Hey, so.. I work as a photographer and videographer for a small (but quickly growing) branding firm in Manhattan.
We're in desperate need of some sort of file storage/backup solution. Since we're a decently small company and only just got into media production in the last year, this is something new that no one here has dealt with before.
Most employees either backup to portable drives or don't backup at all (we have no actual IT department to lecture them). They're probably fine using portable drives to back stuff up, but our art department has grown to two videographers, two graphic designers, and one web developer, and we're producing tons of data, especially for video. I'm talking like 25-50 gigs per shoot, on average, and 2-3 shoots per week usually. So just downloading the cards takes up enough space without mentioning duplicating it (I've got a stack of six 1-2TB hard drives sitting beside my iMac, which already has 2TB of internal space filled).
And since we don't have an IT person and no one in the office is really that tech-savvy, it kind of falls to me, since my team has the most need for it.
What we need is some sort of massive storage solution-- somewhere I can dump my cards after a shoot, organize them (renaming, keywording, filing them in some sort of structure) and also back them up. Besides an onsite backup, it'd probably be good to have an online backup system, too.
Whatever drive the files are stored on needs to have a fast enough interface that I can either edit video directly from it or download a dozen gigs from it quickly. Also, if it could be accessed from an offsite machine (so I can work from home), that'd be great.
All of us in the art department have new iMacs with Thunderbolt capability, as well as the standards-- USB 2, Firewire 800, and ethernet.
I think we'd need to start with something like 20TB at least, and it'd be great to be expandable. Our company is growing fast, so we'll be producing more and more media at a faster rate.
The server would only need to be accessible to the art department, but if there is a way to have it accessible to the rest of the 40 or so employees, that would be helpful, too.
Sooooooo... I can only describe our needs, but I have no idea what we should get or if there is a company or someone we can call to come and set something up for us.. Or what I should tell such a company.
Money is sort of not an object. Meaning there is money to do this, but as I said, I am one of only a few here who appreciate the need for this and how much it could cost initially. I'm definitely expecting it to be at least a few to several thousand dollars. Hopefully 10k or less, though..
Any ideas? Thanks!
We're in desperate need of some sort of file storage/backup solution. Since we're a decently small company and only just got into media production in the last year, this is something new that no one here has dealt with before.
Most employees either backup to portable drives or don't backup at all (we have no actual IT department to lecture them). They're probably fine using portable drives to back stuff up, but our art department has grown to two videographers, two graphic designers, and one web developer, and we're producing tons of data, especially for video. I'm talking like 25-50 gigs per shoot, on average, and 2-3 shoots per week usually. So just downloading the cards takes up enough space without mentioning duplicating it (I've got a stack of six 1-2TB hard drives sitting beside my iMac, which already has 2TB of internal space filled).
And since we don't have an IT person and no one in the office is really that tech-savvy, it kind of falls to me, since my team has the most need for it.
What we need is some sort of massive storage solution-- somewhere I can dump my cards after a shoot, organize them (renaming, keywording, filing them in some sort of structure) and also back them up. Besides an onsite backup, it'd probably be good to have an online backup system, too.
Whatever drive the files are stored on needs to have a fast enough interface that I can either edit video directly from it or download a dozen gigs from it quickly. Also, if it could be accessed from an offsite machine (so I can work from home), that'd be great.
All of us in the art department have new iMacs with Thunderbolt capability, as well as the standards-- USB 2, Firewire 800, and ethernet.
I think we'd need to start with something like 20TB at least, and it'd be great to be expandable. Our company is growing fast, so we'll be producing more and more media at a faster rate.
The server would only need to be accessible to the art department, but if there is a way to have it accessible to the rest of the 40 or so employees, that would be helpful, too.
Sooooooo... I can only describe our needs, but I have no idea what we should get or if there is a company or someone we can call to come and set something up for us.. Or what I should tell such a company.
Money is sort of not an object. Meaning there is money to do this, but as I said, I am one of only a few here who appreciate the need for this and how much it could cost initially. I'm definitely expecting it to be at least a few to several thousand dollars. Hopefully 10k or less, though..
Any ideas? Thanks!
I'm assuming that the people aren't gathered around that one switch, so you might need more than one. In that case, you could use a smaller switch for the clients, so long as it's not oversubscribed heavily.
