Here's what I think I need. DS211J enough?

[jonathan7007]

Hi, All.
Please share your thoughts about this kind of NAS use and the Synology product that fits it best. Could a DS-211J take care of the following:

I am a commercial photographer. Not too intense in minute-to-minute production but images are big, hitting 75MB currently and the next camera iteration in first half 2012 will probably take them up above 100MB regularly. My production system is Win7 64-bit desktop built a year and a half ago around an i7-920 with 12GigRAM. I also just bought a Lenovo fast workstation laptop that will be on the network when I am in the building. Other units will be my wife's MacBookPro and the college kid shows every once in a while with another Win7 64-bit laptop.

I want NAS to
1. give me another storage and back-up solution in addition to
a. internal 6 TB made with 3x Barracuda XT 2TB (could move one (two?) of these to the NAS box
b. external HDs, two, 1 TB each, that I hope to swap one at a time into a SD box in town
c. Mozy's auto backup in the cloud - off-site
2. allow access to files from outside my office over the web without elaborate setup like VPN
3. Time Machine support for my wife
4. RAID1 Mirrored (my first use of this technology)
5. start at 2TB - if prices slide back down this winter maybe 3TB

It seems like I'd move images over the network into a scratch disk internal from the NAS and edit local. If my LinkSys WRT310 router isn't up to the switching task (although it is listed as a Gigabit Ethernet unit) I'd put a switch in the map and hang the NAS off that.

I believe that my main digital asset manager, Lightroom v3.x, is not able to keep track of image files on a NAS, but I will check into that so I know what the workflow implications will be.

Any thoughts and suggestions? Have I left out a key metric/implication?

Thank you for reading such a long post.

jonathan7007

[jonathan7007]

This is the OP... I forgot to ask if I can take two of the three Barracuda XTs out of the desktop computer to wipe and place in the DS212j to make my RAID1 array. These 2TB SATA6 units are listed in the "approved" HDs, I believe as they are classified (by Seagate, anyway) as enterprise drives. Backward compatible to SATA3.

I have 6TB available inside the chassis and it's not yet full. I don't need that much in there if I am going to have a NAS.
Thanks for any feedback.

jonathan7007

[hypertonik]

Well, if the workload intensity is not high then this device shall suffice. Of course, you can move the disks to the device keeping in mind that all the previous data on them will be wiped out.

By the way, if your data is large enough already, maybe you should consider a 4-disk model? If your data continues to grow this will give it more space in years to come, up to 9 TB in a RAID5 or SHR volume with 3 TB disks. Moreover, in this case, if you start with 2 TB disks, you won't have to replace them with larger ones until there are free bays - you'll just add a 3 TB disk to the 2 TB disks you've already put into the device and grow the volume to include the disk, then put another 3 TB disk and grow it again, and only then you'll have to replace the 2 TB disks with larger ones. Not necessarily all those in the same day, of course This way you won't have to replace the 2 TB disks before their lives are over and still add more space to the storage.

[Dad Man Walking]

One other consideration...since you are moving large files around, think about the differences in speed between the 211J and the other units. Performance charts are here http://www.synology.com/products/perfor ... =us#tabs-2

For moving a few large files around while you are waiting they will still all do fine. But if you want to transfer a large group of files, you will notice a difference in transfer speeds/times, and you might appreciate the extra performance of the 712+ (or something similar if you decide to go for more drive bays).

[jonathan7007]

Hyper, Dad Man,
Thank you for your thoughts. Valuable input! I think extra money for more bays seems like a good idea. Now off to the resellers' pages to see what that will do to the cost. I probably have to sacrifice speed to give me data capacity headroom, as there have been so many other purchases "necessary" on the photographic side.

I knew the HDs would be reformatted if I made that transfer.

Am I likely to need a switch so the data doesn't have to go through the LinkSys modem? It's listed a Gigabit-capable, but it's a couple of years old. (WRT310) I am hooked up to the LinkSys with a Cat5e cable for speed and dependability.

...or should I plan to purchase a switch that is known to be friendly to NAS units?

Again, thanks for the help.

jonathan7007

[Dad Man Walking]

@jonathan - regarding your switch question, I'll share my layman's thoughts.

First, if you haven't already, see if you can track down some real world tests on your router/switch to see how fast it really is. smallhardwarebuilder.com is a great place to start.

Second, my hunch is that "Gig-E" refers to the standard being implemented, and the hardware might make a difference. That's certainly been my experience with the wireless side of routers anyway...they are all compliant to the same standard (the 54Mbps G standard, for example) but but some are faster than others. Absent any data/experience to the contrary, my assumption would be that we might see the same thing happening with switch hardware.

Third, nothing like real-world testing to determine how good your setup is. Before replacing the router or getting a dedicated switch, try moving some files around and see how close you are getting to the benchmarks posted by Synology. They clearly state that their results are obtained with highly optimized PCs and networks, but if you are getting 75-80% of their results you are doing pretty good for us real-world people. I get into that range pretty consistently with my DS212 and a D-Link dedicated switch and I've not any tuning, don't use jumbo frames, none of that stuff. Just plugged it all together and let it rip.

Lastly, as I was looking at those performance charts, it looked like you could wring fair amount of extra performance out of the DS by setting up your connection with iSCI. Might take just a bit of reading to sort out how to do it, but it looks like you get the biggest performance boost on the lower-end models.