A SOHO essential NAS with plenty of extras
Synology has just about perfected the NAS solution for small businesses and 'prosumers'. Its DiskStation 412+ range was hailed as being one of the best examples of a NAS unit around for the pro user and business workgroup.
It's since stepped up a gear, though, and has now released the DS415+, a four-bay NAS drive complete with an Intel Atom C2538 quad-core, 2.4GHz CPU, with 2GB DDR3 memory and a built-in Hardware Encryption Engine conforming to an AES 256-bit military grade algorithm.
Other features include a single USB 2.0 port, a pair of USB3 ports, an eSATA port and dual gigabit Ethernet ports. The two large 92mm fans located at the back of the unit do a more than adequate job of keeping the four drive bays cool, even when under substantial load.
Naturally, this increases the noise of the device somewhat, along with the drives chugging away in the hot-swap frames, but the design of the DS415+ does dampen the noise level slightly. The on-paper level indicate 20.2dBA, but we're tempted to say that with four 1TB drives fitted and whirling away, the levels never really reached much above half that number.
The DS415+ is actually quite a stylish looking unit for a business orientated NAS drive. The matt-black finish of the body, with air vent Synology logo imprinted on the sides, is complimented by the piano-black polished door, which is easily removed thanks to four rubberised plugs that squeeze into the drive bay slots.
Behind the hardware, though, is the real star of the show, the DiskStation Manager operating system. Now on version 5.1, this Linux-based OS boasts a much improved security enhancement by utilising AppArmor to block any unauthorised access to the system resources through malicious programs.
DSM 5.1 also offers improved backup apps, which include offsite and cloud storage, as well as several anti-virus packages, a surveillance command station, iTunes server, an eCommerce solution, email server, podcast generator and a WordPress platform tool.
Needless to say, there are countless more apps and packages that cover near every aspect of a business as well as the more traditional media and file sharing. Each is executed exceptionally well, part in thanks to Synology making sure that its DSM packages are developed correctly, as well as the impressive hardware that's driving the unit. Get a few packages up and running and you'll soon see why Synology has opted for a more powerful quad-core Atom with 2GB RAM over the previous 412+'s dual-core D2700 with 1GB RAM.
There's a lot going on with the Synology DS415+, such as the fact you could potentially have 24TB of storage with four 6TB drives. Plus there are multiple RAID levels to choose from, and you can arrange several Synology DiskStations into active and passive clusters for advanced mirroring, which is simply incredible.
With the Synology DS415+ firmly established in your server infrastructure, there's really no excuse to ever get left behind in terms of technology, storage management, business continuity and productivity. David Hayward
An excellent business orientated NAS.