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The DS1511+ is shipped in the same style of packaging as all other Synology products – a plain brown and black box. with a model sticker at the top.
The bundle contains several Cat 6 cables, a power cable, quick start flyer and drive mounting screws for 2.5 inch and 2.5 inch drives. The disc includes software and device specific .pat DSM 3.0 code.
The DS 1511+ is a substantial business oriented NAS, very similar in design to the DS1010+ that we reviewed in September 2010. Without the drives installed it weighs 4.25kg and the measurements are 157 mm x 248 mm x 233 mm. At the top, above the 5 drive bays, is a row of LED indicators and a power button, set to the right.
The ‘Synology' logo is embossed into the chassis on either side, subtle and effective. At the rear we have a power port, dual fan (2x80mm) to ensure high levels of cooling proficiency for five hard drives. Four USB 2.0 ports rest at the side, above two Gigabit Lan ports. There is also a VGA connector and a reset button. At the bottom are two eSATA ports.
These eSATA ports can be used to connect two DX510 units, which house another 5 drives each. A total of 15 hard drives with a maximum size of 3TB each, offering a total of 45TB of storage capacity. KitGuru has already reviewed the DX510 expansion bay, you can read about it over here.
When the outer chassis is removed, the 250w Seasonic power supply can be located on the right side, held in place with a metal support beam. The power cables run across the top of the chassis, feeding the motherboard which is located on the other side.
The system has 1GB of 800mhz DDR 2 RAM installed and can accept 2GB more via an expansion slot, offering a total of 3GB of ram. There is a dual core D525 Intel Atom processor installed which runs at 1.8ghz. There is a plastic layer isolating the motherboard from the side panel, something we noted missing on the DS1010+.
The motherboard is based around the Intel ICH6 southbridge with a 128MB flash module attached for caching and there is a ITE IT871820F controller for interface operations. A Silicon image SiL3132 SATAlink PCI Express to 2-port Serial ATA II Host controller deal with the eSATA interface. Two Intel 82574L gigabit ethernet controllers handle the throughput.
The drive bays are sturdy plastic and are removed by toggling a switch then pulling out via a clip. We can understand Synology using plastic drive bays for the home market, but we still feel that the business audience would prefer these to be metal, much like the QNAP business models. A key locking security system would also make a welcome addition. When all the drive bays are removed, we can see the sata daughtercard which offers data transfer and power delivery. There is also a small fan to the side, actively cooling the processor and surrounding PCB.
Each of the drives are mounted by 3 screws on either side of each drive bay. It is a painless system and only takes a few minutes. Although we are using 3.5 inch drives in these images, the trays also accommodate 2.5 inch units. Drives can be configured in Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5+hot spare volumes.
wozzers, thats outperforming my internal hard drive, over a network lol.
Its way out of my price range for home, but fantastic performance.
Our company bought two of the 1010’s last year and they are incredible. this is even better, didnt think it was possible, especially not for under 1000.
I bought their 211 last year as well after reading reviews here, ive been very happy. This is lovely to look at, but my missus would hack my legs off If I bought it 🙂
Its always embarassing when you buy a cheap SSD and a networked NAS system is faster :p
nice indeed. bit expensive for me, but good for business
They seem to have a good update schedule on their products. especially on a software level.
I never get it why they dont offer lockable drive bays on these business models. its the first thing the IT department will want.
Their software is great, I bought an entry level model last january and its such a pleasure to use. my mates windows server system runs like a dog with the same hardware
Actually the DS1511+ supports drive sizes up to 3TB and natively can house up to 15TB raw therefore and up to 45TB raw via the two optional expansion cabinets.
Andre, you are absolutely right, I just called Synology to confirm and ive appended the review.
Just bought it, along with 2 3TB hard drives… a little afraid to tell the wife…
These seem to be impressive numbers but realistically I would say that the majority of people run their NAS in RAID-5 mode not RAID-0 since the point of a NAS is to have high availability even if some performance is sacrificed as a result. It would be more interesting if you could show up the RAID-5 performance results.
Also, it seems a bit unfair to compare a Synology NAS containing a D525 with Qnap NASes containing a D510 especially since the the D525 Qnap NASes have been available for several months already. Is there any reason to believe that the DS1511+ would out-perform the equivalent QNAP TS-559 Pro+ since they seem to contain very similar hardware?
Hi Mark,
I wouldnt argue about Raid 5, but the problem is two fold. Firstly we only have a specific amount of time we can dedicate to each review, so we opt for Raid 0, as the lower end systems can handle this mode and therefore results are directly comparible across the ranges.
Its not a matter of being ‘unfair’, we have only a specific amount of systems we have tested. We only can test what we get sent.
Hi Zardon,
How can you reach 199 MB/s read and 166 MB/s write? I can’t get that speed with link agregation, I always get no more than around 120MB/s read and write.
Would you please share the setting you use for the network, is there any special setting? Or any setting to get 199 MB/s read and 166 MB/s write.
Best Regards,
Henry
Hi Zardon,
How can you reach 199 MB/s read and 166 MB/s write? I can’t get that speed with Link Agregation, I always get no more than around
120MB/s read and write.
Would you please share the setting you use for the network, is there any special setting? Or any setting to get 199 MB/s read and 166 MB/s write.
Best Regards,
Henry
opps, I am really sorry for double post
There are comments about the fact that the drive bay mounts are plastic and that they don’t offer the security of a lock.
Considering the size of this NAS device I think this is a very minor quibble. A thief could just as easily pick up the whole thing. In a home / SOHO environment this would be a very likely scenario as opposed to a single drive being lifted. Given its cost (value) the NAS would likely be locked in a secure location. In a business environment it could easily find a home in a lockable rack mount case inside a secure server room.
This is a very impressive unit I am hoping to acquire soon.
Nice work Synology!
I agree William, it is a minor quibble. Their business models, released recently have metal bays and locking systems in place.
Good luck with the purchase, I am positive you will be very happy. It is exceptional.
Zardon,
One of the best reviews I’ve read ever!
I am very advanced home user who is interested in such stuff. Currently, I own Drobo Pro (DAS) attached to my MAC. I was very pleased with everything (using iSCSI), but with a penalty when rebooting my iMAC, my other home users lose connectivity to my storage.
I like the NAS solution, I am tempted to buy this box. My only question that I could not get any answer toward, if I buy this box with three HD and using RSH (synology RAID5), can i expand in the future online without impacting data? will Synology takes care of balancing data?
I am used to this from my drobo pro, I expand by adding bigger disks as I go and Drobo will balance data for me.
Thanks, Mo
Hi Mo,
I haven’t tried it to be honest, but going on the data I received from Synology it should handle the addition of extra drives without impacting data and balancing out the content, yes.