ioSafe N2: A Disaster-Resistant Synology DS213

Miscellaneous Aspects and Final Words

The ioSafe N2 is a 2-bay NAS, and the applicable disk configurations are JBOD, RAID-0 and RAID-1. Synology makes the RAID level transparent to the user using the Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) feature. SHR can be set up with either single or dual disk failure resiliency, but, in the case of the ioSafe N2 / Synology DS213, only single failure resiliency is supported. Most users of the ioSafe N2 are either going to use RAID-1 (manual) or SHR (which essentially turns out to be the same). Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild duration testing as well as power consumption recording with the unit configured in SHR mode.

The disks used for benchmarking (WD4000FYYZ - Western Digital 4TB RE) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the ioSafe N2 as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.

Coming to the business end of the review, it is clear that there isn't much to complain about with respect to the ioSafe N2. A point-wise summary of the pros and cons of the unit is presented below.

Pros: 

• Excellent performance and feature set (including hot swap, multiple iSCSI LUN support etc.) for a non-x86 based NAS
• Hard disks are user-accessible while maintaining disaster resistance
• Reasonably priced

Cons / Nitpicks:

• No in-built support for 2.5" drives
• Restricted pool of HDDs to choose from
• Floor mount / physical theft protection could have been integrated in the chassis (like it was done in the SoloPRO) instead of being made optional

As one can see, the cons listed above do not really affect users who purchase the ioSafe N2 with pre-installed hard drives. Even the physical theft protection aspect can be easily handled with the Kensington lock feature.

Before the ioSafe N2 was announced, I was using the SoloPRO connected to a NAS unit as a centralized disaster-resistant storage device. The only drawback in that configuration was the fact that a failed hard drive in the SoloPRO would have rendered the chassis completely useless for further use. The ioSafe N2 solves this problem in an elegant manner. As such, we can definitely recommended it for users looking to protect their electronic data against unforeseen circumstances. My only regret is the lack of competition for ioSafe in this area to drive down the pricing further.