Is there a way to locally cache files from a Synology NAS?

[Seneca]

I have a DS418j that I use to store projects and assets for 3D animation. The reason why I'm using a NAS instead of local storage is because the files need to be accessible to another computer for network rendering.

The downside of this setup is that things like project loading speeds are considerably slower than if I were to store everything locally on my NVMe SSD.

 

So I was wondering if there is an easy way, or a way at all, to allocate something like 100 GBs locally on my PC to cache the most used files from my Synology NAS.

 

Thanks!

[Kilrah]

Put the files on your SSD and share the folder? No NAS, fast operation on your computer, and same thing for the rendering machine. Only difference is your PC must be running when the rendering one is working obviously.

[Seneca]

That's true. That's what I end up doing when working on heavier projects. I should have also specified that I also enjoy the larger capacity of the NAS and it allows me to keep all the projects organized in one place. Right now I have a 1TB SSD on my PC and about 9TB on my NAS, half of which is filled.

 

Edit: Perhaps I'll change my setup. Maybe use StoreMI to combine the speed of my SDD and the capacity of a HDD, and then us NAS strictly for backup.

[Kilrah]

You could copy the project folder onto your drive, then use a program like FreeSileSync to sync the contents with the server regularly.

 

I personally have no NAS but my 32TB of storage are in my main PC, and I share that to the others. The drives being local (2 HDDs in RAID) I get ~450MB/s locally, much better than the 100MB/s of a NAS.

[Seneca]

Thanks @Kilrah.

I'm looking into it and I think I'm going to leave my current NVMe as is, get another one but 256GB and tier it with 2 4GB HDDs using PrimoCache -- this is where I will store all projects and assets.

 

I'll then use Window's automatic backup to back these files onto my NAS. NAS will have 2 6TB drives in SHR.

 

I think this way I'll get the best of both worlds... Speed and security. Right now I have neither. I did the irresponsible thing and have been running my NAS in raid 0 for the past 3 years. Luckily nothing bad has happened, yet!

[Seneca]

Actually, I think I'm going to partition my current 1TB NVMe drive and use part of it as cache for the HDDs: https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/instructions-manage-l2storage.html