Synology takes and secures the high ground
in dual – bay NAS boxes
Details
Price: $433.5
Manufacturer: Synology
Website: www.synology.com
Required spec: Ethernet network, dual SATA
hard drives up to 4TB
Synology
DS213 + Desktop NAS
Synology likes to cover all bases regarding
NAS (Network Attached Storage) and, as such, it makes single- and dual-drive
solutions, as per this DS213+. An evolution from the DS211 and DS212, the DS213
comes in a vanilla version and this ‘spinning rims’ DS213+ designation model.
Previously the extra ‘+‘ got you additional RAM on board, but the DS213+ is
distinct from its sibling by having both an extra eSATA port and a
significantly more powerful CPU.
However, both get 512MB of DRAM, four USB
ports split between USB 2.0 forward and USB 3.0 rearward, and an SD card slot
on the front.
Impressive CPU power in the DS213+ comes
from a dual-core Freescale P1 022 running at 1.067GHz. That might seem modest
from a clock speed perspective, as the ordinary DS213 gets a single-core 2GHz
Marvell CPU, but this processor design has tons of hardware maths acceleration
designed to give DNLA apps the punch they need for dynamic stream processing.
However, what really sells NAS solutions is
the integrated software or DSM (Synology DiskStation Manager), which is
probably second to none in this type of technology. A web-based interface gives
you access to just about any feature you could possibly need on a NAS box, and
it’s fully extensible with user installable apps.
Often companies put these features in their
operating systems and never actually support them subsequently, whereas
Synology has 1 5 in-house developed apps to install and another 22 third- party
ones. These include Python, MySQL, Joomla, Drupal, Magneto e-commerce,
anti-virus, mail server, iTunes and even a VPN server. There are more of these
apps coming all the time, highlighting the flexibility of the system that
Synology has developed.
For those considering adding one of these
to their business network, Windows ADS and LDAP integration means you don’t
need to add users and groups implicitly, and there’s minimal administration.
However, it will work equally well with Macs and Linux systems, if that’s your
environment.
I tested the review system by placing a
single Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB drive in it, and installing the
operating system from my work PC using the Synology Assistant and DSM from
disc. The system was accessible 12 minutes later, performed a 90-minute
complete disk check, then updated itself to the latest DSM 4.1. It was ready
for use well within two hours.
The new release of DSM is very nice, and
includes a new Cloud Station service, which allows you to synchronise files
across PC, Mac and mobile devices.
Even with a single drive, write speed was
close to 80MB/ps and read performance was an impressive 105MB/s on a lGbit
Ethernet network without jumbo frames configured. Obviously, multiple
simultaneous users would reduce speed and dual drives should conversely improve
the performance. However you slice it, though, the DS213+ is very rapid
compared with many small NAS solutions, and it used less than a quarter of
total CPU power to support the reading of data from a single client.
That hints at what is genuinely exciting
about this product: the amount of processing power it has compared to most
dual-drive NAS boxes. It enables this device to handle a much larger range of
tasks, which might normally require a dedicated PC.
Critical CPU features exclusive to this
design, like a hardware encryption engine and powerful floating point
processing, make this a very flexible tool that can be pressed into service in
numerous mission critical tasks.
The dual drive facility allows for
sufficient storage for home use while providing the option for mirroring the
contents. Most home users probably don’t need these performance levels, but for
a typical small business user, the DS213+ is a highly sensible strategic
choice.
The only serious issue here is the price,
which looks excessive when you consider that the basic DS213 model is US$81
less and I’ve seen an entry-level dual-bay NAS box for well under US$150. That
said, if you run a small business and want a small yet powerful server solution
that can easily be transported, then this is certainly the pinnacle of what’s
available today.
It just might be worth holding fire for a
short while until Synology launches its next-generation DS413 and DS413+
models, and the premium the four drive models cost over this. pedigree on offer
are probably The DS213+ isn’t cheap, worth the money and but the performance
and certainly your consideration.
