Is data processing from share on NAS possible?

Hi everyone!

I’ve not seen this mentioned at all since 2015 so perhaps its a stupid question that everyone just goes…duh…but please bear with me, new to all this…

We have a beefy i7 PC that currently processes our files. Our staff return from site visits with drone data and then copy the files to our cloud service for backup. Once the data is confirmed replicated we copy it to the workstation hard drives then process. We are trying to create some efficiency and remove some human error and/or possible corruption and would like to process files directly from a NAS if that’s at all possible.

I read that hard drive/ssd speed doesn’t seem to affect the completion time by much so thinking perhaps over a network may work? Looking at a Synology NAS for this purpose if its viable.

  1. Is it viable to process across a network from a NAS?
  2. If so, how significantly does it impact the processing time?
  3. What kind of disk array and specs would the NAS require to not become the bottleneck?
  4. What kind of network speed would be required? 1, 5, 10Gb?

Thank you in advance.

Hi Mike,

Welcome to our community! Thank you for sharing a little background about your dataset.

  1. Is it viable to process across a network from a NAS?

Unfortunately, we do not test PIX4Dmapper for remote access nor does the virtual machine, and thus we do not officially support it. The processing may be successful, yet most probably, the rayCloud will not display properly due to the OpenGL error.

You can find out more about different operating systems and environments here: macOS / Windows XP / Linux / Remote access / Parallel processing

Also speaking of the hard drive processing speed, in fact, it is a crucial component in step 3 for PIX4Dmapper. You can find out more about how PIX4Dmapper use different parts of the hardware components in each step here: Hardware components usage when processing with PIX4Dmapper

Though this information might not be the answer you were hoping for but I hope it is helpful. :sweat_smile:

Cheers,
Rosana