I manage the IT for a small media production company with around four workstations. We currently use a Dropbox Teams account that holds about 100TB of data, and I want to find a good NAS solution to sync this data locally. We've been syncing with a Synology DiskStation, but we've hit a snag since the Dropbox API limits file sizes to 375GB, which causes issues with our larger projects. Dropbox's desktop app can handle these situations, so I'm thinking about building a setup using a SuperMicro chassis with Windows 11 Pro, since the Dropbox app doesn't support Windows Server. I'm quite familiar with Linux and virtualization, but I want to keep things simple for my team to manage while I'm traveling. I'm considering installing Windows directly, using Storage Spaces for the volume, and possibly adding an SSD with PrimoCache for performance. I'm thinking this might cost around $3,500. What do you all think of my approach?
1 Answer
Have you thought about setting up an on-site storage server and having your team use remote desktops for their actual work? That way, you wouldn’t have to sync or deal with transferring those huge files around. I used to work in a similar environment, and it helped avoid a lot of issues with massive data transfers.
The editing is done in Adobe Premiere & After Effects, and it’s all on Macs. I haven’t really checked the latest on virtual desktops in our industry, but the earlier ones I tried had some major issues with performance and latency when playing back real-time video. I’ll definitely consider looking into it more; it’s a solid idea!