Synology DS414j: An Ideal Backup NAS
by Ganesh T S on July 10, 2014 9:00 AM ESTSingle Client Performance - CIFS on Windows
The single client CIFS and iSCSI performance of the Synology DS414j was evaluated on the Windows platforms using Intel NASPT and our standard robocopy benchmark. This was run from one of the virtual machines in our NAS testbed. All data for the robocopy benchmark on the client side was put in a RAM disk (created using OSFMount) to ensure that the client's storage system shortcomings wouldn't affect the benchmark results. It must be noted that all the shares / iSCSI LUNs are created in a RAID-5 volume. The DS414j manages to compare favourably against (and actually beat in many cases) other ARM / Evansport-based 4-bay NAS units. Benchmark numbers are provided in the graphs below.
Encryption Support Evaluation
Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume. Synology supports only folder-level encryption in DSM.
On the hardware side, encryption support can be in the form of specialized hardware blocks in the SoC (common in ARM / PowerPC based NAS units). In x86-based systems, accelerated encryption support is dependent on whether the AES-NI instruction is available on the host CPU. The Mindspeed SoC does have cryptography accelerator blocks. We enabled encryption on a a CIFS share to repeat our Intel NASPT / robocopy benchmarks. The results are presented in the graph below.
In this scenario, the write workloads suffer a bit compared to other NAS platforms. However, the read workloads are faster on the DS414j.
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Andrew911tt - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
I was dealing with the exact same thing and ended up building my own based on the Intel J1900total cost for me was $400
https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/107967-anyo...
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1825843
embeddedGPU - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
I just want to mention that Mindspeed's CPE processor business has been acquired by Freescale and the Comcerto C2200 is now the Freescale LS1024Acolinstu - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
Absolutely love my DS412+!basroil - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
That iSCSI performance is really lackluster considering the ratio to CIFS performance of other drives. But given that this one's an ARM system rather than Atom, perhaps the device is optimized for multiple users?peterfares - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
So many NAS reviews lately! Thorough as always!Andy Chow - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
Since you guys have 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB laying around, could you run a benchmark with SSD? In general all NAS should be benchmarked with SSD.A SSD would show the bottlenecks of the device itself.
I really wonder if cheap devices like these could really become fast enough and scalable to replace commercial systems.
gorbag - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link
"A SSD would show the bottlenecks of the device itself." -- Andy ChowSort of. One device might be better at using drives in parallel than another - a difference that would disappear with extremely fast drives. But if you intend to use the NAS with SSDs then of course SSD benchmarks would be more useful to you.
Conficio - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
"for example, DS414j and jx4-300d both don't support hot-swap" type "ix4-300d" ?brifin5 - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
You can use Long Path Tool as well.carage - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
I was inclined to buy a Synology NAS device recently, until I heard of thing called SynoLocker. I would think twice before there is an official solution to this problem.