Possibly something like Arctic Wolf.

A lot has changed within the company I work for, I find the daily grind now to be frustrating and stressful with a new boss, with myself now having little to no authority to get anything done, despite requirements to make work progress. Other than finding a new job, does anybody have any ideas on how to cope, or ways to get work items done? I have tried discussing this to no avail with my new boss.

One example. I am responsible for the IT infrastructure within around 30 offices globally. We have them all over. Not driving distance. We only have IT people in around 5 of the offices, leaving 25 unmanaged. Yet, these offices still have have infrastructure requirements. The people in the office are not IT people and do not do IT work, they are busy and refuse. Its infrequent, but we have items like the below from time to time:

• ISP line speed is not what is expected or paid for. Appears to be 30% lower. ISP requires somebody hook up directly to the link and perform iPerf testing showing bandwidth issues to continue giving us help as their kit is configured correctly. Local people cannot help as they are not in IT and busy. I am not being given budget to outsource to a local IT provider or contractor to get them to do the testing. I cannot travel there myself, think UK -> Australia. I cannot hire a junior IT person in every office. How on earth can I get items like this accomplished? Despite these issues, i'm told 'make it happen'.

Similarly to the above, I have offices where we need switches installed to a second WAN link to provide local HA. The company does not want downtime in the office, yet, I cannot get anybody to install and configure the equipment, the local staff cant, and I cannot thousands of kilometers away from the room and hardware.

Another example would be fixing cabling. The cabling is a mess from M&A, we purchased companies that have terrible cabling in the IT comm areas. Yet, I won't be given budget to get professional services in to fix the cabling properly. For the smaller sites, sure, I can do the work myself. But, the company are not willing to allow travel. As before, its not the local peoples jobs. Plus, given the sites demand no downtime, this needs to be weekend or evening only work.

I guess, i'm not sure what I am really asking, just venting. Its so disappointing to be told to accomplish something with little to no available paths. We used to have Splice to do the remote work but this was taken away.

I feel its time to move on. How can I possibly manage this stuff without resources?

@scottalanmiller said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

This looks like another option, although, it does just look like a NAS to me, just through a specific 'media' vendor.

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/

That's a scam. I use those guys about once a week as an example of "market vertical scams." I've had customers get seriously screwed over by them.

Never buy "industry" IT equipment, it's always a scam. IT is IT, anything industry specific is another way of saying "not good enough to pass IT muster, so we try to bypass IT by claiming it's specifically made for an industry."

They literally make the worst storage you could possibly imagine.

Could you tell me more about this? I am not sure I fully understand but would like to. Is the thought that because its a "NAS for Editors" and not just a "NAS" that its not good, otherwise it would be a NAS for everybody regardless of need?

@scottalanmiller said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Obsolesce said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

Originally, I was looking at proposing a 20 - 30 TB NAS populated with SSDs in the local office, with 10 Gbps NIC. This would provide high speed local access over the LAN to 6 marketing users.

If their PCs accessing a NAS at 1-10Gbps isn't good enough because their primary concern is speed, why would they push for way slower cloud storage, assuming no on-prem cache?

1 - 10 Gbps would be more than fine. That is what I proposed. But, the CIO is asking that the storage is Cloud only. Leading to this issue where the editing workstations are in office and the storage is remote.

I would connect the CIO with the users and ask if waiting hours or days to work on a file is good enough. Let the CIO take that up with users.

The CIO is pretty much of the opinion that the user should plan better and download files they need for editing whilst working on something else.

This looks like another option, although, it does just look like a NAS to me, just through a specific 'media' vendor.

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/

@Dashrender said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

Sounds like all the bases have been covered.

It's unrealistic to work with files of that size (even 10 GB files are unrealistic to work on from cloud).

As Pete said - show the owners the time it takes to move the data, then show them the cost of a potential VDI solution with hosted storage - your solution of a NAS will quickly be back on the table with backups to cloud.

I have been doing some research and am interested in this company, they seem to have both storage in cloud and editing via browser. Any thoughts on this, or better alternatives?

https://www.blackbird.video/

Does anybody know if Adobe has a similar entirely cloud solution for video editing? When I go to their site I find it a mess and confusing.

@scottalanmiller said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@IRJ said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

What kind of marketing department is this? A movie firm? It seems insane to have video files average 10-20gb. Even high budget commercials are probably only that size.. Is this a bunch of templates or something?

Check your Olympus EM-1 MK2 for video, it'll produce that amount fast (but breaks up the files, but just imagine that it kept them as a single file like newer cameras do.)

If you are shooting with a Fuji XH2 or similar, you'll produce 20GB files every few minutes.

I'm just on a GoPro 11 and all my files are 10GB because that's its file limit. If the GoPro kept the files together, I'd routinely have 20GB - 40GB files. And that's low bit rate compared to serious cameras. Imagine if you shot on Panasonic GH6 or better, especially if you go to 6K or 8K! And I'm using H.265 which is tiny. If you shot on ProRes, which is what most do, the file sizes will explode quickly. 100GB or more would be nothing.

I've not seen the files first hand, am just told these are the sizes by that team. They are telling me the cameras will do 40 minutes to 1 hour recordings of presentations and stuff like that at 4k and 8k, and they are usually 300 GB - 400 GB.

@Obsolesce said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

Originally, I was looking at proposing a 20 - 30 TB NAS populated with SSDs in the local office, with 10 Gbps NIC. This would provide high speed local access over the LAN to 6 marketing users.

If their PCs accessing a NAS at 1-10Gbps isn't good enough because their primary concern is speed, why would they push for way slower cloud storage, assuming no on-prem cache?

1 - 10 Gbps would be more than fine. That is what I proposed. But, the CIO is asking that the storage is Cloud only. Leading to this issue where the editing workstations are in office and the storage is remote.

Hi all,

I am being asked to find a storage solution for our video editing department. They use various Adobe tools on Mac clients.

They have around 40TB of files they use, with the largest files being RAW files of 300 GB - 400 GB. Average file sizes are 10 GB - 20 GB.

1/2 of this is archive and can be stored on cloud storage for pull down should they require again. Leaving around 20TB live data and 20TB in archive.

Originally, I was looking at proposing a 20 - 30 TB NAS populated with SSDs in the local office, with 10 Gbps NIC. This would provide high speed local access over the LAN to 6 marketing users.

Marketing said speed was the main concern. Accessing the large files is currently slow causing many delays. They have so far been sharing USB 3.0 devices between each other, without backups.

Our CIO is now pushing for cloud only solutions for the storage where marketing can check in/out the files they need, killing my NAS idea. I have concerns on this but am open, so would like some advice. What have you used or what would you suggest to use to provide this?

I am concerned that when an editor wants to do something with the 300 GB file, that will have to pull down from the cloud, bringing our WAN link to a crawl until the download finishes. Then, once they have finished editing, they have to upload the end product, again causing bandwidth issues. This is exacerbated shoudl multiple editors be pulling multiple files at the same time. Even at 500 Mbps with no overhead that is around 1.5h of time to sit and wait for a 300 GB file whilst everybody else is affected on the same WAN link.

I assume the'video editing' cloud storage providers are like OneDrive or DropBox, where each machine has a local cache so do not have to pull from cloud each time. But, wouldnt that mean that our video editing workstations all need to have a 20 TB local drive to store this local cache?

Kind of all over the place on this one, any ideas folks?

@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:

@Jimmy9008 said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:

but if its for work, its must be procured by work.

Just to earn less money? What's your goal in that statement? Why lower your value only for the sake of doing so?

Are their cases where it makes sense, sure. But are there cases where it makes little sense? Yes, many.

And I ask again... if you feel that way about computers, why not Internet access, power, or even the house you are in? Where do you draw the line and why?

It feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It feels like you see your employer as the enemy and you want to hurt them. While that might be the case, instead of taking an antagonistic approach, look for an employer you like and who likes you. Your employment should be a positive thing for both parties, both working together, not against each other.

Let’s be real here. The argument you make is BS. If a business doesn’t have to buy a laptop, do you really think that money is going to your salary? Talk about head in the sand. That will go straight to investors or somewhere else. The decision isn’t ‘buy Scott a laptop or pay him 2k more’. You’ll never see that 2k.

@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:

@Jimmy9008 said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:

Likewise, I spend thousands on a beast of a machine for my personal use. No way am I putting wear and tear on that for business reasons. It is my device. Go pound sand, get a device for me to use to get company work done, or go find a chump who will use their own like a damn fool. Of course I can afford top end and buy a really high spec machine, but thats for my use.

Wear and tear? What? What wear and tear are you thinking of? That's not how computers work.

Using anything causes wear a tear. To what degree is irrelevant. Simply being on and ready to use for work is wear and tear. The laptop trackpad and keyboard, wear and tear. Components have a lifespan and none of that lifespan should go to the employer on a device I own.

@scottalanmiller

I am reacting to the video and discussions on this page. My example provides an example scenario which could happen. I own a deceive, it is my device, and I decide to give my device to somebody else. I no longer have it. Therefore, I have no device to work on. This is one reason why it is entirely expected by myself and many others that work must provide devices. You expect me to be able to work, then provide the tools to do so.

@scottalanmiller

I have been WFH for a long time and feel passionately that if I’m doing work, the it’s on something work provided. The only time I would consider using my own hardware would be if the work hardware fails and I am waiting for the hardware to be fixed.

As with many other folk, I also disagree. Work from the office, office machine. Work from home, home machine. Laptop or desktop, I don't care - but if its for work, its must be procured by work.

An example, asking an IT person what setup they have at home is perfectly fine. Seeing what they run and why. What network and switch they use. The firewall and lab. What Internet connection they have. All fine.

Getting that person to use their own machine for work, absolutely not.

Lets say I am passionate about my car and have spent a lot of cash on something fancy. No way am I putting mileage on it for work. Buy me a company car. My own car = my use. You want me to get from customer A to customer B for projects, get me a fooking Uber, or flight, or expense me a rental. No way am I putting hundreds of miles on the car I am passionate about for the business use.

Likewise, I spend thousands on a beast of a machine for my personal use. No way am I putting wear and tear on that for business reasons. It is my device. Go pound sand, get a device for me to use to get company work done, or go find a chump who will use their own like a damn fool. Of course I can afford top end and buy a really high spec machine, but thats for my use.

Edit: my neice needs a laptop and I decide to give her my personal one to use as I want to upgrade. Great, she has my device. My top of the range laptop is on order and is going to take a week from factory. Well, sucks to be the business, its my device and I no longer have it, so cant get work done! Should have supplied me with a work machine then - I can do what I damn well want to with my own machine and im not going to go and spend my own money on something cheap already at a store because my personal machine is no longer with me. Pfft.

Anybody in Houston, Tx, Oct 1st - 8th? I'll be visiting, fancy some beers and a chat?

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

If they were renting from the 80s until 2014, they would have had zero.

This is unlikely to be true. Your point is valid, but it misses a lot of cost of lost opportunity.

Agreed there, for sure. But my point is where I am in the UK renting is more than mortgage. You don't have a monthly disposable difference to invest. You are at a net loss compared to the mortgage. Therefore, you don't have excess money to invest in other vehicles.

Like I said, I get it if rent was far less than mortgage. But where I am, its not.

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@JaredBusch said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

Neglected a huge cost of owning a house in the U.S., property taxes. That would bring that $115,000 significantly higher as I currently pay ~$6,000 per year in property taxes. That comes to $120,000 over a 20 year loan.
So now I need to sell this house in 2041 for $463,000 (in 2016 dollars) just to break even.

And don't forget the huge sales tax and assumed real estate fees that will be on top of that sale. You tend to lose most of your money on the transaction overhead. That adds up quickly.

Keep in mind this is regional. We do not have the same situation in the UK as the US with selling houses. You only need to pay tax when selling if its a buy-to-let or a second home. If you are selling your home to move to another home, you don't get taxes here for that. You would pay a fee to the selling agent. But, the money is yours.

Buyers have to pay various taxes though.

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

The prices in the UK for renting are above what you would pay for mortgage payments.

TODAY this is true. Unless that has always been true, then your logic doesn't hold. Looking at a momentary financial situation isn't a good way to invest for a lifetime.

This is why I ask if this is regional. Its been true in South East UK for a long time. My parents purchased in Greenwich, London, in the early 80s for £38k. They sold in 2014 for £1.1m. Looking at inflation 38k would be £164k in 2014. They were hugely up on the initial purchase ~£960,000. Sure, they had some maintenance, insurance, and other costs, but that is a huge amount.

If they were renting from the 80s until 2014, they would have had zero.

Even now, my place in 2019 was £270,000. Its currently valued at £340,000. In fact, I am going to sell soon and move. But that is £70k addition compared to if I had rented. If I rented, I get £0 from that £70,000. That 70k goes straight in to the pocket of the landlord.

I get it. It may not have always been like this. But where I am in SE UK, mortgages are going for 1,000 and rental for the house next door is £1,200 - £1,400. It just doesn't make sense to rent here right now. If I could rent this place for say £500 - £800 that could make sense. I could take the difference and put it in a fund long term. But, realistically - its just not going to make sense here right now.

Same for Liverpool, Aberdeen, Barcelona? I don't know. That is why I think its regional. If I have to rent for more than it would cost to own, then it makes sense to own here.

@JaredBusch said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Pete-S said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Pete-S said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

But, if I know I am going to be South East UK for at least a decade, owning is the only sensible financial choice.

Right, until you get sick long-term or have a divorce and you can't afford to pay your mortgage and you can't sell your house because nobody is willing to pay what you need to pay off your loans.

Renting is the SaaS of living arrangements.

Zero capital expense, zero risk, 100% agility.

Pretty much, shit happens.

If you are worried about possible future long term sick, get ASU insurance.
If you are worried about future divorce, well that sucks. Its still better to have 50% of a house than 0%.

There are lots of real world examples of shit happening. It still doesn't change the fact that renting is paying somebody else mortgage, when you could have your own and 'hope' to gain from it.

Everything has risk.

Yeah, but a shitty investment such as a single family home isn't worth that risk. It's a lot more financially responsible to rent your home and invest your capital in something better. Something that is not coupled to your living arrangements. Something you can sell and buy when the opportunity is right, not when you want to move.

If you like real estate there are plenty of things to own. Apartment buildings, commercial real estate for example.

The prices in the UK for renting are above what you would pay for mortgage payments. You are spending far more renting than you would not renting. That makes no sense.

See this is the thing people are trying to explain to you. Math doesn't work that way.

You are very confused if you think owning a home as an investment is a smart thing.

Owning a home is fine. Thinking of it as an investment is the issue of this topic.

I bought my house for $228,000 in 2016. I paid 10% down and the rest was a loan. I refinanced last year to take advantage of the lower interest rate and to drop my term to 20 years. I was 5 years into a 30 year term, so I gained 5 years on the payback also.

I don't' have my original amortization schedule handy, but for my refi I do.

My refi has an original balance of $205,986.
After making a payment of $1,168.34 for 240 months (20 years) I will have paid $280,401.60.

This means before any other expenses or values are calculated, I will have lost $74,415.60 over the term of this loan.

This is a shit ass way to start an investment return.

By the way, I only put 10% down on the original loan in 2016, because I knew the house needed remodeled. I drop approximately $25,000 to remodel everything in 2016.

So that puts me down $100,000 at the 20 year mark.

I converted the half bath to a full master bath in 2019 for $11,000.

So that puts me down $111,000 at the 20 year mark now.

I gutted 2 rooms and reinsulated them in the last 6 months for ~$4,000.

So that puts me down $115,000 at the 20 year mark now.

That means for my house to be a value as an investment, assuming I have zero other house only expenses (aka expenses that I would not also have as a renter), I would need to sell my house for $228,000 + $115,000 = $343,000 in 2016 adjusted dollars just to break even on my investment.

Edit:

Neglected a huge cost of owning a house in the U.S., property taxes. That would bring that $115,000 significantly higher as I currently pay ~$6,000 per year in property taxes. That comes to $120,000 over a 20 year loan.

So now I need to sell this house in 2041 for $463,000 (in 2016 dollars) just to break even.

Say somebody was renting your dwelling for 20 years from a landlord. They also would be paying $1,168 every month for 20 years. Where you are down $74,415, they are down $280,401.

Rent here in the UK is MORE than the cost of a mortgage. I'd get it if the renter was paying $400. They could take the other $768 and stick that somewhere with better interest than a house.

Owning may not be a great option, but its still better than renting. In 20 years you hopefully have a house you can sell worth at least $205,986. Then renter doesn't.

How is that better than owning where the rent cost == mortgage cost?

I can pay a bank 1,168 dollars every month for 20 years and hope to have a house I can sell for 200k+. Or, I can pay a landlord that money have after 20 years have sweet fuck all... hmmm, sure, I will rent.

@Pete-S said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Pete-S said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

@Jimmy9008 said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

But, if I know I am going to be South East UK for at least a decade, owning is the only sensible financial choice.

Right, until you get sick long-term or have a divorce and you can't afford to pay your mortgage and you can't sell your house because nobody is willing to pay what you need to pay off your loans.

Renting is the SaaS of living arrangements.

Zero capital expense, zero risk, 100% agility.

Pretty much, shit happens.

If you are worried about possible future long term sick, get ASU insurance.
If you are worried about future divorce, well that sucks. Its still better to have 50% of a house than 0%.

There are lots of real world examples of shit happening. It still doesn't change the fact that renting is paying somebody else mortgage, when you could have your own and 'hope' to gain from it.

Everything has risk.

Yeah, but a shitty investment such as a single family home isn't worth that risk. It's a lot more financially responsible to rent your home and invest your capital in something better. Something that is not coupled to your living arrangements. Something you can sell and buy when the opportunity is right, not when you want to move.

If you like real estate there are plenty of things to own. Apartment buildings, commercial real estate for example.

The prices in the UK for renting are above what you would pay for mortgage payments. You are spending far more renting than you would not renting. That makes no sense.