Hey everyone, First time here. We're trying to upgrade our hardware at our studio and we really need to set up a fast server ASAP. We have some current projects and some old, archived, projects. We've been getting by with a makeshift server and backup (converted workstation and NAS) but it's time to buy a real server or two. As we finish projects and enough time goes by, we move the project to the archive folder.
We currently have about 8TB of work. Half current, half archive. NAS for backup.
This is what we're considering (two identical servers with different guts):
Server 1 (main server)
Dual Xeon (octo-chips)
SSD for OS
20TB (RAID 10) for storage
32GB RAM
Server 2 (backup server)
Dual Xeon (hexa/quad chips)
SSD for OS
20TB (RAID 5) for storage
16GB RAM
Offsite backup as well
Keep in mind that 8TB of the 20TB will be used up immediately with existing files.
My main question is; is this a good setup? Is it overkill? Underkill?
Should we only use RAID storage for the current projects and use NAS for the archived projects (for both main archive and backup of the archive) since we only access them occasionally? Should we nix the second server and use a high-performance NAS for backup?
Sorry for the long post. As you can see, our knowledge of a large-scale professional setup is limited. I'm hoping some of you have gone through this same ordeal and can help me choose a good solution. I'm not limiting myself to just these two. If anyone has a better approach to a good animation studio server setup with redundancy and backup, I'm all ears!
Also, are there any companies that I should use? HP? Dell? SNS EVO?
Thanks!
