Reddit reviews HighPoint Dual-Bay Thunderbolt 10Gbps Storage Dock (RocketStor 5212),clear

One of my hobbies is setting up servers. I've built a number of post systems for companies and I run my current home NAS to do a lot of home automation / media distribution tasks. I've also set up wireless editing systems based on NAS systems (offline only, of course). I've also built SAS backplane systems and custom RAID solutions. I am by no means an expert or an IT professional, but like I said it's a hobby so I've done some experimenting with a lot of what's out there.

Your question makes it sound like you already know what you want, but I'm curious how you're mentally dividing up your data.

What you should consider is the difference between 3 things:

1.) Active, concurrent backups

2.) Long term project archival

3.) Day-to-day project access

It's possible to glom these 3 tasks together into a single storage solution, but you'll hamper performance, safety, and pay more than necessary if you do. It's better to break them apart.

How would you answer these questions:

• What is the average size (in GB) of a project being worked on in my office?
  
• How many people are typically accessing that project simultaneously?
  
• How many simultaneous projects might a single editor have on her plate on any given day (and therefore need to have simultaneous access to from a given system)?
  
• What is the highest bitrate media we'll normally be cutting?
  
• Related: what is the throughput of our network?
  
• How long do we want to archive client projects after delivery?
  
• What kinds of workstations are being used, and how much data needs to be stored on them directly (i.e. not on an external drive plugged into them)?
  
• What other tasks would we like a file server to accomplish (besides just serving files)?
  
• How many blinking lights in a cabinet is too many blinking lights?
  
• Etc. etc. etc.
  
  
  Depending on your answers to questions like these you may want one set of products or something else entirely.
  
  In my experience, for most small editing shops with consumer-grade networking infrastructure, you're best off splitting archival / backups / active projects into separate storage solutions.
  
  For active projects a DAS is necessary above certain bitrates (working with ArriRAW? Not going to happen over the network. ProResLT? Yeah, do it wirelessly if you want). A good DAS on every workstation is also nice because it lets you host several active projects simultaneously in recoverable storage (RAID 1, 5, or 6). In that case OWC is a good cheap solution, but Promise or Caldigit are much, much better. I do not trust G-Drives at all.
  
  If you're working with low bitrate footage and a good network you could instead get a 4+ bay NAS (fewer than a 4 disk RAID and you may not have enough I/O bandwidth for >1 user) and let every workstation pull from the same project pool over the network. This is a completely valid setup, but I would not expect it to be free of bumps unless you're running 10gig Ethernet, fibre, or custom NICs with active teaming. For DASs, Synology is a favorite among filmmakers, but I actually prefer QNAP – I've been running them for ~3 years now and they get better and better every month (company is aggressively developing firmware & OS). Anything above the X53-Pro series can be run as a true server (buy some RAM for $20 and upgrade what it comes with), and simultaneously host a virtual machine if you need a Windows or Linux system. Don't buy anything cheaper than the X53-Pro series though, that model is where they start getting really good. I would stay far, far away from DROBO. Netgear also makes some very solid gear but with limited OS capabilities – good enough for storing files though. I've heard WD is similar but have no experience. All of these systems can run whatever backup software you want for as many machines as you can imagine. The limit will be drive speed + network throughput, and if you're sticking with consumer grade gear you'll want to get a really good router & switch.
  
  Beyond that, if you're doing serious heavy lifting, you could go for a SAN, but those are hard to build yourself. If you're doing work like that though, you should be able to afford to hire EditShare to come in and get your shit in line.
  
  Finally, you should have some other system in place for project archive. I prefer buying drive docks, OEM drives, and anti-static cases. LTO is also an option, but jesus that's annoying. The drives-in-cases plan has been working out pretty well for me over the last 10 years.
  
  Before you buy anything, you should really sit down and try to answer all of these questions, make a spreadsheet of the bitrates of your footage multiplied by num. users, test your network throughput from different workstations, etc.

Faster than via thunderbolt. Here's some discussions on iMac internal PCIe SSD vs external Thunderbolt SSD

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-internal-ssd-vs-external-thunderbolt-ssd.1604225/

The gist of it is, if you have a good TB connection, it's faster than the pcie ssd.

I need to connect a lot of devices, and this is the best TB dock I've found. From what I can glean, it looks like it will be faster than the internal PCIe ssd. If I'm wrong, please let me know why.

https://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Dual-Bay-Thunderbolt-RocketStor-5212/dp/B00DJ3YEH0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1500002380&sr=8-2&keywords=ssd+thunderbolt+enclosure

I have a question about the best editing setup for 4K footage:

I am on an iMac so I cannot do the very cool setup that PC users are doing, with a PCI based SSD as their HD for the footage they are working with.

I am thinking of purchasing an editing dock, so I can slap my SSD's in that I use for image capture and just edit the footage right off there (for smaller/shorter videos). For my bigger projects (martial art seminars) I can use the SSD's as fast storage for the files I'm currently working with, then archive them when I am finished with that timeline and move on to the next batch.

Does this sound about right for an editing workflow? For a dock I was thinking either of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DJ3YEH0/?coliid=I3LVQBX3Y28PPN&colid=18MV1ZDGQIPKJ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

or

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/?coliid=I1S7ITYP2SKAOB&colid=18MV1ZDGQIPKJ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I'm going to be working with 4K Pro Res 422 60 fps footage.


Any advice on how your work flow goes is most appreciated!

https://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Dual-Bay-Thunderbolt-RocketStor-5212/dp/B00DJ3YEH0