NAS and network storage official stance

[someguy]

One of the biggest selling points to our team would be something Adobe has an entire page explaining basically how they dont support it - saving directly to NAS and networked storage

 

more specifically - saving to a networked storage location to which multiple individuals are working on the same file. To be clear, Adobe 'officially' wants you to save locally and how their setup works ... network storage and collaborative work isn't really something they designed for.

Is this something Serif has considered, something that is already possible and documented somewhere?

[Lee D]

We take a similar approach to Adobe as during testing we found that document files can become corrupted or even lost when saving to networked locations . We advise users to save locally and then copy the file to the networked storage, the same applies when opening.

[R C-R]

On 10/25/2018 at 4:24 AM, Lee D said:

We take a similar approach to Adobe as during testing we found that document files can become corrupted or even lost when saving to networked locations .

That being the case, maybe it would be a good idea to build a warning into the Affinity apps when users try to open document files from networked locations?

[v_kyr]

On 10/24/2018 at 5:21 PM, someguy said:

One of the biggest selling points to our team would be something Adobe has an entire page explaining basically how they dont support it - saving directly to NAS and networked storage

more specifically - saving to a networked storage location to which multiple individuals are working on the same file. To be clear, Adobe 'officially' wants you to save locally and how their setup works ... network storage and collaborative work isn't really something they designed for.
 

Hmm AFAI can tell most software (and especially graphics software here) isn't really buildup in mind for direct collaborative work aka where multiple individuals are working on the same file. - But you usually can overcome to this with some indirect own team workflow setups and strategies. One of them would be to use a capable VCS (Version Control System) which supports huge binary file handlings too on a network storage server, but in this case for collaborative graphics image work.

[AT.HA]

Hi Lee, any changes meanwhile since 2018?

I will buy a NAS soon. Work alone. Thanks.

[sfriedberg]

If you don't have multiple users accessing the same file concurrently, any application should treat a NAS file system like a local file system.  Performance may be slightly slower, depending on the speed of your network and NAS box.

The primary concern is failure modes.  If the network glitches or the NAS goes down while you are working, the application quite possibly does not know that the version of the file on the NAS does not match the updates the application has been writing to it.  Sadly, even if the application is written robustly to always check for error returns from any I/O operations, there can still be NAS-side failures that are not reliably communicated to it.

In principle, the same thing can happen if you are working with local storage, but in practice a sufficiently borked local disk will cause all sorts of inescapably noticeable problems (like blue screens of death, or total lockups of the desktop UI), so we are less concerned with the possibility of a quiet failure to write some blocks somewhere in the middle of a file.

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, sfriedberg said:

If you don't have multiple users accessing the same file concurrently, any application should treat a NAS file system like a local file system.

For Mac users what a NAS device should do is not always the same as what it actually does, & not just because the NAS server goes down or the network connection times out. There can also be problems caused by how the NAS emulates accessing the two standard Mac OS file systems (HFS+ & the newer APFS) over the network. For macOS Catalina users there is also this connection failure issue to consider.

So until such time as Serif explicitly says the Affinity apps support working directly from networked storage locations, I think the only prudent thing to do is copy the document from there to a local drive (preferably the startup one), do whatever edits you want to that local copy, & then move it back to the network storage location. A PITA for sure, but not as big a one as losing hours of work due to corruption or other failures.

[AT.HA]

1 hour ago, sfriedberg said:

If you don't have multiple users accessing the same file concurrently, any application should treat a NAS file system like a local file system.  Performance may be slightly slower, depending on the speed of your network and NAS box.

The primary concern is failure modes.  If the network glitches or the NAS goes down while you are working, the application quite possibly does not know that the version of the file on the NAS does not match the updates the application has been writing to it.  Sadly, even if the application is written robustly to always check for error returns from any I/O operations, there can still be NAS-side failures that are not reliably communicated to it.

In principle, the same thing can happen if you are working with local storage, but in practice a sufficiently borked local disk will cause all sorts of inescapably noticeable problems (like blue screens of death, or total lockups of the desktop UI), so we are less concerned with the possibility of a quiet failure to write some blocks somewhere in the middle of a file.

Thank you very much for your comment Sfriedberg.

So there are always dangers and unpredictable things. It's never like editing with an internal disk on our computer. In this case, the safest option is to edit on our internal disk and use the NAS only for a quality backup.
I work alone and I don't need to share what's on my NAS. Just share final files to clients. I only use a Mac Pro (mid 2010) with four internal SATA drives and an SSD for the system and I will probably switch to a Mac Mini (2020). After your comment, I also remembered a simpler solution (it is not a NAS but a DAS). Here's a possibility:
https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/tr-004
Works with USB 3.0. I think it will be a decent speed as an extension of space for a Mac Mini (work with the Mac Pro meanwhile) !? Will have less fluctuation problems than a home network presents; Am I right?
Your comments will be highly appreciated .-)
Thank you.

[AT.HA]

11 minutes ago, R C-R said:

For Mac users what a NAS device should do is not always the same as what it actually does, & not just because the NAS server goes down or the network connection times out. There can also be problems caused by how the NAS emulates accessing the two standard Mac OS file systems (HFS+ & the newer APFS) over the network. For macOS Catalina users there is also this connection failure issue to consider.

So until such time as Serif explicitly says the Affinity apps support working directly from networked storage locations, I think the only prudent thing to do is copy the document from there to a local drive (preferably the startup one), do whatever edits you want to that local copy, & then move it back to the network storage location. A PITA for sure, but not as big a one as losing hours of work due to corruption or other failures.

Agree .-)

[R C-R]

@AT.HA, regarding your other topic specifically about the Synology DS918+ NAS, while checking a few things for this topic, I found this. I don't know how relevant it would be to you but it is probably worth considering.

[AT.HA]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

@AT.HA, regarding your other topic specifically about the Synology DS918+ NAS, while checking a few things for this topic, I found this. I don't know how relevant it would be to you but it is probably worth considering.

Thanks a lot.

[v_kyr]

See also:

That user there used a USB 3 SSD HD on Win, though Macs aren't behaving much different here. The overall problem is that the Affinity software itself (due to it's incrementally file format) is generally still very fragile when operating on mounted (slower) storage spaces, be it cloud drives and network connections, or mounted storage devices (external HDDs, NAS, USB sticks etc.), independent from the OS version and filesystems. - Thus you use a NAS storage then for Affinity app related files better only as a backup storage place and not as the file working on storing space.

[AT.HA]

On 5/30/2020 at 2:08 AM, v_kyr said:

See also:

That user there used a USB 3 SSD HD on Win, though Macs aren't behaving much different here. The overall problem is that the Affinity software itself (due to it's incrementally file format) is generally still very fragile when operating on mounted (slower) storage spaces, be it cloud drives and network connections, or mounted storage devices (external HDDs, NAS, USB sticks etc.), independent from the OS version and filesystems. - Thus you use a NAS storage then for Affinity app related files better only as a backup storage place and not as the file working on storing space.

We are reaching the conclusion using a NAS or even a simple DAS in it with RAID function, it is best to use the computer's internal disk for editing and then make the respective backups for the Raid. It takes more work and takes more time but it is safe. In my case, which I am thinking of a future Mac Mini, a 1TB SSD is fine for my image editing, vector drawing and pagination work, so that after I finish, back up to NAS / DAS. And I delete the work from the internal SSD.
Ideally, from NAS / DAS it is convenient to have an additional backup in another physical location, but that is another discussion.
Conclusion; edit on the internal disk. Make backups on NAS / DAS.

A little to the side but connected to this subject because the objective in my case is to understand how to build a system today, alternative to the monolithic and very expensive (but good) Mac Pro; it's great to know that Affinity programs, especially Photo, support and take advantage of eGPU .-)

This discussion is very useful. Thank you all.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, AT.HA said:

Conclusion; edit on the internal disk. Make backups on NAS / DAS.

I think even though it i more work, it is (for now) the only safe option.

I thought about investigating ways to partially automate this, like maybe with AppleScript & folder actions, but that still seems too risky for serious consideration.

[v_kyr]

The common actual problem with working on external network storage, which can even happen on a local network if it doesn't offer a stable fast access.

For backup automation just use then some approved operating sys services, via time adjusted scripts which use rsync & crontab etc. - You can instead also try out some plugged on GUI things like RsyncOSX and the like.

 

[AT.HA]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

I think even though it i more work, it is (for now) the only safe option.

I thought about investigating ways to partially automate this, like maybe with AppleScript & folder actions, but that still seems too risky for serious consideration.

Agree .-)