Indiestor is the server you have been looking for
I wanted to give a shout out to our pals at Indiestor. If you want shared media storage for your post house or production company they are the only company you need need to know.
Firstly who are they? Indiestor are based in Kent (United Kingdom) and I have been dealing with Alex who is probably one of the nicest people in tech, especially when it comes to people in the server world, they all seem to spend all their time trying to convince you to buy more than you need, he spends his time trying to convince you to buy less no matter how much you push him to “go big”. They are incredibly down to earth and nothing is ever too much hassle, honestly I have been on the phone to him throughout the night talking about various other projects, so much so that my other half thinks we are having an affair.
Why go with Indiestor over the big players like Avid and EditShare? Primarily I’d say simplicity and a complete lack of bullshit. The server software is incredibly lightweight and has only the features you need. Setting up workspaces and handling permissions and users etc is crazily simple and on top of all that they have OpenSourced the software so anyone can just go and install it on a spare box and have a play. Because it is open source you can also take it and tinker around to make it do more than was initially intended, this is also handy if you are a bit of a nerd like me and fancy a poke around.
Price is obviously the other huge factor and if you take a look at their pro systems it’s a no brainer, you can pick up a 32TB system for close to £3,500. If you compare that to the Avid Isis 1000 which will give you 20TB for around £17,000 you would have to be on crack to go with the Isis but if you did that you would have no money left for crack so you should still go with the Indiestor option. You could buy almost four Indiestor systems for the same price! 128TB for the price of 20TB… need I go on?
I’ll leave it there, if you are in the need for shared media contact Craftkit and chat with the team, Indiestor make shared storage fun, I’m serious.