Digital Photo setups...

Perhaps this is somewhat off-topic, but nonetheless...

 

Our institution has moved almost completely away from traditional film in favor of digital photography.  This is true for both administrative and academic sides of the college.  My question is in regards to storage space for institutions utilizing digital photography.  The academic side of digital photography is simply a local computer issue, so no network storage is necessary.

 

For all you folks at companies or institutions utilizing massive amounts of digital images, what sort of accommodation are you utilizing for file storage?  Is an XServe RAID the way to go?  We'll also be adding some sort of Digital Asset and Project Management in the future, so that will have to kept in mind when deciding how to store the data.  We have a robust network infrastructure, including Gigabit (copper) to the desktop, and OC-12 connections between buildings, so I'm not worried about network performance except where the server's performance will affect it.  We're collecting data quickly and have nearly filled a 1TB FireWire800 storage device in the last year while trying to work lean.

 

My thoughts were to use XServe RAID for this task.  Any thoughts?  As for Digital Asset Management, we've been looking at Virtual Ticket (http://www.meta-comm.com/products/virtual_ticket/), Extensis Portfolio and FileMaker Pro as possible solutions for all or part of the management side.

 

I'm mostly looking for feedback from those already involved in a successful implementation of such a system.  Of course not-so-successful setups are worth hearing about as well, for obvious reasons.

 

If this is too far off topic for these lists, please accept my apology and anyone with information just contact me off list.

 

Thanks

 

Joe Anthenat   ><>
PC Technician & "Mac Guy"
Waubonsee Community College
(630)466-7900
www.waubonsee.edu
email@hidden