One of the biggest hurdles for small and medium size businesses is finding reliable and cheap ways to store data securely. For most businesses this means buying and maintaining large and expensive storage severs. Most small companies don’t need the cost or capabilities of a SAN, yet do require something smaller that they can use to store their data in a secure and reliable manner. Many of this site’s users utilize Synology NAS units for their small business IT due to the relative ease of implementation. This was confirmed in our Synology DiskStation DS1812+ review. On Wednesday, Synology announced an updated rackable NAS server system just for this purpose.
Synology’s RS2414+/RS2414RP+ and RX1214/RX1214RP announcement
Synology announced the RS2414+/RS2414RP+ and the RX1214/RX1214RP. The first is the actual NAS server, that features Synology’s DSM 4.3 management. The latter allows users to expand the storage without purchasing an entirely new server. The RS2414+/RS2414RP+ is loaded by the following specs:
- Dual Core Atom 2.13 GHz CPU
- Almost 210 MB/s write speeds, Almost 340 MB/s read speeds
- Quad 1GbE LAN with continuous uptime support called failover provided by 4 LAN Ports
- Up to 96TB of total storage with the addition of the RX1214/RX1214RP add on shelves
- 2GB of DDR3 RAM
- Optional redundant power solution for A + B power delivery
- CPU cooling system that intuitively controls the CPU’s temperature.
- Hot Swap Capability for the installed hard drives
- 2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 2.0 ports on the rear expansion panel
The server offers high performance without busting out huge specs that would be wasted and cost your business extra in terms of equipment and energy. Hopefully we will soon see these server ship with the Intel Atoton architecture that we recently benchmarked which might help throughput.
Expected Use Cases
The point of these NAS systems is to provide small and medium sized businesses with scalable and reliable secure NAS storage without costing an arm and a leg. Some storage servers cost well over $10,000 when all is said and done. If similar Synology products are any clue, these will be significantly under that price point. No price was announced, so we’ll have to wait and see.
“RS2414+ and RS2414RP+ are built to address SMB’s growing needs of performance, capacity and reliability” Synology’s Product Manager Chad Chiang wrote in the press release announcing the two new products.
One of the best things about this NAS server is that it looks like it will be easy to maintain. With the ability to easily manage drives with hot swap capability and simple expansion these should remain easy to manage.
Conclusion
The RS2414+/RS2414RP+ and the RX1214/RX1214RP have the potential to be great options for small and medium size business that are looking for relatively inexpensive ways to expand their data storage capabilities without installing huge servers that are both expensive and hard to maintain. They offer high performance, secure data storage without the cost and maintenance obligations of a large SAN system or larger NAS systems. The RackStation products are known to be excellent options for businesses looking to improve their infrastructure, with fairly long warranties, and great support. The RS2414+/RS2414RP+ will most likely be no different.
This looks interesting. I have the RS810+, this would be a nice upgrade for the office.
Speeds for a dedicated rack-mount appliance are nothing special. If the speeds are that low then the I/O will be limited as well meaning this would the last thing I would put near a office/business.
Sure, it has quad-port NIC’s (cant really use them to capacity) and redundant PSU’s but I still feel that a BYO appliance will do a better job.