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For a 5-bay NAS, Synology's DiskStation DS1517+ is a pretty compact desktop design due to the vertically mounted drive bays. Powered by an Intel Atom C2538 2.4GHz CPU, the DS1517+ comes in two memory options an entry level 2MB version and the flagship 8MB unit. Whichever memory option you choose it can be upgraded if you feel you need more grunt as the DS1517+ supports up to 16GB of memory via the two SO-DIMM slots that sit under an easy to get to hatch in the base of the unit.
The DS1517+ has a degree of future proofing built into it in the shape of a PCIe slot. This slot currently supports Synology's M2D17 dual SATA adapter card supporting a pair of M.2 SATA drives or a 10GbE network add-in card so should you need to boost performance with SSD caching or need faster networking speeds you have the ability to upgrade but with only one slot the decision has to be made which one is more important.
The NAS itself provides up to 50TB (5 x 10TB drives) of storage space but should you need even more, the unit can support a pair of Synology DX517 five bay expansion units via the two eSATA ports in the rear panel giving a total capacity of 150TB, which should be enough for small to medium sized businesses.
Synology’s DSM (DiskStation Manger) is one of the best NAS O/S out there, quick and easy to install, feature rich and with a large collection of apps in the Package Center to expand what the device can do. It's being constantly updated with Synology adding even more features and apps to an already feature rich NAS O/S.
The latest 6.1 version of DSM brings Btrfs file system support to more models in Synology’s product line (there’s a full list of compatible units available on Synology’s site). Amongst Btrfs many features are auto-detection of corrupted files (silent data corruption) and repair. It does this providing checksums for the data and metadata, generating two copies of the latter and then verifies the checksums during each read. Any reported mismatch sees the metadata being repaired.
We found the Synology DiskStation DS1517+ available brought to order at Overclockers UK for £784.99 HERE
Pros
- DSM OS.
- Btrfs file system support.
- Capacity can be expanded using Synology Expansion units.
- PCIe slot.
- Easy to access memory slots.
Cons
- Pricey.
Kitguru says: The DS1517+ is a powerful 5-bay NAS for small business although there is no reason it couldn't be used in for SOHO enviroment. By adding a PCIe slot, Synology has given it a good deal of future proofing allowing for the addition of fast disk caching or fast networking options.
Somehow the benchmark results do not make a lot of sense to me ie looking at the throughput benchmarks most of them hover around 100 MB/sec despite the different RAID set-ups ie one would expect for example a noticeable difference between RAID-0 and RAID-5….
My guess is that you connected the NAS and/or workstation via a standard 1 Gigabit Ethernet to the Network and therefore the LAN became the bottleneck at around 100 MB/sec ie 1 Gigabit …
In a 10 Gigabit LAN with 5 HDs installed I would expect that you should get close to 400 – 500 Megybytes/sec (at least thats my experience with Synology although I am not familiar with this specific model, so there might be otehr bottleneckes in the specific set-up, also 10 Gigabit needs a little bit of tuning until you get good throughput).