All puns and cheesy social media article titles aside, network attached storage (NAS) is now a must-have for every serious, modern production company.
With overall data growing exponentially due to ever-increasing file sizes, the old-school approach of stacked-up hard drives and beefed-up workstations are no longer close to a viable solution.
More so, the result of ever-increasing data now collides with equally important business requirements—ensuring that seamless data access, data protection, and capacity and performance is a constant, never hampering productivity or profitability. So, it’s at this point you should be asking, “What can NAS do for me and my organization?”
The possibilities and benefits of NAS can be virtually endless as the overarching capabilities can be applied to everything from business processes and workflows, to the overall unique nature of each and every production house. However, for the purposes of this article, I’ll cover the high-level—yet highly important and mission-critical—attributes of NAS only.
Increased Storage = Better
As previously mentioned, capacity alone is a game changer in 2021 and beyond. Hence, the idea of having more storage that is of a far higher standard means a lot right out of the gate. It’s this primary benefit that leaves hard drives and workstations behind, providing a significant addition to storage capacity along with the ability to inherently create a single storage volume from several drives, often arranged in a RAID scheme. Simply put, RAID combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy and performance improvement. A win, paired with a win.
Data Security = Safer
Cyber security is a hot topic in this day and age, and rightfully so. As more and more companies fall victim to cyber attacks, keeping data safe and away from proverbial bad actors is paramount. Natively NAS provides data security—accessible only from inside one’s own four walls. This means that the outside connection (if any) can be highly controlled, along with the specific user accounts associated with the environment.
Speed = Productivity
As an extra bonus, NAS is—by design—exceptionally fast. This means that your user experience is throttled only by the speed of your local network. Therefore, if access speed is increased, by default productivity will increase—as will profitability. No one will argue that the faster and more accurately a job can be completed, the sooner more work can be taken on.
Data Protection = Peace of Mind
There is nothing more terrifying in a production environment than a catastrophic failure. When drives fail, there’s that sinking feeling of lost productivity, lost opportunity and lost profits—it makes me queasy just writing about it. The aforementioned RAID configurations ensure that any and all data stored within it can survive through a single or multi-disk failure.
Improved Data Management = Modernization
It’s amazing what happens when disparate drives are taken out of the equation. It’s almost like modernization and all of its benefits come to fruition in an instant. NAS is that modernization, personified. From fully automated back-ups, advanced compression, encryption, and even de-duplication—that is just the list of day-one attributes that are realized with better infrastructure and technology.
But wait, there’s more: users can also configure seamless sync workflows that immediately enable enhanced collaboration efforts, enable easily managed users and groups through service directories, and implement media management tools.
In the end, drives stacked up on a shelf somewhere did have their time in the sun—but that sun has set. There are far too many reasons to move to NAS; you simply need to make an informed decision. Best of all, we’d be more than happy to show you a world of possibilities. Visit us at www.ScaleLogic.com/demo to book your instant walk-through.
