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We have reviewed many NAS units on Kitguru – it is a thriving market and one which many enthusiast users have been embracing in 2010. This is competitive industry with manufacturers such as Buffalo, QNAP and ASUS releasing a variety of products for the home sector.
Today we look at a very attractive pairing from Synology, the DS1010+ scalable 5 bay All-in-1 NAS server for small business users and the DX510 expansion unit which delivers another five hard drive bays for a two fold increase in capacity. These units combined allow for 20TB of storage which will more than satisfy the needs of any small business. These are not entry level products, the DS1010+ alone costs £725 inc vat, without any hard drives included so we will be ensuring they achieve justifiable performance levels.
Synology have also been working hard on their operating system and have just released their new DSM 3.0 multitasking operating system, so we will be taking a look at that later in the review.
Christ that is simply stunning. what a fantastic product from Synology. the internal design is fantastic.
our business just bought the RS810RP+ and it is a fantastic performer. this one looks even better. great company
Any chance of a review of something I could afford. like the 200 model they sell ?
so 750 without drives, add 5 x 2TB drives at 90 quid each, thats 1200 quid, then add the expansion pack with 5 more. another 800 quid.
Still 20TB is a nice amount of storage. not sure id ever fill it. thats a lot of word documents :p
These are great, follow up with some lower priced reviews please Allan, these are a little out of my price bracket
synology are great. nice to see all the high end samplez, but I agree, lower models now as a follow up.
Quick question, can any of their NAS systems use the new operating system or is it only the business models?
The OS looks brilliant. multitasking over IE as a control panel is really showing they are trying to make great products
synology FTW. 🙂 I might pick up a nas in the new year, wont be this one tho, thats a months pay for me, or more.
Business product reviews now too. what a great idea 🙂 im all for something different. keep it up.
My boss saw this last night and ordered 5 of these for our business. We have a lot of biggish files in the video sector and i cant wait to get my hands on setting them up.
Excellent ! I have been waiting on a good tech site to review this and finally I have one. I have a QNAP system which is a little outdated now and I will have to replace the fan as it is making a whiring sound. I might replace the fan, sell it and put the funds into one of these base units. I have already got 5 1.5TB drives, so this is perfect.
Good to see the partnering equipment used on KitGuru is up to spec. I have seen a few NAS system reviews lately which get poor marks but its actually due to a reviewer not using the right gear to measure performance.
QNAP should fear these guys, they seem to be making a push into the business sector now. I know our company wouldnt buy this however as it doesnt have a key locking system. our IT boss has all the systems locked out hard and carries the keys with him everywhere. It wouldnt be an issue for a server room which only allows key staff inside, but our room has footfall from other departments. with unlocked drives it is a potential security issue.
Thanks for the detailed analysis. We have just ordered a couple of this in for our marketing department.
Hello, can the reviewer tell me which is better for a business dealing with a lot of medium sized files ? a QNAP 639 pro or this ?
Kern – Well there are several factors to weigh in.
QNAP 639 Pro – has lockable system for security. Synology doesn’t.
Synology DS1010+ is faster
QNAP 639 pro – is built a little better, especially the drive bays which are metal.
QNAP 639 Pro has an extra drive bay over the 1010+ base unit
Synology DS1010+ has expansion capabilities with the DX510 added, giving 4 more bay options than QNAP 639 Pro.
Synology DS1010+ is slightly cheaper in the UK right now by £120 or so.
OS on both is great, although Synology is multitasking now so id say it would be a little stronger. Qnap 639 pro has a lot of options however so I wouldn’t discount it completely.
In regards to medium sized files, they would both be quite close, although id give the edge to the 1010+ it has a faster controller. Your networking specialists would need to correctly configure jumbo frames for these file sizes and ensure the network is all set up for this specific request.
Overall its a close call, both are brilliant systems for a business. Personally id give the edge to the 1010+ because I feel it offers a little extra performance which can be critical depending on the demands. Future expansion with the excellent unit we tested also factors in. A business can expand and easily pay more for additional storage and capabilities.
The drive bays, you mention them a few times, do they look as if they could be easily damaged? It is hard to tell the strength going on pictures.
Hi Kern – no the material is strong, but its not metal. The business market can expect this with a high end system for long term use. I wouldn’t class it as a critical issue, but it is something that could be improved, especially as competitors such as QNAP are already doing it.
I decided to order one of these today, I have a few hard drives and I almost bought a buffalo system last month, but it looks too slow. I want to store all my HD movies and tv shows and I need something more substantial. thanks for the great buying advice as always KG.
Seriously, only useful for people who will use this kind of stuff occasionally or where speed is not essential. Transfer rate is appallingly low. OK if you running unattended backups when you are away from PC/terminal, but transferring some TBs of data when speed is vital (like watching movies in HD) NAS is completely bonkers solution.
For that kind of money (in particular if you do not require network access) you can get great (even if not very new) RAID controller like Areca 1231/61ML (660/790 Euros). Of course there is additional cost of backplanes, but transfer rate in RAID0 will go through the roof when you fill every channel [12/16] with SSD disks. Plus you can increase cache to 2GB on this card to improve performance even more – it doesn’t matter if you running RAID0, 6 or few mixed arrays.
Hi Hakuren – I fail to see your point. you are saying not to get this, but to get an internal RAID setup with 16 SSD drives? if you wanted to have good storage capacity, you would need 16 512GB drives at 1000 each. thats £16,000 for 8TB. 20TB here would be around a tenth that price. There are very few businesses or home users who need SSD transfer rates for watching media or backing up files. I dont understand your point at all. Its a completely different demand you are talking about.
This is network assisted storage, not internal RAID 0 over 16 drives. completely different audience and demand.
Not to mention you can set up 10 x 2TB drives into 10 Raid 0 configurations so you can easily saturate the gigabit lan crossover point. I dont think anyone needs network assisted SSD raid 0 in a 12 or 16 drive configuration. You certainly wouldnt be looking at a business market for the majority of tasks. unless its broadcast video requirements.
Would there be a performance increase using 7200rpm drives instead of 5400prpm (which you’ve used in this test) ?
Has anyone tried one of the expansion units directly connected to a PC eSATA port? Would it work as a DAS?