Anyone use network storage for their photos for lightroom?

After some tinkering we have the Synology working as the main archive for 980,000 images over the gigabit ethernet and it works faster than the previous FW800 drive collection. So yes, we are using it as a primary device.

Transfer speeds to/from the server are in the 80-110 MB/sec range, far faster than the average 40-60 MB/sec we got with FW800.

For active jobs we import to the iMac and edit and develop and export/deliver to clients from there. When that's done we use LR to drag the folder from the iMac HDD to the server. Though there really hasn't been a noticeable difference in working speed when working on images either on the local drive or the server.

The catalog file size is about 12GB. The preview file is 20+GB with minimal previews. Generating standard previews or 1:1 greatly increases the preview file. The one thing that surprised me was the preview file doesn't really act like a single file. I think it's more like a container that holds a small file for each image. I think this because copying the preview file from the home iMac to a ext drive, or a copy to the server for back up takes 12+ hours! So I think it's copying a million 10kb files. It's the same incredibly slow speed copying to the server, or to a USB3 ext drive or FW800 drive. I haven't tried going to a TB drive yet but don't expect much better.

That really has been the only major limitation/handicap of haveing such a gigantic LR catalog so far.

My next concern is backing up the server. We have 28TB worth of WD external drives with FW800/USB2 interfaces. The Synology supports USB3.0 (and of course USB2), however they don't support Apple formatted drives, only the EXT4 and NTFS formats. Macs don't read EXT4, but can read (but not write) to NTFS. NTFS is very slow for backups from any server (I think 1/3rd the top spec speed). If something goes wrong with the server we want to be able to access our backups without having to use the machine that "went bad". I've seen one $40 program that lets Macs interact directly with EXT4, but I'm still hesitant.

I want to buy two 8TB drives for a rotating backup of the server but that expense coupled with those also being two drive raid systems also has me still looking for an optimal solution.

I'd love to hear your progress so far on using yours as primary and your back up regiment.