FTP Server build

[yolosnail]

So my uncle runs a small TV production company and needs a FTP server to ingest the footage from one of his foreign clients since with things the way they are at the minute, international travel isn't exactly the best option!

 

The latest project he is working on requires about 2tb of data to be transferred which is too much for their current solution to handle without moving to a much more expensive plan, so asked if I could look into quickly knocking up a local server they can transfer the data to (and by quickly I mean within the next day or two)

 

Now, I have a few old HP Core 2 Duo desktops laying about gathering dust from our old office, would they be sufficient for a build like this? I believe they only have 4gb of RAM and obviously the hard drive would be upgraded.

 

It'll probably end up being temporary until we can find a more permanent solution, probably something a bit more purpose built.

 

Software wise, I was thinking Freenas, but not sure if that would be the best option

 

 

Any advice would be most appreciated!

[FloRolf]

Wait, so you want some dude to upload 2TB worth of data onto your intermins solution here?

You realize that uploading that much data over your standard internet connection, say 50mbit upload, will take like 4 days straight? 

 

Not sure if freenas is your easy and quick solution here if you don't have experience with it already. 

 

 

Edit: I'd look at something like Google Drive or similar enterprise solutions for this. It's way easier to setup and you can just cancel the plan after all this covid mess. 

[Loote]

Assuming your network is good enough and you can be accessible, core2duo will be enough.

Is it 2tb daily transfer, or 2tb of space with smaller transfers?

Hetzner offers https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share 2tb at ~$10 + tax with 10TB of monthly transfer, you could also get a dedi from them for ~$28/month right now and it'd be 2x3TB drives with unlimited megabit line. It's just an example, but in my case looking for a hosting solution is cheaper than setting up a fast internet connection at my place.

[yolosnail]

7 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

Wait, so you want some dude to upload 2TB worth of data onto your intermins solution here?

You realize that uploading that much data over your standard internet connection, say 50mbit upload, will take like 4 days straight? 

 

Not sure if freenas is your easy and quick solution here if you don't have experience with it already. 

 

 

Edit: I'd look at something like Google Drive or similar enterprise solutions for this. It's way easier to setup and you can just cancel the plan after all this covid mess. 

 

It would all have to be downloaded after the fact anyway, so even if they do upload to Google Drive there'd still be the multiple days of downloading. 

 

The other issue is the fact that for some reason there is an insistence on using FTP for the transfer, maybe this is easier for the client?

 

6 minutes ago, Loote said:

Assuming your network is good enough and you can be accessible, core2duo will be enough.

Is it 2tb daily transfer, or 2tb of space with smaller transfers?

Hetzner offers https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share 2tb at ~$10 + tax with 10TB of monthly transfer, you could also get a dedi from them for ~$28/month right now and it'd be 2x3TB drives with unlimited megabit line. It's just an example, but in my case looking for a hosting solution is cheaper than setting up a fast internet connection at my place.

It'd be 2tb in total.

 

That seems like it could be a good option, they never showed up in my previous search. They need FTP so a storage box may be better than the storage share for the same price

[Loote]

21 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

That seems like it could be a good option, they never showed up in my previous search. They need FTP so a storage box may be better than the storage share for the same price

Ah yes, I looked at those offers few years ago and they just had storage, now just clicked the first link under my mouse, but I recall FTP being there and assumed it still is available.

[Jarsky]

9 hours ago, yolosnail said:

The other issue is the fact that for some reason there is an insistence on using FTP for the transfer, maybe this is easier for the client?

I wouldn't say thats an issue if you're dealing with large file sizes. Connections can get broken, and FTP can automatically check and auto-resume transfers without having to re-transmit the entire file again. You can also do multithreading and segmented transfers with the right software. This is probably something the client will want to try and do since typically single threaded performance can often be quite poor internationally traversing many networks. 

 

Also: FTP Server could run on a potato. I can max my Gigabit even with mine which is a VM with only 1 CPU core and 1GB ram assigned to it.