Networked Storage Suggestions?

Hi Friends,

We are outgrowing our last server and would like to move to a better solution for our all MacOS workstations. Essentially we are looking for a server 50-100TB or so, networked via 1Gb or 10Gb ethernet for about 5 workstations. Right now I'm leaning towards LumaForge Jellyfish for ease of use in the Mac environment but I'd love to hear success stories from folks using their competitors. Thanks in advance!

I have to say, I doubt you'll find anything that'll touch Jellyfish.

FCPX.guru wrote: I have to say, I doubt you'll find anything that'll touch Jellyfish.

Ditto on that. I don't ever recollect seeing a Lumaforge customer on some FCPX forum begging for help. Yet we frequently see customers who "saved money" by buying a Brand X NAS and have problems with performance, reliability, data integrity, etc.

My own team doesn't use Lumaforge but we have highly skilled engineers who are expert at NAS issues, and other ex-IT people who are experienced at OS debugging. Given proper technical understanding and in-house support, a vanilla NAS can work well. The question is how many post production teams have those in-house resources? Will their NAS vendor remotely connect to their site and do extended in-depth performance and/or reliability troubleshooting involving FCPX/NAS integration?

I know FCPX.guru has lots of low-level technical experience and could probably handle anything. How many places have someone like that? Another example is this informative post from Thomas Berglund who deciphered some of the network optimization settings used by a Lumaforge NAS. If a person was familiar with MacOS terminal, editing network config files and then measuring network performance (possibly using DTrace), maybe this would work -- on *current* MacOS and FCPX versions IF using the exact same NAS: www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...work?start=40#109131

Lest somebody think "Aha, I don't need an expensive Lumaforge server, those config files are sufficient" -- without someone to continuously maintain this, that delicate solution could easily stop working on, say, Big Sur if on Apple Silicon. In past MacOS versions, small tweaks to SMB or NFS have caused significant NAS issues. My recommendation is always consider the issue of support.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the feedback. We have been living in the "I'm on the line with tech support again" world for years now with two different servers. I am technically competent but really just don't have the time to dedicate to the upkeep and problem solving these days. Cheers!

Jellyfish

Yup. I'm virtually meeting with one of their sales people today. Thanks again.