Synology DS710+ 2 bay NAS Server

1. Introduction2. Synology DS710+ (1)3. Synology DS710+ (2)4. The Software (1)5. The Software (2)6. Performance Testing7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

As we are using a high end Belkin 16 port switch for our testing today we wanted to check the ultimate speed of the unit, so we decided to format the system into a pure striped Raid configuration (Raid 0).

We selected ‘standard', hit next.

You are then given the option to merge several discs or use iSCSI options.

We then select both check both disks to configure as Raid 0, and press next.

This screen is well laid out as you are shown Raid options split into two categories. ‘with data protection' and ‘without data protection'. We selected Raid 0, then clicked next.

The system offers a quicker install without sector checks, or a longer but recommended option to check while it formats. We clicked YES and then next.

Our two 500GB drives configured into a single Raid 0 unit with approximate capacity after formatting. We clicked finish.

The DS710+ then proceeds with building the single Raid 0 drive.

For our one terrabyte volume, this took 30 minutes to configure. Incidentally when logging into the admin area we would have liked to see a wizard appear for less skilled users, because without correctly configuring the NAS system, it is basically useless. If I handed this to my family members they would be completely lost.

After the drives are initialised and configured we need to set up a shared folder, which is connected to user groups.

We were happy to see the unit visible in our Windows 7 networked devices.

Our shared folder from the Synology configuration shows up immediately.

Mapping the networked drive, we can see that we have 910GB free. No problems with setting up a networked share and as painless as we have experienced.

The admin software offers a plethora of options from S.M.A.R.T. monitoring…

To fully fledged Macintosh and Windows support. As I have a mixed network at home with 5 or 6 PC's and a couple of Macintosh systems I tested the sharing and ran into no issues at all. The multi platform support is fantastic.

I was happy to find support for Jumbo frames, which can enhance performance with larger file transfers across the network. I honestly wasn't expecting full support for a wide range of frame support. We changed over to 9k Jumbo frame support as our switch is fully configured to maximise bandwidth with this setting.

There are also options to connect external USB and eSATA drives. We tested this with an external 4TB eSATA drive we had on hand and it also worked flawlessly.

This overview is handy as it gives system/CPU temperatures as well as free space and drive temperatures. It is well laid out and presented to the user and is just as effective as the QNAP software package.

A full system log is stored within the NAS which is very useful as we can see any error reports and exactly what the unit has been doing over the course of the history. There are really so many options here that it would take up a full review to tackle half of them .. rest assured if you need it Synology clearly have already thought about it and added it to the list of options. From FTP to Itunes support this NAS really does have it all.

Would you like to try it out for yourself? then Synology have a live demo which you can see over here. Let us know what you think yourself on our forums.

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