Installation & update
About program installation and update, hardware, operating systems, setup, etc.

Looking for a new storage solution for an 11 person firm, and would like input.

mi_jan
Enthusiast
Hi All,


Current Setup:

1) 5 yr old NAS (DROBO) system with five 4TB disks - Where we store all of our Deliverables, .PLN'S, Revit Files, Backgrounds from consultants, ETC. We use an Old iMac to manage the Drobo, Set up the VPN to be able to work from home and have a CrashPlan on that computer backing up the Drobo.

2) Newer iMac (specs in my signature) Running Bim Cloud Basic 21 and 22. With a CrashPlan

3) A 4T External Hardrive Plugged into the Newer iMac which is set to be shared, and every user can access it as a shared folder of said newer iMac with a single username. (we use this to place DWG's and PDF's from consultants and be able to see Linked files from different Users)


The problems we have:

1. Drobo Is slow, so we're looking into a newer option. ( We have separate usernames for each person to control access to certain folders. Therefore when you link a file from it the path includes /user.name/ of the person linking it to the Archicad File, so only that user can see the link making it unusable for Archicad)

2. The linked files on the (External shared drive) for the teamwork files Have to go from the HD>Dock>iMac>Network> User. I set this up as a temporary solution because half of the firm was still using Revit. This method Is Slow and allows only ten users to connect to the shared drive so one person can't see links.


What I would like to have:

One solution that works for both things. Storing our deliverables and linking files into our teamwork, without having to access it through the Bim Cloud dedicated Machine.
iMac - MacOs Big Sur 11.6.6
Archicad 24 - Latest Build
Archicad 25 - Latest Build
1 REPLY 1
Anonymous
Not applicable
For an 11 person office you should be using a dedicated server and not just peer to peer networking.
A server will save you time (and therefore money). If it saves each person about 15 minutes a day it will save about 660 hours per year and if staff are paid $40/hr you would save $26,400 pa.u
If you want to stay with Mac you could go with a Mac Mini (i7 6core 3.6 GHz with 32Gb RAM, 10Gb network card, 10Tb Thunderbolt drive array) running MacOS with server add ons. Or you could go with a HP server running Windows Server.

Regards
Scott