Synology DS214play: Intel Evansport Almost Done Right
by Ganesh T S on May 20, 2014 3:00 PM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects & Concluding Remarks
The DS214play is a 2-bay NAS, and most users are going to use it in a RAID-1 configuration for optimal balance of redundancy and capacity. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-1. 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
| Synology DS214play RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Avg. Power Consumption |
| Idle | 12.01 W | |
| 4TB Single Disk Initialization | 1h 43m 22s | 23.38 W |
| 4TB RAID-0 to 4TB RAID-1 (Expand from 1 to 2 Disks) | 10h 16m 17s | 32.52 W |
| 4TB RAID-1 Rebuild (Replace 1 of 2 Disks) | 10h 31m 15s | 32.36 W |
Coming to the business end of the review, the performance of the DS214play is more than acceptable given the target market (home consumers / power users) and the single GbE link. DSM 5.0's multimedia capabilities are excellent on paper and in practice too, for the most part. Make no mistake, Synology has boldly ventured into a space (hardware accelerated video transcoding for media serving) which no other serious NAS vendor has done before.
In our opinion, from a NAS perspective, the DS214play's unique feature makes more sense than trying to run XBMC on a unit for hooking up to the TV. A NAS needs to be a NAS first and, in most situations, doesn't need to be tied down to a single display. Synology wins hands down on how to properly architect a solution based on an Evansport SoC.
Unfortunately, with bleeding edge features, we also have plenty of bugs resulting in an inconsistent experience. From our interaction with Synology, it looks like they are showing a commitment to devote resources to perfect the firmware for this SoC platform (and also probably release new units based on it such as the 4-bay DS414play exhibited at the 2014 CeBit). So, it looks like most of our concerns should be addressed in future firmware upgrades and updates to the mobile apps.
While the same SoC can stand in good stead for the next generation unit and/or the DS414play, we also need continued commitment from Intel to release SoCs for this product line. Ideally, Intel could offer QuickSync (for which plenty of software work has already been done in the PC space) instead of a custom transcoding block in the SoC. Marrying QuickSync into this lineup would also enable Synology to port the hardware accelerated transcoding capabilities to high-end NAS units based on the Core i-series processors.
On the pure storage side of things, it is not clear why Synology doesn't take advantage of the security engine to provide better performance for encrypted folders. Additional DRAM capacity might prove helpful if the NAS has multiple simultaneous external connections (each triggers a openvpn process) and multiple simultaneous transcoding sessions. In our limited testing, we didn't run into capacity crunch, but it is not inconceivable given that at least one other Evansport NAS vendor has models equipped with 2 GB of memory.
If one is planning on buying the unit solely for its transcoding and media serving capabilities, restrictions such as the non-availability of DTS audio (probably permanent) must be fully understood. If it is mostly user-generated media (such as camcorder streams or PVR recordings) and not Blu-ray remuxes, the DS214play presents an excellent (and currently, the only) choice at its price point / power consumption profile. For those worried about two bays not being enough for media storage, the DS214play also supports the DX513 expansion module (that attaches to the eSATA port) giving a total of seven disks across at least two volumes (the disks in the DX513 can't be used to expand the existing volume using the two primary drives).
The DS214play is priced at $370 for a diskless configuration. Synology's premium pricing is a well-known fact, but the unique multimedia features of the DS214play make it difficult to actually find a competing unit to compare the price against. All said, the strengths of DSM 5.0 and the well-developed mobile ecosystem combine to create an enjoyable and unique experience for DS214play users once the transcoding limitations are understood.
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Chloiber - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Exactly.I don't own a NAS yet, but plan to buy a Synology 4b NAS (probably DS414). I'm a very tech savvy person and have built my own PCs since years - but I just want a NAS that works, that I have to setup once in a matter of minutes and never (or rarely) worry again. I don't want to waste any more free time on these things
awktane - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I have a much larger version. Reasons I chose a NAS device rather than building my own:-8 disks in pretty much the same space as it would take to store 8 hdds side by side on their own
-My time is worth more than the cost difference. I can turn features on with a click rather than installing and configuring packages.
-In the event of a failure I don't want to have to set it all up again. I don't want to cause a failure accidentally or some update to screw things up. I can't afford downtime.
-Fewer possible points of failure. The hardware is much simpler and streamlined.
cjs150 - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I have had a NAS for 2-3 years. (QNAP).I would never bother with a 2 bay NAS, I want redundancy, as HDs do fail. I know that technically ZFS is a better solution than RAID 5 but for a home media store, RAID 5/6 is fine.
Yes I could build a cheap Mini-ITX build to do the same job, but a good NAS takes 5 mins to set up (then about 10 hours to build a 6TB RAID 5 array!) and should simply work.
Perfect for people like me who do not have the time to spend fiddling with it for optimum set up and have a family wanting access to the film library now!
Beany2013 - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I think when my DS214+ needs replacing (or when I find £500 down the back of the couch, etc) one of the chunkier, VMware/citrix/HyperV certified units will be next - I can then justify building another VM server and using that as a small SAN type thingy.I can use the DS214 as an iSCSI host, but it's not really quick enough over a single GbE link, and I don't have trunking/aggregating capable switch to boost performance...
In time...oh yes, in time....
bznotins - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Thanks for the discussion, it's really helped me to understand the benefit of a unit like this (mostly time/simplicity). Which are perfectly good reasons to go that route.What I was concerned about was that I was missing some other benefit of a NAS other than time/ease. It doesn't appear to be the case.
As someone who needs four drives + optical (ripping) + SSD (OS), I have always just leaned toward rolling my own. I love the ability to use TeamViewer to remote into my PC and manage things. Plex runs great. I keep AirSync native on it to sync my music collection to my Android devices over WiFi. In order to manage my media, it's great to be able to run Media Companion on it.
I guess for all my needs, if I got one of these NAS boxes I would still need a full-time PC to manage my media and streaming needs. Thus, it makes sense to take the time and effort to build my own.
Appreciate the discussion.
Major_Kusanagi - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I got an incredible deal on a Dell T20 Server: $199 with a Haswell processor and 4GB of RAM to start. The expansion abilities are nice, to include up to 6 drives (13TB total space). Granted, I could have built my own, but getting an actual server with a modern processor for $199 can't be beat.GTaudiophile - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I must be the idiot then. About 3 years ago I build a small tower using a AMD Athlon X2 quad-core CPU, 16GB ECC RAM, and 4x 1TB drives running FreeNAS7 in a ZFS2 configuration. Performance through SAMBA was simply abysmal. Earlier this year I bought the DS214play and it just works the way I want it to. I run 2x 4TB drives in RAID1 using the old 4x 1TB drives as a backup to the NAS. I love that it's a small, silent box that sits on an IKEA Expedit shelf. it hides behind a photograph. Performance through SAMBA is much better than what I experienced before. Setup and Web access is indeed idiot proof. And most of all I feel I have great support (and apps) behind the product. I frankly got tired of doing the "nerd" solution. I just wanted something small, silent, supported, and highly functional. The DS214play does this for me.Major_Kusanagi - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I don't think you're an idiot GTaudiophile, sometimes I don't want to deal with the whole 'geek out' thing either, and I'm a Systems Administrator. :-pbsd228 - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Poor samba performance 3 years ago points to problems around the SMB1->2 migration, particularly when we're talking about freenas7. MS made it a moving target. Eventually solved. But you're cheating a bit by comparing it to 3 years later technology. If you have rebuilt with a more recent freenas release, or gone to solaris, you'd have also seen better samba performance.chaos215bar2 - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I know this is somewhat tangential to the main review, but since you mention Photo Station, one important thing to note is that it does not properly support photos in non-sRGB color spaces (including AdobeRGB which is very common in mid-to-high end cameras). These photos all end up looking muddy and washed out in Photo Station, since the color space is discarded during processing.