Design a Storage Solution for a Creative Media Firm

One thing, I enjoyed the most in last four years while writing this storage blog, is the interaction with professionals from diverse background discussing wide variety of issues. Time to time, I was approached by readers looking for new opportunities or to fill open positions in their organizations. No, I am not setting the stage for launching a classified service on my blog.

The reader communication that attract me most are the ones where I learn something new or I can extend help to others or introduce two people together. And, such contacts didn't stop despite my absence for past few months.

A product development executive at a creative media firm contacted me a month ago requesting advise on storage solution for his firm. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to communicate regularly after initial contact. In our last conversation, he agreed for me to post his initial email (redact identifying information) on my blog.

Can you advise on a suitable storage solution for him? What questions will you ask to get additional information? What suggestions will you make?

Dear Anil,

I was reading through storage solutions and came across your very informative blog. I am not sure if you can help me on this; we are looking to deploy a SAN solution in our company and since my knowledge on this topic is only building up now I am a bit shaky about going down this path.

Just a quick overview – we are a creative media company with about 40 users and growing fast, our work involves 3D visualization, video production and interactive media development targeting architecture and pharma companies. We are continually fighting a battle with our storage requirements, we have generally been adding a NAS box as we needed more and using the older NAS boxes for admin usage etc. Our main hiccup is storage and to a lesser degree speed. We don’t have any serious application servers, just workstations and render servers in our production pipeline. We are looking at the NS20 Celerra from EMC, but am a bit unsure of this path and it’s applicability in our environment.

Thanks

JD

Thanks for sticking around!

It has been quite a while since I last blogged. This summer had high-and-low stored for me at personal level. The summer started out great with family get together and celebration but ended with death in the family.

Blogging and Storage weren't something I though about much in last two months. As someone said, life goes on, it is time for me to move on from personal tragedy. Thank you everyone for inquiring about my absence from blogging and whereabouts. I hope to slowly ease back in to blogging again.

If you are reading this post, thanks for sticking around!