Saving Library to a SAN or Supported SMB

Is there a list somewhere of preferred SAN devices, or supported SMB locations to use to share libraries to? my office just upgraded out backbone and I would love to stop using the Sparse bundle trick. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Michael, welcome to the forums.

I don't think anyone needs to use the Sparse bundle trick anymore. What kind of shared storage solution are you using at the office?

- Ronny

We are using a Synology NAS (RS3614) and connecting over 10g cat 6

A Synology NAS is cheap but not very fast or user-friendly, so you may have to change quite a few settings to make this work. What operating system are you running, and what version of FCP X?

- Ronny

From the error message you have posted, I assume you are working with FCP X 10.3.

Are you working over NFS or over SMB on the Synology?

10.3 allows storing Libraries over SMB, but this won't work with your Synology until the DSM gets updated to version 6.1, which should support SMB 4.4. (4.3.4 is required for FCP X 10.3).

Anyway you will still get better Read performance over NFS, and you should not have any problems storing 10.3 Libraries on an NFS share. So that's the first thing you should try.

- Ronny

I have been using AFP. Older yes, but in my testing it was giving me after data speeds. However when I try using SMB it doesn't work. Our machines are on 10.11.6.

I just got into the office and am going to check what DSM version we are on.

You cannot store FCP X Libraries on an AFP share, so that won't work and that's why you are getting the error message.

Since FCP X 10.3 you can store Libraries on an SMB share, but SMB is not ideal because the speeds are not brilliant and it does not support Hard Links which are crucial for FCP X management. SMB is only useful when you work with mixed environments, such as using PCs and Macs with the same server.

The best way for working with FCP X in a shared storage environment remains NFS. If you can enable NFS on your Synology, that would be the solution to your problem.

- Ronny

I know that Final Cut doesn't support saving to an AFP volume. So far SMB hasn't worked either (I have tried connecting to it both ways). I checked this morning and our Synology is currently on DSM 6.0.2 and it looks like 6.1 is only in beta. So I will have to wait until that update is available to try again.

That's correct. It won't work until DSM 6.1 gets released, and even then you are not going to get optimized speeds and you won't be able to use Hard Links. NFS is the only way to make FCP X run perfectly on a shared storage system if you want to store your Libraries on the server.

- Ronny

I just tried setting up NFS and I wasn't able to connect to it at all. So Ill have to do a little more research, I'm guessing I just set it up wrong.