Is this even possible?

[dknight903]

Hey guys, New to the forums and I have a unique situation, I work for a big corporation as a cad designer. My biggest issue is how slow our internal network is. All of my files are stored on the server and it takes forever to load some of them and occasionally it will crash my program. The question I have is it possible to set up a NAS in the office so I can directly work to that without having to travel back to the server, and then just have the corporate servers keep that backup?

 

Thanks for any help..

[m9x3mos]

5 minutes ago, dknight903 said:

Hey guys, New to the forums and I have a unique situation, I work for a big corporation as a cad designer. My biggest issue is how slow our internal network is. All of my files are stored on the server and it takes forever to load some of them and occasionally it will crash my program. The question I have is it possible to set up a NAS in the office so I can directly work to that without having to travel back to the server, and then just have the corporate servers keep that backup?

 

Thanks for any help..

It is all going to depend if your employer and the it department will be cool with it or not.  A lot of companies don't like equipment that is not theirs in their network for obvious reasons.  It is theoretically possible though. 

[MonkeyBomb]

It's possible of course. But, the IT department should be getting to the root cause and resolve the issue instead of doing workarounds. 

[dknight903]

As far as getting them to do it I don't believe will be a problem. For me, I just wanted to know if it is possible and what was the best route to do it. It will be a company project.

[LIGISTX]

4 minutes ago, dknight903 said:

As far as getting them to do it I don't believe will be a problem. For me, I just wanted to know if it is possible and what was the best route to do it. It will be a company project.

What is the best solution will be largely dictated by the corporation and what they network topology looks like. If it is “a large corporation”, the IT group should look into what makes most sense for their deployment.

 

We being on the outside won’t be able to provide much useful information as we are not the ones with knowledge about the network. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, having branch offices with local storage is not a new concept. But, I would also question, what exactly is wrong/not working correctly here. I assume you work at a branch facility and not the main campus location where the data center is? I assume branch offices are VPNed into the main HQ and your pulling your CAD files down over the internet (via a VPN tunnel of course)? Maybe they don’t have a split tunnel set up correctly, maybe their internet isn’t fast enough, maybe to many people are accessing a under speced file server?  

[Eigenvektor]

Technically possible? Yes

 

Should you do it? Hell no.

• Don't spend your own money to fix issues with company equipment
• If files are lost you'll be responsibe because the NAS isn't part of the company's backup strategy
• If there's an electrical malfunction that causes a fire, good luck getting insurance to pay for that

In short don't run private equipment in a corporate setting

[derr12]

is it the network or the share server IO performance causing an issue?  

 

What kind of network connectivity do you have?   

 

If its just IO issues, ask IT to mirror a couple SSD's and put your share on it, if its network, well, upgrading to 10g isnt the cheapest thing in the world, but its a pretty small cost if it makes a difference in productivity. 

[dknight903]

44 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Technically possible? Yes

 

Should you do it? Hell no.

• Don't spend your own money to fix issues with company equipment
• If files are lost you'll be responsibe because the NAS isn't part of the company's backup strategy
• If there's an electrical malfunction that causes a fire, good luck getting insurance to pay for that

In short don't run private equipment in a corporate setting

Sorry Eigenvektor, I don't know what part of the post you thought I was going to spend my own money for the solution.

 

Well, I'm just trying to understand how it works so that when we propose this solution we can answer any kind of questions that might be asked. Most senior leaders don't know much about networking, They rely on IT to solve problems, like @LIGISTXI points out there is a problem here, but my facility mainly pushed word doc. so they don't feel the lag that I see when I start moving big cad files around. I'm the only one that does this kind of work here. My local IT guys understand my frustration and are willing to work to help fix the issues but everything is Controlled from the other side of the country and he doesn't have permission to make any kind of changes. They just allow him to be more of the hardware side.

[Kilrah]

30 minutes ago, dknight903 said:

My local IT guys understand my frustration and are willing to work to help fix the issues but everything is Controlled from the other side of the country and he doesn't have permission to make any kind of changes.

So explain your problem and you can mention some kind of local caching as a possible idea, but it's likely going to be your IT guy who will have to present it to the guys on the other side of the country, and they either will do something about it the way they want, or not...

[voyager_]

What CAD software are you using? How large are the files? are you working in 2d or 3d? are you 100% it's the network?  Where I work we work with autocad, plant 3d, inventor, and navis mainly. We are currently transitioning over to using plant 3d as our main software. We utilize bim360 and the desktop connector software to handle project collaboration. This has made a bid difference especially with the latest desktop connector software. This setup basically caches a file to your pc local and sync the changes back to the server and notifies other users that me be referencing that file that you have made an update. With vanila autocad this process doesn't work that way but it has not been an issue as long as designers are purging and deleting registered apps on a regular basis. Performing this regularly makes a big difference on file size. With 3D projects the easiest way to improve performance is to simplify the models that are being used. Get rid of unneeded detail, we often get blocks from venders that have every single nut and bolt included and it just adds too much junk to the file. Another thing that may help is to break up the files. A really simplified way that we manage this is to put process equipment in one file, architecture on another, piping on another, etc... (you get the idea). This way you are only loading what you need. We also create a master file that has everything attached rather then overlaid. The master file gives us an easy way to create NWC or to create sheets. The idea behind this is that you only xref in what you need at a time, then detach it when you are done. Doing these things won't fix a slow network but will help reduce the size of the files and the number of elements you are trying to load at once. I will often get files from other companies that are slow to load and it normally comes down to either way too many things in the file or just a bunch of junk that needs to be cleaned.

 

As far as setting up a NAS, unfortunately that going to be unlikely. Your IT department could set something up but it's not just something that you would be able to add on your own. The way ours manages it is that we have a server in every office that mirrors our main server. This way we are accessing something local rather then somewhere else in the country.