NAS: Synology for business/home ?

Piliger

I have been looking at the Synology products (DS213j) for a home/office solution (small two person office using Macs)

I was wondering if Synology offers something that other or standard NAS solutions don't. When I looked around online it looks like Synology software includes a lot of bells and whistles for home use, Time Machine, streaming media etc. Is this something that doesn't come with other NAS solutions ? Or am I being seduced by a nice website and marketing ?

CreepingDeath

I've a Zyzel NSA325 at home, which I'm happy with for personal use.

You can compare the two here, doesn't seem to be too much between them.

NSA325 has an extra USB 3 port, 1.6Ghz processor as opposed to the DS213J's at 1.2Ghz.

NSA325V2 Specs @ €116.41

DS213J Specs @ €193.81

But the synology does seem better for businesses, better enterprise level integration, firewall and the "SMS alert" sounds interesting.

Maybe it's just the Dabs ad, but I don't see "Time machine" mentioned in the DS213J, but the NSA325V2 does explicitly mention "Apple Time Machine compatible"..

Piliger

Yes it does support Time Machine. It's not so much the tech specs I am focussing on but the software involved. As an amateur it looks like normal NAS products are just internet connected hard drives and their functionality is simply and effective. I am looking at a situation with three iMacs, an iPad , two iPhones, a MacBookPro. Also the home entertainment issue ... do normal NAS products (clearly much cheaper) have apps and home streaming software built in.

Piliger

No one have any insight into this software side of things ?

CreepingDeath

I'm not an Apple fan boy, so can't comment on that side of things.

If it's for a small business use, then why worry price too much, since you can write it off as a business expense against your tax?

If you want the most flexible solution, then maybe a dedicated Linux box would be more suitable than a "dumb" NAS drive.

Alun

CreepingDeath wrote: »

If you want the most flexible solution, then maybe a dedicated Linux box would be more suitable than a "dumb" NAS drive.

Synoloy NAS's are far from dumb, and offer pretty much all the functionality most home and small business users would want from a Linux box (they are Linux based anyway, as are most other NAS's on the market I suspect), but packaged in a user friendly way with a consistent GUI across all the built-in and installable packages.

I can't comment on the Apple compatibility side of things as it's all Windows stuff here though.

@OP: I have a DS414, so if there are any specific questions you want to ask, fire away.

Piliger

Alun wrote: »

Synoloy NAS's are far from dumb, and offer pretty much all the functionality most home and small business users would want from a Linux box (they are Linux based anyway, as are most other NAS's on the market I suspect), but packaged in a user friendly way with a consistent GUI across all the built-in and installable packages.

I can't comment on the Apple compatibility side of things as it's all Windows stuff here though.

@OP: I have a DS414, so if there are any specific questions you want to ask, fire away.

Apple isn't an issue here. The question is how the Synology product compares with other standard NAS products in terms of software and processor etc. From my reading of the site it seems pretty comprehensive but it could be that it is just better promoted, hence my post.

Alun

There's a live demo on Synology's website you can access and try out some of the features for real.

http://www.synology.com/en-global/products/dsm_livedemo

Take a look in the Control Panel and Storage Manager to see some of the built-in features, and in the Package Center for some of the add-on packages available.

Synology make a whole range of NAS devices from simple 2 bay devices for home use to large expandable multi-bay devices for large companies. They all run exactly the same software (DSM) regardless of their hardware capabilities. Another company that does something similar is QNAP.

Other manufacturers like Western Digital, Netgear, Seagate etc. are really aiming only at either the home market or home / small business.

Piliger

Ok Alun - Thanks. I will do that. I was hoping for people with experience of NAS, as even though I can check out this demo ... I have nothing to compare it with :-) Know what I mean ? so learning what it does doesn't tell me if it is more impressive than the many other NAS solutions out there which seem to be mainly bare bones business kind of products designed for IT people to interact with.