Big DataCase Studies

Friends Studio Gets Speedier, Better With NAS Implementation

Friends Studio

Friends Studio, a Gujarat-based photographic laboratory that provides services to professional photographers by materializing their work either into digital albums or handmade formats, was facing a unique technology problem that started impacting their bottomline. Ketan Shah, Director at Friends Studio shares the challenges faced by the company and also its implementation of a NAS solution from Asustor that not only came as a rescue for them, by means of providing speedy and reliable service, but has also permanently changed Friend Studio’s workflow process for the better. 

Due to the studio’s different activities, they have to transfer a large number of files of considerable size, which have to go through different processes within the same company. When a department has finished with its work it has to save it to a USB thumb drive or external hard disk and then pass it on to the next department to continue with the work process. The method in which these files were transferred between departments was neither fast nor convenient.

According to Shah, to solve this problem, the IT Head thought of implementing a NAS as a network storage solution and consulted Amity Infosoft (P) Ltd. Based out of Gujarat, Amity Infosoft is one of the trusted and leading SIs with a goal to provide latest & reliable IT solution to its customers.

Since Friends Studio required high data storage and wanted fluid performance in a working environment with 4 designers accessing data on a real time basis, Amity decided to incorporate an AS6208T, and use 5 HDDs (10TB each) for creating a RAID 5 storage volume with 40TB of storage space.

Through the folders created within NAS and shared between different users, Friends Studio created a networked line of work. The images the company works on are housed inside the NAS server and each user works on them according to the order of processes that must be followed. Once an image is finished, it can be stored in a specific folder. The folders are structured by volume, according to each process and within each volume by name and date of the project, so that it is very easy to find specific information. For all of these folders and files they can set user privileges to restrict access to each of them, as well as create temporary links to share with their customers.

These links are created using the Share Links function which lets users instantly create download links for files that they want to share, allowing users to share files with people who don’t have accounts on the NAS. Expiry dates can also be set for each Share Link that is created, allowing for safe and flexible management. When users have multiple files that they wish to share, they can choose to share them via a single Share Link for all the files or via individual Share Links for each individual file, said Shah.

Friends Studio has also discovered that the MyArchive function is suitable for storing the finished projects that they have accumulated over the years. The MyArchive function allows the use of hard disks as removable storage archives. Whenever users need to access the archived files, they can just plug the MyArchive disk into the NAS and they will be able to access files in no time. They can conveniently plug in a MyArchive disk when they need it and swap it out for a different disk when needed. Additionally, MyArchive disks can be encrypted by password, importing an electronic encryption key, or binding a USB device as a physical encryption key if needed, allowing for secure data storage.

In terms of storage capacity, a 8-bay NAS meets the requirements of Friends Studio at the present time. However, should they need a larger capacity device; they can simply plug in 3 new HDDs to NAS (as they are using only 5bays out of 8 bays currently) or by simply attaching AS6004U expansion box to increase the number of bays. ASUSTOR’s built-in system migration mechanism allows businesses to quickly upgrade from current NAS model to a newer one by moving their original hard disks to a new NAS system. This function is also extremely useful in the unfortunate event of a system malfunction or failure. Users only need to move your hard disks from one system to another without need for transferring data or re-installing the entire system.

These NAS also supports online capacity expansion, which means that users can easily swap out all your old disks for higher capacity ones without turning off your NAS. Online capacity expansion does not require any advanced IT skills to execute and helps users eliminate cumbersome backup and migration procedures. When it’s time to upgrade NAS’s capacity, ASUSTOR simply gets the job done for businesses without missing a beat, said Shah.

Shah concluded, “This NAS meets all of our requirements while providing speedy and reliable service. It has permanently changed our workflow process for the better. We highly recommend the use of ASUSTOR NAS devices for all offices.”

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