ioSafe 1513+ Review: A Disaster-Resistant Synology DS1513+
by Ganesh T S on August 13, 2014 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Storage
- Synology
- Enterprise
- ioSafe
Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
It is expected that most users would configure the ioSafe 1513+ in RAID-5 for optimal balance of redundancy and capacity (reflected in ioSafe's decision to ship the units pre-configured with SHR 1-disk fault tolerance). Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-5. 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.
| ioSafe 1513+ RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration (HH:MM:SS) | Avg. Power (W) |
| Single Disk Init | - | 37.9 W |
| JBOD to RAID-1 Migration | 11:40:48 | 49.59 W |
| RAID-1 (2D) to RAID-5 (3D) Migration | 38:34:47 | 59.46 W |
| RAID-5 (3D) to RAID-5 (4D) Expansion | 31:33:19 | 69.95 W |
| RAID-5 (4D) to RAID-5 (5D) Expansion | 33:46:59 | 81.31 W |
| RAID-5 (5D) Rebuild | 22:57:12 | 78.89 W |
One of the issues that we would like Synology to address is the RAID expansion / migration / rebuild durations. Though we don't have the full corresponding data from similar (read, 5-bay) competing units, the expansion durations with QNAP NAS units and rebuilds with the Seagate NAS units are much shorter compared to the ones in the table above.
Coming to the business end of the review, there are two different aspects of the ioSafe 1513+ to comment upon. The first relates to the software platform from Synology. DSM 5.0 is arguably one of the most full featured COTS NAS operating systems around. Its popularity is even reflected in the fact that specific viruses have been created for the platform (though it is also an indication of the security weaknesses that Synology has been actively patching in the recent past). The mobile apps and NAS packages extend the functionality of the appliance to provide a comprehensive private cloud experience. SMB features such as virtualization certifications / iSCSI support further enhance the appeal of the ioSafe 1513+ for enterprise users. All the plus points of the Synology 1513+ (including the performance, capacity expansion, high availability, hot-swappable fans etc.) translate as-is to the ioSafe 1513+.
The second is obviously related to the chassis design that makes the ioSafe 1513+ one of the most unique products that we have evaluated. ioSafe continues to impress us by scaling the disaster-proofing techniques to handle more and more complicated scenarios every year. The ioSafe 1513+ is an awesome piece of engineering aimed at solving the very relevant issue of protecting data from disasters. Fire protection is rated for 30 minutes at 1550°F (ASTM E-119) and the unit's drives are kept safe even in 10 ft. deep water for 3 days. ioSafe provides the option to purchase a Data Recovery Service (DRS) scheme along with the unit. The DRS period can be extended at a simple rate of $2.99/TB/month. The only points that consumers might complain about are the limited 'qualified hard disks' list, fan noise and the cost of the units. From our evaluation, we believe that the unit is best operated in an air-conditioned server room where fan noise should not be an issue. Some of the qualified hard disks are suitable for usage only at ambient temperatures lower than 30°C, but neither that nor the cost are likely to be factors for SMBs and SMEs that constitute the target market of the ioSafe 1513+.
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bkleven - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link
Most modern safes have a small hole in the back for cabling, which is usually intended to bring electricity into the safe to power humidity control equipment (and that is usually just a heater). When you are forced to place a safe in a location that is not climate controlled it's pretty important to prevent condensation from occurring anywhere inside.I've never looked into the impact that hole has on fire protection (I presume there is some impact) but obviously flooding is an issue unless you spay foam it or use some sort of grommet.
bsd228 - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link
Cannon, for example, provides power and a cat 5 connection on most of their safes. It's not a problem.Beany2013 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
I doubt the floor of my flat is rated to half a ton of spot weight. Nor that of most SOHO offices in houses or houses converted to office buildings (as with a lot of small town businesses).It's a pretty practical solution, though, I'll grant you, if your floor is rated for it.
robb.moore - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link
Engineers have another word for power supplied into perfectly insulated boxes - "ovens" :)Great for baking bread, not so good for computers.
Plus, if it gets hot enough inside, it'll actually cause the insulation to kickoff prematurely rendering the safe useless in a fire. It's a non-trivial balance between heat produced during normal operation and heat resistance during a fire event. DIY and proceed with caution.
Robb Moore, CEO
ioSafe Inc.
Essence_of_War - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Nice review! I certainly don't think I could roll my own one of these!I had a question about some of the time scales you present in the misc/concluding remarks section.
Have you considered testing/reporting RAID1 or RAID10 rebuild times? Or are they so much (and consistently so) faster than the RAID5 times that it isn't particularly interesting?
Gigaplex - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
How does a device like this ensure good thermal transfer such that the hard drives don't overheat under regular use, while still giving good thermal isolation so they don't melt in the event of a fire?jmke - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
well they have active cooling, check the cooling fans. In case of fire you can see that white stuff "DataCast Insulation" will keep the heat of the fire under control, converting to gas (and thereby taking up the heat)I tested the smaller brother (ioSafe 214) with fire and water and filmed it. http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/1000593/...
others have put them in cars , houses, etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OygRpR4qtcM and the drives survive.
During normal operation the active cooling keeps the drive well within the safe limits.
If you want to enjoy data disaster recovery service make sure that you take HDDs from the qualified lists.
you can also just launch up Ubuntu and mount the Synology drives like this to copy your data.
ideal would be a second unit to just plug and play the drives...
Herschel55 - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Folks, a normal DS1513+ diskless on Amazon is $780. This is $1600, more than twice the amount. For this price I would invest in a true DR solution that mirrored a normal DS1513+ to a cloud service like S3 or Glacier, or even another DS1513+ offsite. The latest Synology DSM supports all of the above and the strategy covers ALL disasters, natural or otherwise.Gigaplex - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
This is a 5 bay device, which is usually configured in a RAID5 equivalent. With 4-6TB drives, that's 16-24TB capacity. Finding a cloud provider and Internet uplink capable of transferring that amount of data in a reasonable timeframe is not trivial.robb.moore - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
You're right in the mark Gigaplex. With this unit, 90TB is possible with 2 expansion bays. For people concerned about recovering quickly, it can take months (maybe a year?) to stream 90TB back. And for many cloud providers, they might offer to ship a single HDD back but not an entire array.Robb Moore, CEO
ioSafe Inc.