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Synology finally hits the midrange sweet spot in price, performance, and capacity with the 10-drive, rack-mount RS3411RPxs
My lab is dotted with Synology NAS devices providing a wide array of services, from disk-based backup to general file sharing to shared storage for small virtualization build-outs. In all the years I've had these boxes spinning, they've never once let me down. In fact, I have a four-year-old Synology DS409 that is still performing perfectly. It hasn't lost a disk yet.
When reviewing storage devices, that's always the hardest part -- trying to gauge the longevity of a product without having a year or so to test. Since I've been running these units for many years now, I can attest to their durability. Synology has produced some exemplary small-business and consumer-grade NAS devices.
[ Also on InfoWorld: "NAS shoot-out: 5 storage servers battle for business." Five- and six-bay NAS cabinets from Iomega, Netgear, QNAP, Synology, and Thecus compete on speed, ease, and business features. | Watch Paul Venezia and Matt Prigge chat about virtualization networking in this Shop Talk video. ]
But I've always been a bit disappointed with Synology's higher-end offerings. They run the same capable OS as their smaller counterparts, but none have quite achieved my vision of the sweet spot for midrange production storage. That vision includes at least eight spindles (preferably 10), redundant power, higher-end CPU and RAM resources, all bundled in a nice rack-mount case. Synology has come close with devices like the RS810+, but that had only four internal spindles with an optional four-spindle expansion...