Synology DS1812+ 8-bay SMB / SOHO NAS Review

Miscellaneous Factors and Final Words

The Synology DS1812+ is a 8-bay NAS, and there are many applicable disk configurations (JBOD / RAID-0 / RAID-1 / RAID-5 / RAID-6). Most users looking for a balance between performance and redundancy are going to choose RAID-5. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild duration testing as well as power consumption recording with the unit configured in RAID-5 mode. The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.

Due to the nature of the CPU, RAID expansion / rebuild takes progressively longer as the number of disks increase. Coming to the business end of the review, the Synology DS1812+ has plenty of positives (applicable to other Synology units that I have evaluated also): It is simply the most reliable NAS that I have encountered. All RAID expansions and rebuilds complete without issues, performance is solid and consistent, and the DSM interface is a joy to use. I haven't even touched upon the breadth of apps available which extend the functionality of the NAS beyond the basic firmware features. The combination of stability, price and expandability (coupled with extensive virtualization support) makes it ideal for many small scale virtualization setups. The number of bays available also makes it possible to create multiple disk groups and run volumes with different RAID levels on the same unit (each disk group can have multiple volumes, but all of them have to be of the same RAID level). The DS1813+ carries forward the DS1812+ with the addition of two more GbE network ports (Synology plans to sell both models in parallel).

Despite our extensive praise for the DS1812+, we feel that Synology has left open some areas for improvement. From the hardware perspective, I would have been happy if they managed to provide a AES-NI enabled platform at the same price point. A USB port or two on the front side of the chassis would have been nice. From the firmware side, it would be good to have support for volume encryption in addition to folder encryption. In addition, it would be interesting to see if provision can be made for dynamically expandable volumes with the ability for a disk to be part of multiple volumes (possibly in different RAID levels). This would make the Synology NAS units even more appealing to the crowd currently using WHS / Windows Storage Spaces.

In closing, Synology manages to hit yet another home run in the 8-bay SMB / SOHO NAS space. They are miles ahead of the competition in almost all respects. Even the few quibbles that we outlined in the previous paragraph are just aspects which might make it even more difficult for competitors to catch up.