Hello,
I’m a filmmaker and a film colorist and I’m looking at either the HL8 or HL15 to function as both an archive for old projects and as an active server for in progress work. The use case is Da Vinci Resolve Studio running on a Linux PC and on a Mac using either the HL8 or HL15. I wanted to see if anyone had insight into whether either of these boxes would be ideal use cases for the type of work I’ll be doing (mostly video editing and color grading. although being able to handle part of an audio workflow and vfx workflow from other vendors would be useful as well).
I think the HL15 would be aimed more at your use case. As I understand it, 45Drives’ original Storinators are in use at a number of clients doing video production work.
The HL8 has one, cramped, PCIe slot and only 2.5 GBE networking, so your options for adding GPUs, cache, sound cards, etc would be limited in the HL8 and speed to access it over the network would potentially be slower.
- Do you expect to edit off of the NAS? Ie, Resolve opens the files across the network and you aren’t copying files back and forth or creating proxies?
- Do you need a GPU on the NAS to do any rendering, or will all rendering be done on a client?
- Are you the only creator or are you sharing files with others working on the projects?
- Does the audio workflow and/or vfx workflow require any dedicated hardware?
- What speed network connectivity do your Linux PC and Mac have?
- Do you have any special needs, such as Thundrbolt support, or special media docks, etc, for ingesting footage directly onto the NAS?
- How much space is your old projects and what is the growth rate?
Note that 45Drives has a “Pro8” version of the HL8, if that form factor was more appealing to you but you needed faster networking. You have to contact them for Pro pricing quotes, though.
Thank you for the detailed reply! Answering to each of your queries in order starting with A for answer:
- Do you expect to edit off of the NAS? Ie, Resolve opens the files across the network and you aren’t copying files back and forth or creating proxies?
A: Yes I would like to edit off this NAS so that I can hand off parts of the workflow easily between the Linux workstation and the mac workstation. I would be working off a 10GB ethernet connection
- Do you need a GPU on the NAS to do any rendering, or will all rendering be done on a client?
A: I would like to eventually have the NAS handle rendering off client.
- Are you the only creator or are you sharing files with others working on the projects?
A: In my office I’m the only one handling most projects for my clients. If I’m working with someone else, it’s usually remotely.
- Does the audio workflow and/or vfx workflow require any dedicated hardware?
A: Negative. Those are workstation dependent, although in theory I could run dedicated audio or video cards from the NAS to specialized eqiupment.
- What speed network connectivity do your Linux PC and Mac have?
A: PC & iMac Pro both have 10GB RJ45.
- Do you have any special needs, such as Thundrbolt support, or special media docks, etc, for ingesting footage directly onto the NAS?
A: thunderbolt is nice, but a 10GB RJ45 should be enough. I have a 10GB unmanaged switch with 5 ports to handle various connections. Behind that I have a router/firewall that pumps out 1GB ethernet.
- How much space is your old projects and what is the growth rate
A: Old projects and current storage caps out at around 16TB (I do not keep client raw files. I only back up resolve project files+smaller masters for my reel. For my own personal projects I back up everything along with full res masters. The majority of my current storage is original files of my own projects+my own masters+client side masters/resolve database back ups). Growth rate is variable. The main issue is if I have multiple feature projects back to back, meaning I would require at least 30TB of active fast storage to handle two feature length projects at a time.
Please let me know if I am missing something from my answer above. Thank you again for the detailed response. At the moment I am considering running this hardware with Truenas, but I’m unsure what the HDD to SSD mix should be. Although if Rocky+Houston UI can meet my needs, I’m okay running that (I’m no server wiz here, just an artist trying to make my workflow easier).
My goal is to move away from using a DAS as my main working storage/raid for projects and have a NAS do those things, and have back ups from the NAS go to cold storage drives, backblaze, and a secondary off site back up server. The DAS would move to being a back up working storage in case the NAS goes down in the short term.
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Those answers, particularly 10 GBE and GPU support, point to the HL15 over the HL8. 15 disk slots may be a lot more than you need tor 16 TB + 30 TB, but you won’t get those features together with the HL8. I assume we are talking about the pre-built systems.
There are any number of articles and Youtube videos of people setting up NASes for video editing. 45Drives may have some best practices. But you’ll probably have at least two pools, one with something like RAIDZ2 HDDs for you archive footage and one that is something like a striped mirror of SSDs for your active project. The more RAM you can throw in the better.
TrueNAS vs Houston is going to be a bit of a personal preference. I find TrueNAS a bit more polished, but I’m a computer geek not a creative type. At the end of the day, they’ll just be GUIs to help manage ZFS for you and not really affect performance. I think you’ll find more crowd support for TrueNAS if you run into trouble.