Asset Server Advice

I use the Asset Server here where I work with my team; and have been very pleased.

But I’m working with another company with which I’m assembling a virtual studio with animators/scripters all over the place. Sending packages back and forth is getting tiring as too often materials get disconnected, etc…

So, I’m wanting to look at the option of setting up an Asset Server that my team can access from all over; and I’m hoping to get a bit of advice.

Here’s what I’m considering:

Option #1: Installing the Asset Server on a dedicated server with my web space provider. They won’t let me do this on a shared machine - and so need the dedicated server. The problem is that this is about $99/month which means over $1000/year. It has unlimited bandwidth and 500 GB of storage, and so should be sufficient for the job - I’m just wary of that price.

Option#2: Buying a cheap(er) PC to act as a dedicated Asset Server that I just keep at my home. I could put this server outside the firewall so my team could access it. This of course would be quite a bit slower using residential speeds, but seems like it’d be significantly cheaper.

Does anyone have any experience with either of these sorts of configurations? Any testimonials of one over the other?

Thanks for any advice.

  1. The way to go though not with a webhoster, more with someone from the field of dedicated machines. Also 99 a month is a lot, already some half arsed 1 1 server does the job just as good if not better and even Amazon gets out cheaper (and that says a lot) - for a middleground AirVM could be an option

  2. Likely not an option due to the speed unless you are workign with small enough projects as the through put datawise on AS is larger than on SVN etc cause the AS syncs the cache (saves reimporting)

Thanks much for the advice. Looks like I’ve got some more research on dedicated servers. Thanks again!