Synology DS211+ SMB NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on February 28, 2011 3:50 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- NAS
- Synology
We have taken a brief look at the performance of the Synology DS211+. The NAS has plenty of features which we have not explored in detail in this review.
Does the performance of the NAS live up to what is claimed by Synology? We do have to agree with them. This is one of those rare products which don't leave much to complain about. If we have to nitpick, we could ask Synology to improve NFS performance, and not concentrate on SMB alone.
A diskless version of the DS211+ can be purchased for $410 if you shop around. This is as much as what the Atom based dual GbE sporting ReadyNAS Ultra 2 bay model (RNDU2000) costs. Pricing is something Synology has to work on.
An option to make the unit act as a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) would also be nice. This, however, is again not the way the industry is moving forward. Some of the Drobo models act as both DAS and NAS. However, even Drobo is dropping the DAS feature in favour of pure NAS only options in their recent models.
Users with a large media collection may opt for the DS1511+. This 5 bay model can also link to 2 more 5 bay models, giving a total of 15 bays of RAID storage. The DS1511+ has already received praise from many users in AVSForums.
The DS211+ is also quite power efficient and silent. At full load, the unit consumed 25.6 W. In sleep mode (from which it is woken up if there is any access to the disks over the network), it consumes 12.1 W. This is far less than what Atom based NAS models consume. The DS211+ is rated to have a noise level of less than 20 dB according to official specifications. It looks as if Atom based models are an overkill for home media NAS. Users are better off with the Marvell based NAS platforms in such a scenario.
Synology support is also pretty highly rated amongst users, and they have webinars and a detailed wiki to help users make the most of their NAS. All in all, the DS211+ is a power efficient and high performance unit. You wouldn't do much wrong in opting for it, if you are in the market for a 2 bay NAS.
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Rasterman - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
a comparison to the previous model would be niceMadMan007 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
The prices on NASes like this always make me shudder and laugh at the same time. For much less than $400 you could build something like a low-end C2D setup (used parts, if not a new cheapie combo) that is still reasonably power efficient (My e7300 WHS box with 4 HDDDs pulls 50W idle with a 450W 80+ PSU which honestly is a touch large. Spending more on modern parts like a Clarkdale would get closer to this device's power draw.) That costs me an extra ~$22 in electricity each year over this device except I could probably put it together for around $200-ish nowadays...so 8-10 years to make up the difference? Oh, and it' much more expandable and also acts as an emergency backup PC.I know these are for 'consumers' who don't know jack about assembling a PC but for anyone who can I just don't see the appeal or economic advantage. I guess it's good to have a little basic PC knowledge, I kind of feel bad for the consumers who 'have to' buy these hings.
MadMan007 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
*note: not that price with 4 disks, just the hardware for an apples-apples comparisonWackyDan - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
"I know these are for 'consumers' who don't know jack about assembling a PC"Bull. I have two Synology NAS and I'm a systems engineer for a rather well known tech company. I have several PC's in this house, sitting around idle in my attic. I chose Synology for the energy consumption, to be quiet, and SIZE. They don't crash, auto restart on power loss, and have been bulletproof. *which with my wife, is important.
If you want to pay likely more than the $22 in extra power than that is your opinion, and right to it. Some of us like more refined solutions, and for NAS Synology is it.
V864 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Power consumption has implications beyond simply cost of energy. Your homebrew system would require more than twice the UPS capacity than the DS211+ to attain the same level of uptime if you lose power.Exelius - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Don't bullshit yourself, you really couldn't build anything comparable for less than $400 unless you have a crapton of parts just lying around. Then there's the issue of your time having any value at all... Old PC equipment isn't necessarily cheaper; after it's been end-of-lifed it disappears from the marketplace pretty quickly. I guess there's always eBay, but anyone who's tried to buy computer hardware off ebay knows what a crapshoot it can be between mislabeled or non-functional gear. You can blow your savings in a hurry.There's also something to be said for a headless unit that you can manage through a web browser. At the end of the day, you're going to spend somewhere in the ballpark of $400 and have a device with similar functionality, but you'll put in a LOT more work. Why not just buy the $400 device and be done with it?
fteoath64 - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
Not true. Here is the parts list:Intel Atom D525DW OEM = $70
2GB DDR3 SODIMM = $25
Thermatake Element Q case = $80 { included 90w PS}
Total = $175
Download ZFSGuru in a USB stick install and configure. Done.
You have 2 SATA ports , 6 USB ports, a PCI slot and mini-PCIe slot for expansions.
blckgrffn - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Performance looked OK for raw data access, but how does it stand up to something like iometer? Hit this thing and give us an idea of how its cache works, etc. :)ganeshts - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
I agree IOMeter can give info about the cache behaviour.However, NASPT is the benchmark which actually gives the real world performance. More info here:
http://cpu.xbitlabs.com/articles/networking/displa...
That said, I will definitely try to integrate IOMeter in the next NAS review.
Pandamonium - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
I own a DS209 myself, and I think there's a major flaw in the Synology DSM OS.There is no way to schedule SMART tests on your disks. You have to manually initiate the tests on each drive. Unless Synology has some kind of unpublished mechanism whereby it verifies data integrity, I'm pretty sure that automated SMART tests are a necessity.
For most home users, a NAS is a place where you can centralize your music, photo, and video collection. And while I realize RAID 1/hybrid RAID isn't true "backup", it is a relatively acceptable solution. I think we are all more likely to have a HDD fail on us before we are robbed or our houses suffer catastrophic damage.
That said, say you've got 1 TB of stuff stored on the NAS. That data isn't generally accessed on a regular basis. We all have media that hasn't been accessed in years. When one of your drives begins to go, you might lose a bit here and a bit there. And you would have no way to know that your drive is failing unless you were manually running SMART tests or other HDD diagnostics. When all is said and done, your RAID 1 or hybrid RAID would be inconsistent. What guarantee is there that the Synology DSM could tell which hard drive contains the "right" data?
As far as the competition goes, QNAP definitely supports automated/scheduled SMART testing.