Synology DS1010+ NAS

[Jeff Mottle]

I'd been running OpenFiler on an old workstation for my NAS solution for a number of years, but ran out of space and needed to upgrade. Given OpenFiler is not that user friendly to configure and I had to weigh time vs cost, I opted to just buy a more plug and play NAS solution. Upon a recommendation, I purchased a Synology NAS, specifically the DS1010+ I have it set up as a 4TB RAID 5 Array and from start to finish it took less than an hour to install the drives into the hot-swap drive caddies, format the drives and build the array. I've done some speed tests and am getting pretty close to the specs they indicate. I am getting about 100-130MB/sec reading and 85-100MB/sec writing. It also supports Link aggregation as it has two NIC ports which is supposed to provide another 50% speed increase and should get the read/write speeds up to about 150-170MB/sec.

 

Anyway, if anyone is looking for a new NAS solution, so far I've been pretty impressed with the device. I also called their support before my purchase and again afterwards and was immediately able to speak to VERY knowledgeable people. Not the standard tier 1 support people reading from cue cards. It also has a ton of nice features and a really nice web UI. The new beta 3 UI looks even better.

 

Here's a link to the NAS: http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS1010+/index.php It's a bit on the spendy side, but it has really good reviews. I paid about $1000 US without the drives. It also has support for an expansion box that can hold another 5 drives which can currently get the total capacity of the system up to 20TB.