NAS For Delivering Footage to Editors over Internet?

[ShadowWolf810]

Hi all, I've been toying around with the idea of building a NAS for quite some time. I recently bought 5, refurbished 3TB HGST Ultrastar drives. I know the risks and cons of buying refurbished drives, but they were like $60 each and this is a good way to get my feet wet. 

 

I'm starting a freelance editing house/production company and I'm trying to figure out the most cost effective way to be able to have my editors downloading footage, and my clients sending footage. But we're starting with little to no money, definitely no office space, everyone's using their own computers and drives at home. I looked into Dropbox Business but it seems like it would get very expensive. So I figured maybe I could use these drives as a NAS pointing out to the internet.

 

Seems like a NAS and a Business grade internet connection at my house for no data caps would be the cheapest option. The convenience is really appealing of being able to manage all the footage in one place, instead of having everyone downloading stuff on their own, as well as being able to just say to clients "Hey go to this URL and upload all your footage, using this temporary account name and password and we'll take it from there." They wouldn't need to edit off this drive over the internet, just be able to download the raw footage to their own drive space to edit, and then upload project files/final products. 

 

So long story short, I'm wondering if FreeNAS or unRAID have capabilities like these built in already? What other issues with doing it this way are there that I'm not seeing? How to be relatively secure?  

 

All the info you can give me, as well as any thoughts of how to accomplish this better would be much appreciated! 

[NTDaws]

Get a used server.

[NTDaws]

I would look at something like this.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-2950-Server-2x-1-86GHz-QC-16GB-RAM-PERC-5i-RAID-DVD-2xPS-22-/232275439318?hash=item3614b1eed6:g:aYEAAOSw~otWedAG

 

Then buy some SATA hard drives and maybe a ssd for boot.

[ShadowWolf810]

@Being Delirious

 

Well I've got a motherboard, processor and RAM just laying around, all I'd need would be a case and a power supply. But these drives that I bought are just regular SATA drives

 

Whats the difference between a homemade NAS at home and a server box, other than maybe power efficiency? I'd still need pick an OS and be able to have it run a http service with all the same requirements of being able to create accounts with different permissions for people to use and whatnot right? I'm guessing? Networking is not my strong suit what so ever. 

[ShadowWolf810]

@Being DeliriousWould I still run something like FreeNAS if I did get a used server? 

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

@Being DeliriousWould I still run something like FreeNAS if I did get a used server? 

Personally I would just run Windows 10 on it. Setup a FTP server so you can connect to a specific folder assigned to that user. And then locally share your files over the network. Easy as that.

[NTDaws]

An FTP server like this would be fine for uploading and downloading files.

 

https://www.xlightftpd.com/download.htm

[ShadowWolf810]

Just now, Being Delirious said:

Personally I would just run Windows 10 on it. Setup a FTP server so you can connect to a specific folder assigned to that user. And then locally share your files over the network. Easy as that.

Can you point me to a good tutorial on "setting up an FTP server" 

 

Not looking for only local sharing of files though. Needs to be over the internet. I was hoping there was some OS out there that would allow for people to just sign in through a web interface and drag and drop their files, no mapping network shares or anything like that. 

[ShadowWolf810]

1 minute ago, Being Delirious said:

An FTP server like this would be fine for uploading and downloading files.

 

https://www.xlightftpd.com/download.htm

So is an FTP server like a VM that you run, or is it an application that runs in the background, or how does that work? 

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

So is an FTP server like a VM that you run, or is it an application that runs in the background, or how does that work? 

Application. 

[ShadowWolf810]

1 minute ago, Being Delirious said:

Application. 

And does that give me all the same functionality of setting up different user accounts with different read/write permissions. And able to just send a link to someone to have them upload their files to a specific folder without giving them access to all the other folders on the server? 

[NTDaws]

You can try the filezilla method as well.

 

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

And does that give me all the same functionality of setting up different user accounts with different read/write permissions. And able to just send a link to someone to have them upload their files to a specific folder without giving them access to all the other folders on the server? 

All I can say is you log in through your public ip address with the port so for example 192.383.194.383:20 This would be the ftp server address, then you would create user accounts so User would for example be Guest and the Password is you're choice.

[ShadowWolf810]

1 minute ago, Being Delirious said:

All I can say is you log in through your public ip address with the port so for example 192.383.194.383:20 This would be the ftp server address, then you would create user accounts so User would for example be Guest and the Password is you're choice.

Would there be anyway to have the address not be the public IP but instead to be a regular website name, i.e www.something.com? 

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

Would there be anyway to have the address not be the public IP but instead to be a regular website name, i.e www.something.com? 

GoDaddy

[ShadowWolf810]

Just now, Being Delirious said:

GoDaddy

Ok so you're saying to actually pay someone to host it. I was playing around with a Synology NAS awhile back looking at the interface and it looks like that OS is able to run its own http: service, is that accomplishing the same thing? 

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

Ok so you're saying to actually pay someone to host it. I was playing around with a Synology NAS awhile back looking at the interface and it looks like that OS is able to run its own http: service, is that accomplishing the same thing? 

Not to host a server, I mean a dedicated IP.

[ShadowWolf810]

2 minutes ago, Being Delirious said:

Not to host a server, I mean a dedicated IP.

So even with the Synology example, if it were being used to host a website, regardless of any filesharing stuff, you'd still have to use something like GoDaddy or Squarespace or whatever to have it appear as a website instead of your public IP? 

 

Or are you only doing it so that its static and your ISP doesn't change it occassionally?

[NTDaws]

1 minute ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

So even with the Synology example, if it were being used to host a website, regardless of any filesharing stuff, you'd still have to use something like GoDaddy or Squarespace or whatever to have it appear as a website instead of your public IP? 

 

Or are you only doing it so that its static and your ISP doesn't change it occassionally?

Sometimes the companies display as a ftp site or a website you can say like ftp.synology.com but the ip address behind it is the 192.298.384.124:45 or whatever

[ShadowWolf810]

3 minutes ago, Being Delirious said:

Sometimes the companies display as a ftp site or a website you can say like ftp.synology.com but the ip address behind it is the 192.298.384.124:45 or whatever

Ok that makes sense. So I guess the question now is do you know of any other services that don't require any sort of downloading programs on the client side? Correct me if I'm wrong but from that Filezilla one you sent over by Linus it looks like both computers need the program installed. I'm just looking for a simple web interface

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

Ok that makes sense. So I guess the question now is do you know of any other services that don't require any sort of downloading programs on the client side? Correct me if I'm wrong but from that Filezilla one you sent over by Linus it looks like both computers need the program installed. I'm just looking for a simple web interface

Let me look around.

[NTDaws]

2 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

Ok that makes sense. So I guess the question now is do you know of any other services that don't require any sort of downloading programs on the client side? Correct me if I'm wrong but from that Filezilla one you sent over by Linus it looks like both computers need the program installed. I'm just looking for a simple web interface

Look into the unlimited plus option.

 

https://www.1and1.ca/ftp-hosting

[ShadowWolf810]

Just now, Being Delirious said:

Let me look around.

Thank you! Its a relatively big security risk to just send out your public IP to people is it not? Even if it just directs them to a page that requires credentials? 

[NTDaws]

Just now, ShadowWolf810 said:

Thank you! Its a relatively big security risk to just send out your public IP to people is it not? Even if it just directs them to a page that requires credentials? 

Unless you have DDOS protection, than to some point yes.

[ShadowWolf810]

Just now, Being Delirious said:

Unless you have DDOS protection, than to some point yes.

Hmm ok, I'll keep looking into that FTP you suggested. Was really hoping to be able to do it all for free. 

 

On a side note, is it possible to install FreeNAS onto a VM on my current system so I could play around with it? Or will it not be able to access hard drives correctly in a VM?