a ryzen 3 with 32gb of ram, 512gB m.2 system drive, and 4x 8TB 7200RPM drives in a RAID 5 configuration. I ended up 3D printing a rack enclosure out of ABS, and it works great!