Synology DS1815+

[crmaris]

Synology definitely put up a strong showing in the SMB category with the DS1815+ that can support up to 18 HDDs if paired with two optional DX513 expansion units. Today, we will put it to the test to figure out how it fares against the competition.

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[Ferrum Master]

Well to me... I cannot imagine me for taking it for THAT price instead putting myself a smaller any case, cheap AMD APU A88X(8x Sata III) and PCIE boot option ASMEDIA card for 3$ for the running proper Linux a top... you can put some more NIC for teaming up and raising throughoutput. And it will beat it to dust...

 

[crmaris]

A business environment demands reliability and support, something that you won't have with FreeNAS OS. When the data that you want to store worths much more than 1000 bucks then you choose NAS servers like the one in the review.

I don't want to defend any product but there is a reason behind their cost and this is support and software. They didn't implement DSM in a few weeks but it took them years and paid big bucks to developers to make it one of the best NAS OS available today. On top of that they provide countless applications for this OS and this means even more money for the development of this apps (which are provided for free).

Finally, you won't have such low energy consumption with a custom made PC playing the role of a NAS.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I understand you have a valid point... the support may be valuable, but for who?... but for places where actually data costs thousands this thing is also laughable it is simply too slow and they have their own system administrators and support as themselves...

Power wise, I can argue... the APU combo consumption even full powered is OK, see may fave AMD A6-7400K I cannot trigger it out of C states unless I rebuild a dead body part, but then we all don't care about the consumption, and the chipset offers RAID5 and 10, and no matter where it actually is it remains what it is. The whole system is usually more cooler and thus more reliable also.

Shame you don't test array rebuild times, that is actually a crucial thing and rocks on such custom platforms as it offers more raw power and you and put loads of RAM just as you wish.

My point is this thing is kind of a middle, It ain't the most serious heavy duty offering (Blade), it's like entry level thing on steroids, but way too expensive. And the final score is simply not deserved. But that's only my own taste... cheers

 

[Disparia]

It does seem a little misplaced. I haven't worked at a business where this would be a good fit, but on the other hand there are plenty of places I haven't worked at

I suppose at a small business where shared storage is the main need (no domain, email, database, etc) then maybe it's attractive? Entire network could be this NAS, switch, workstations, and internet connectivity.

Many years ago I worked at a small business (64 employees) but there was a domain and various other services running. Not as attractive in such an environment because there is already dedicated server hardware on a regular upgrade/replacement cycle.

 

[crmaris]

Raid Rebuild speed times rely on many factors. E.g. QNAP has set a minimum speed of only 5 MB/s for most of their NAS offerings so rebuild there is too slow. However you can easily bypass it and see how fast the NAS really is into this scenario.

However since I am always open to suggestions I will examine this scenario and include a RAID rebuild time in my reviews, in the near future.
As for business environments a medium-size office won't need any stronger/larger NAS however still the data they will store in it will be valuable to them.

ps. my next NAS review will include RAID rebuilding times along with power consumption

 

[ArdWar]

Come on, at least do some proofreading before publishing the article. It's not that matter, but it could be done better.

What do you mean with "anti-absorption materials"? (p4)
Altera MAX II is a CPLD, not EEPROM. (p5)

 

[crmaris]

We do have a professional proof reader that throroughly examines all of our articles but he is still a human, so it is natural to miss something in a 17 page review.

vibration-absorbing material.

The MAX II includes also an EEPROM so I assumed that it was safe to describe it as EEPROM rather than CPLD which is a word unknown to most users.

 

[ArdWar]

Is it done by one person? Most of the time, when I publish something into a journal, it's reviewed by at least a fellow engineer (who know how things work), a grammar nazi and depending on circumstances, maybe a legal consultant too.

The MAX II includes also an EEPROM so I assumed that it was safe to describe it as EEPROM rather than CPLD which is a word unknown to most users.

Well, calling a CPLD as EEPROM is like calling a computer as hard disk. You'd miss the purpose here.

Computer loads its' program from hard disk, likewise CPLD loads its' program from its' EEPROM.

 

[crmaris]

One person and he has become highly technical so far. Especially in PSUs he can easily take over if he finds the equipment! However this isn't a journal where you go strictly after grammatical etc. errors but a review. We don't write for academics that lose the whole forest behind a single tree some times, but for plain users that want to learn more about a product and in most cases don't have enough experience to follow a technical discussion.

 

[cyriouslydylan]

I know this review is a few months old, but I'm curious as to why it was done in Raid 5/6 as opposed to SHR, as I would assume most people would use. I'm guessing that it is because Raid 5/6 are common to all brands of raids while SHR is proprietary. It would be nice to see what the benchmarks are for it though.

And to answer some other user's questions about the use case - I'm currently considering this NAS for my photography business. Currently there are only 2 users, but we have filled up a 4-Bay NAS with 3TB drives. Replacing said drives with 6 or 8TB ones is as expensive if not more than getting this 1815+, and there is no room for expandability. The plan would be to buy this, add extra 6 or 8 TB drives to the array, and if we ever fill that up then replace the 3TB drives. I know that's not an ideal situation, but it's the most cost-effective solution. Building a similar FreeNAS box would cost less, yes, but if anything went wrong our data would be unreachable until I had time to fix it myself, which there is no guarantee I could do despite me being pretty competent. I just cant risk losing that data.