Synology RackStation RS812 Review

Today we are looking at the Synology RackStation RS812 NAS server which has been designed for small business environments. This cost effective NAS has four drive bays and can scale to eight when paired up with the Synology RX410. It has full link aggregation support with VMWare, Citrix and Microsoft Hyper-V compliance. Our reviews tend to focus more often on the home, or consumer oriented NAS systems from Synology, otherwise known as the DiskStation products. We do however like to look at their RackStation, rackmount business server products when we get the opportunity. On paper, the RS812 is a very capable high capacity NAS unit. Internally it can support 16TB of storage (4x4TB drives) with another 16TB available from the RX410. Performance isn't at the same level as their more expensive server systems, rated at around 110 MB/s read and 50 MB/s write. There is a 2 LAN fallover system in place and with full hot swappable drive support it should prove ideal for a small, growing businesses. Product Overview: Optimal Price/Performance Ratio 2 LAN with Failover and Link Aggregation Support Scale up to 8 Drives with Synology RX410 VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Hyper-V compliance Power-saving with only 37 Watts in Operation Affordable Total Cost of Ownership Running on Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) As the Synology RackStation RS812 is a rackmount product, the box is large and quite heavy, as we would expect. Almost all rackmount products have a metal shell for the professional sector. The bundle contains the software disc, user manual, rackmount support panels and a regional specific power cable. We do recommend you grab the software from the Synology website to ensure you are running the latest revision. The RS812 is built like a tank, which is reassuring. The naked metal shell covers the whole body, with a black plastic front panel section. The RS812 measures 44mm x 430.5mm x 457.5mm (HxWxD) and weighs 6.9kg. Along the front of the unit are the four drive bays and a power button and LED indicators which highlight drive and network activity. Rackmount bolts are in place for mounting the RS812 inside a tower rack. Along the rear of the RS812 are several fan ports, alongside the power connector. There are also two LAN ports for failback and aggregation support and several USB ports and a single eSATA port. The eSATA port is specifically in place for the Synology RX410 bay which doubles the hard drive support from four to eight. The RS812 has great airflow inside, with 3 small fans (40mm) mounted at the rear to ensure cool air flows across all the components and to eliminate any 'dead zones'. The front panel is connected to the main board via a ribbon cable which runs along the top of the front drive bay. The RS812 is using a 1.6GHZ ARM processor with a total of 512MB of Hynix DDR3 on the motherboard. The board is passively cooled, although there will be some air flow from the surrounding fans. If you want to analyse the board in closer detail, then check out the High Resolution Image Gallery later in the review. It is always reassuring to see a company using a quality power supply in their products. Synology are using a high grade Seasonic 80 Plus Bronze certified 250W power supply in the RS812. Bonus points for this. The four drive bays are constructed from metal and each bay has a felt covering to protect the sensitive components underneath the drive. On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. We have looked at the Synology DiskManager Operating System many times in the past. It is one of the finest operating systems on the market for a NAS system/server, and doesn’t need a high specification list of hardware to run well either. The multitasking support means that multiple tasks can be handled simultaneously. It is important to ensure that the newest software package is downloaded directly from the Synology website over here. It would take a dedicated indepth review to cover all of the options in this software, but we will skim some of the options which we have detailed in the DS713+ review a short while ago. Setting up a volume doesn't take too long and the options available will vary depending on how many drives you have available. Options are available for single volumes on RAID, or Multiple volumes on RAID. With only one drive in our system we can only have a 'BASIC' setup. The screenshot above shows the other options however, Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 5+Spare, Raid 6, Raid 10, JBOD and RAID 0. This stage of volume creation is important. If you are using an older drive which you aren't sure about, it is best to use the longer disk check and select 'Yes'. Be aware this can take a serious amount of time, as the system has to remap bad sectors, if found. The format process will vary depending on how many drives you are using and the RAID mode. When the drive is ready, the system health will change to indicate a 'good status'. This is a new addition in the latest revision and will help inexperienced users who may find the wealth of settings confusing. It is important to set up a shared folder at this stage, so you can access the storage across your network from multiple computer systems. The main settings can be accessed from the control panel options at the top left. The NAS will also flag updates and alerts top right. The Package Center is the main area for downloading and updating the NAS, if you want to use third party software. This is a nice touch, although we found this panel rather slow to update for us. This section of the interface is expanding on a regular basis. The main control panel window gives access to the main settings and configuration options. These are all labelled clearly and easy to navigate and find. If you use a network of mixed devices then this panel is important, as you can configure Windows, Macintosh networking and the NFS service. FTP can be set up in a dedicated panel. We recommend you give the server a unique name. If you have several Synology NAS systems in the same network, they default to the same Diskstation name, which means your Windows network will only see one of them. The Control Panel has dedicated Media Indexing options. It can scan for multimedia files including videos, photos and music. The NAS system can be used for automated backing up of special folders. There is also the option to set a speed limit, if it has a negative impact. You can restart the NAS system automatically after failure and adjust the fan speed mode between three settings. External devices can be connected and accessed via this panel. USB printers can also be connected to the DS713+ NAS. The DiskManager software offers many applications for media and networking support. Photo station supports BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF, RAW (arw, srf, sr2, dcr, k25, kdc, cr2, crw, nef, mrw, ptx, pef, raf, 3fr, erf, mef, mos, orf, rw2, dng, x3f image formats and 3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, FLV, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, QT, WMV, XviD, RM, RMVB, VOB, RV30, RV40, AC3, AMR, WMA3 video formats. The DNLA/UPnP Media Server can support both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with AAC, FLAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg, Vorbis, PCM, WAV, WMA, WMA VBR, WMA PRO, WMA Lossless audio formats. 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, DVR-MS, ISO, M2T, M2TS, M4V, MKV, MP4, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, MTS, MOV, QT, SWF, TP, TRP, TS, VOB, WMV, XviD, RV30, RV40, AC3, AMR and WMA3 video formats. It also can handle BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF, ICO, PNG, PSD, TIF (tiff), UFO, RAW (arw, srf, sr2, dcr, k25, kdc, cr2, crw, nef, mrw, ptx, pef, raf, 3fr, erf, mef, mos, orf, rw2, dng, x3f ) image formats. iTunes Server is also supported with MP3, M4A, M4P, WAV, AIF audio formats, M4V, MOV and MP4 video formats and M3U, WPL Playlist Format. Two printers can be hooked into the system supporting LPR, CIFS, AppleTalk and Multi Functional Print Server. If all this isn’t enough it also offers the following iPhone and Android applications.: DS Photo+, DS Audio, DS Cam, DS File (iPhone only) and DS finder (iPhone only). Survelliance station is a useful feature, especially for a business. Users can hook an IP camera into the unit. We have looked at this in detail before and if you missed it before you can read it here. We are testing the NAS within our gigabit network which is pretty much as good as you will get for a home or small office environment. It is a mixed network with several 1GBit switches for ultimate performance. All tests are performed ten times to ensure that no abnormalities can creep into the final results. We copy across several files at the same time. This product supports 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation which enables multiple connections to be linked in parallel to increase the link speed beyond the limits of any one single cable or port and to increase the redundancy for higher availability. Most implementations now conform to what used to be clause 43 of IEEE 802.3-2005 Ethernet standard, usually still referred to by its working group name of “IEEE 802.3ad”. The definition of link aggregation has since moved to a standalone IEEE 802.1AX standard. For this page we have removed all mechanical drives and are using a Solid State Drive, kindly donated by ADATA. The XPG SX910 256GB which we reviewed in the past. We copy across several large files to maximise the bandwidth. These results are close to the official Synology claims. Considering the budget business price point, the performance is very good. We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA - Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA - MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA - Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA - Threshold of Pain 140dBA - Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA - Instant Perforation of eardrum Noise was measured from a meter away. The little 40mm fans in the RS812 are audible most of the time, however a rackmount NAS system is likely to be kept inside a dedicated I.T. room with air conditioning. Noise emissions in this environment really aren't as critical and unavoidable due to the chassis dimensions. The RS812 isn't a power hungry NAS system, demanding only 15 watts when idling. When all four hard drives are active the system takes around 40 watts at the socket. The cooling performance of RS812 is excellent, with a high volume of air being pushed through the chassis. For a business, getting the correct system for networked storage is massively important. Synology have released the RS812 specifically with a goal in mind - to offer the best performance and capacity at the lowest possible price. At Kitguru we are used to seeing some of the more powerful NAS systems priced at £2,000+ ... before you even buy a hard drive. This would be hard to justify for a small, local business who only need to power an office environment with around 10-20 people. When you look at the Synology RS812 pricing in the United Kingdom, it can be found for around the £500 mark (Ebuyer) which means it is difficult to ignore. As our testing has shown, the RS812 is capable of handling sustained transfer rates over 100MB/s when reading data and over 50 MB/s when writing data. This will be more than adequate for serving basic files across an internal network. The metal chassis is built to last, and with dual LAN fallover / Link Aggregation Support built in it should prove reliable over many years. The unit is louder than many of the RackStation devices, although this is unavoidable as the rackmount chassis shape means that small 40mm fans will have to be incorporated into the design to ensure there is enough active cooling. The build quality and component selection inside the RS812 is top notch. Synology are using the highest grade parts, including an 80 Plus Bronze certified 250W power supply by Seasonic. The unit has clearly been designed to last for many years in a 24/7 environment with minimal servicing by an I.T. department. If you are in the market for a low cost NAS system for a growing, small business, then the RS812 is definitely worth buying. Pros: well built. great internal components including Seasonic power supply. solid performance. low price point. Cons: Performance won't suit a demanding environment. Kitguru says: An excellent NAS for a small business/office environment.