Shared-storage which is able to handle continuous data offloading and handling on tv/film productions

QNAP TVS-1582TU – Thunderbolt 3 Performance and future-proofing

I need a mobile (rack–mounted in skb/peli shock racks is preferred) shared-storage which is able to handle continuous data offloading and handling on tv/film productions (called „ingest“) on location from somewhere about 2-5 sources plus classic features like simultaneous-access from
editing machines and say people who review and log footage via network where 1Gbe /10Gbe with switches are installed. Overnight the footage might get transferred to LTO-Tape or to shuttled-drives.
The difference to lets say a standard NAS system is that Im planning to go all flash to achieve continuous read/write speeds about 600MB/s for a minimum of 3 sources – so high I/O is important.

The ingest-speed to a central-storage is key.

(This is the result of 4K multi-camera productions where a show or concert can easily grow to 6TB per taping and which needs fast and most of all centralized turnarounds.
Right now im handling this data with multiple thunderbolt ssd-raids)

The QNAP is obviously special because of the ability to easily integrate Thunderbolt 3 and 2 devices which as far as I know represents 40Gbit and 20Gbit protocols – of course keeping protocol headroom etc. in mind.
Im interested in the real world speeds because from what I have learned „consumer“ protocols like thunderbolt are not always able to keep put those high-data streams for a long period of time due to heat / controllers / protocol overhead etc.

Do you or your team have had any experience with this specific QNAP system and/or do you have suggestions for other systems?
10G-Base-T is of course an option and I will do that as well but right now Thunderbolt3 seems like a good idea until 40GBe becomes more available and affordable. Also the ability to upgrade AIC in the Qnap with lets say 40Gbe cards is really good for future-proofing.

 

TVS-1582TU is a great choice and you will achieve your desired transfer speeds. Similar performance is expected from desktop model TVS-1282T3 which seems to be the top choice this year. It is not as loud as rackmount model, and it does have extra PCIe slot for additional 10GbE ports. It will also be easier to connect to over the Thunderbolt port if it is placed on the desk rather the server room (an optical Thunderbolt is an option).

Either way, both models will allow multiple users to connect and offload their data very quickly. People even decode to edit directly from the NAS because RAID storage is faster than their internal SSD on the editing machine.

You can connect  LTO-Tape or to shuttled-drives to these NASes for overnight backups (or even have a tape drive built inside the NAS with TVS-1282 rdx). Many people set up remote replication which means that all data is synchronized on an another NAS somewhere in the basement or other building.

The 40GbE card will be an option in the future, but today we can still benefit from multiple 10GbE ports with load balancing and link aggregation functionality.

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