- Hey everyone. Welcome back to another video.
Today we're gonna talk all about data management,
and how to manage over 100 terabytes of data
as a production company with multiple editors.
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It's definitely a system that we've worked on,
and taken a long time to develop.
So every single project that we do
we always invoice for a hard drive or data storage,
or data management.
And that might be a couple of hundred dollars per project.
And we've always just put that money back into drives,
and slowly scaled to where we are today.
So we're gonna talk all about the Synology 4017xs2,
along with the RS1217 expansion units,
and how we use that in our studio to allow our editors,
we've got seven computers all hooked up to this NAS,
and every single person
can edit the same project at the same time
with over 600, sometimes even 800 megabytes a second
read and write speed to the NAS.
So what you're seeing here is a 16-bay server unit.
This means that there's 16 drives installed in this unit.
Every one of these green lights represents a drive
that is installed and working.
Above this bottom unit of 16
there is another 12-bay unit,
which is the 1217 expansion unit.
Now if we look at how this data is distributed
across the network,
we have a 10GbE or 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch.
This is connected to the NAS directly.
And then we have every single one of our Mac computers
connected into this switch.
So on the computer side of things
we have a few new M1 Mac minis
which have a 10GbE built-in Ethernet card already.
So these plug directly into the server
using a CAT 6e cable.
Some of our computers are older iMacs
that don't have a built-in 10 10GbE card.
And for these computers we use
a Thunderbolt 3 to 10 10GbE adapter,
which allows us to plug our Thunderbolt 3 devices
into the NAS using this adapter.
So each computer currently is getting
about 600 to 800 megabytes a second
read and write speed from the server,
which is plenty fast enough to directly edit
raw footage off the server.
And also the ability for multiple editors
to be editing off the server at the same time is beautiful.
The other beautiful thing about this particular NAS
is that it's scalable into the future.
So we're obviously gonna keep growing,
and we're gonna shooting more projects.
And if we want to grow that data capacity
all we simply need to do is buy an expansion unit,
which is the RX1217 expansion units from Synology,
and install another one above the current server
that we have,
and simply daisy chain them in,
and we have the ability to continually expand
the current storage that we have
without having to turn the server off,
pop it to a new one, or anything like that.
We've got a hundred percent uptime,
and we simply just grow the storage as needed.
And finally the last thing that is beautiful
about the Synology system
is that it has a really cool thing called hyper backup,
which allows us to completely replicate the server offsite
at a different location.
So every morning at 2:00 AM,
the server is completely backed up over the internet
to another server at a different location.
And this means that every morning when we start a new day
we know that that last day's work
is completely backed up offsite
if anything happens to our server onsite here.
So that in its most simplistic form
is the network configuration.
There's obviously a ton of technology
going on behind the surface to make this all happen.
But essentially now that we have seven computers
plugged into the server,
we can really take advantage of DaVinci Resolve,
and the collaborative workflow that is built into DaVinci.
So if you're familiar with DaVinci Resolve
you'll know that when you set up a project
that you have to set up a database,
and often this will be a disk database
which you set up on your computer itself.
When it comes to collaborative workflows on a network
you need to set up a PostgresSQL database
instead of a disc database.
Now this PostgresSQL database will need to be installed
on one of the computers on the network.
All the other computers
essentially referenced this one computer
that is organizing the database for the network.
I'll be working on a more in-depth tutorial
to actually explain all of this process in detail.
But just for this video we want to summarize
what's happening and essentially
have one computer hosting all of our databases,
and then every other computer on the network
is simply referencing that database.
Now what we have is a network environment
where every single computer is referencing
the exact same project on the server
which is being hosted from the M1 Mac mini.
And then every single computer also has access
to the footage, and all the data,
and the assets on the Synology NAS.
After that's shown you how you can use a NAS
to create a network environment,
and also provide some future-proofing,
and scalability for your data needs.
Just remember data is the most important asset
that we have as creatives.
And especially if we're servicing clients
that data to the client is worth more than anything else
in our studio.
We can always claim insurance on our cameras,
and our lighting, and our computers, and the hardware.
But if we lose the data
that's the stuff that's irreplaceable.
Especially if you're telling stories
where the content is valuable
in a way where you'll never be able to reshoot it.
So just make sure that you're accounting for data backup,
and data management within your studio,
or your creative workflow,
because it will pay for itself many times over
throughout your career.
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