Synology DS214play: Intel Evansport Almost Done Right
by Ganesh T S on May 20, 2014 3:00 PM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects & Concluding Remarks
The DS214play is a 2-bay NAS, and most users are going to use it in a RAID-1 configuration for optimal balance of redundancy and capacity. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-1. The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities
| Synology DS214play RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Avg. Power Consumption |
| Idle | 12.01 W | |
| 4TB Single Disk Initialization | 1h 43m 22s | 23.38 W |
| 4TB RAID-0 to 4TB RAID-1 (Expand from 1 to 2 Disks) | 10h 16m 17s | 32.52 W |
| 4TB RAID-1 Rebuild (Replace 1 of 2 Disks) | 10h 31m 15s | 32.36 W |
Coming to the business end of the review, the performance of the DS214play is more than acceptable given the target market (home consumers / power users) and the single GbE link. DSM 5.0's multimedia capabilities are excellent on paper and in practice too, for the most part. Make no mistake, Synology has boldly ventured into a space (hardware accelerated video transcoding for media serving) which no other serious NAS vendor has done before.
In our opinion, from a NAS perspective, the DS214play's unique feature makes more sense than trying to run XBMC on a unit for hooking up to the TV. A NAS needs to be a NAS first and, in most situations, doesn't need to be tied down to a single display. Synology wins hands down on how to properly architect a solution based on an Evansport SoC.
Unfortunately, with bleeding edge features, we also have plenty of bugs resulting in an inconsistent experience. From our interaction with Synology, it looks like they are showing a commitment to devote resources to perfect the firmware for this SoC platform (and also probably release new units based on it such as the 4-bay DS414play exhibited at the 2014 CeBit). So, it looks like most of our concerns should be addressed in future firmware upgrades and updates to the mobile apps.
While the same SoC can stand in good stead for the next generation unit and/or the DS414play, we also need continued commitment from Intel to release SoCs for this product line. Ideally, Intel could offer QuickSync (for which plenty of software work has already been done in the PC space) instead of a custom transcoding block in the SoC. Marrying QuickSync into this lineup would also enable Synology to port the hardware accelerated transcoding capabilities to high-end NAS units based on the Core i-series processors.
On the pure storage side of things, it is not clear why Synology doesn't take advantage of the security engine to provide better performance for encrypted folders. Additional DRAM capacity might prove helpful if the NAS has multiple simultaneous external connections (each triggers a openvpn process) and multiple simultaneous transcoding sessions. In our limited testing, we didn't run into capacity crunch, but it is not inconceivable given that at least one other Evansport NAS vendor has models equipped with 2 GB of memory.
If one is planning on buying the unit solely for its transcoding and media serving capabilities, restrictions such as the non-availability of DTS audio (probably permanent) must be fully understood. If it is mostly user-generated media (such as camcorder streams or PVR recordings) and not Blu-ray remuxes, the DS214play presents an excellent (and currently, the only) choice at its price point / power consumption profile. For those worried about two bays not being enough for media storage, the DS214play also supports the DX513 expansion module (that attaches to the eSATA port) giving a total of seven disks across at least two volumes (the disks in the DX513 can't be used to expand the existing volume using the two primary drives).
The DS214play is priced at $370 for a diskless configuration. Synology's premium pricing is a well-known fact, but the unique multimedia features of the DS214play make it difficult to actually find a competing unit to compare the price against. All said, the strengths of DSM 5.0 and the well-developed mobile ecosystem combine to create an enjoyable and unique experience for DS214play users once the transcoding limitations are understood.
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bznotins - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Maybe I'm just not the target market for this kind of device, but I am always left scratching my head on the value proposition of something like this.For roughly the same price, I could build a micro-ATX rig with twice (or more) the SATA ports, a higher-power CPU, optical drive capability, and more USB/USB3 ports. Plus, the custom build could also be an additional home PC, from which you could run a Plex server, and/or host your mySQL database for XBMC.
I always find myself reading AT reviews on NAS boxes with the idea that I might want one. Then I look at the price and compare to the functionality of my current W8.1-based home server and the two aren't even in the same league.
Power consumption can't be it (my W8.1-based home server consumes 31W at long idle).
Network throughput can't be it (I get 900Mbps over my home network moving files between PCs).
Redundancy, perhaps?
/shrug
ZeDestructor - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Don't worry, you're not alone.I'm at the other end of the spectrum myself: I have a pile more data, well into the 6/12disk segment, and at the price, dropping a microATX Rangeley (Avoton with more extensive crypto engine) into a backblaze pod looks like a much nicer proposition.
owan - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Completely agreed. $370 for a 2 disk setup seems absolutely absurd unless you are absolutely positive you won't need more than 3 or 4TB of space over the life of the device, and even then its hard to fathom. You can build a custom PC for that much, put a 4-in-3 hotswap bay in, and have double the hot swap space, plus future expansion options. These devices just seem so limited I cant comprehend why you'd botherSpoony - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
I also don't understand. I want something other than ext4 as well. If I'm going to store lots of data long-term I want reliability to be the name of the game. I ended up building a server around a Xeon E3 with ECC memory and 6x drives. Then installing FreeBSD on it with the storage drives running ZFS. It cost similar to a midrange Synology box, but it is better in every way.I think these are for people for which the hassle of setting up and building is significant. They just want to plug it in, flick some switches on the web interface, and easily store data on the network. For that I can certainly see value, it just isn't for me.
Impulses - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
The number of people that want that idiot proof NAS experience might outnumber the amount of enthusiasts that will roll their own. I don't have either, still seems unnecessary with just two PC in the house, but I know plenty of non enthusiasts and family guys that have bought a NAS like this and would never or could never go DIY. Seems like beating a dead horse to argue the value if you're an enthusiast, it's there for those that aren't or don't wanna bother just like HP & DELL desktops were for ages...robinthakur - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
I bought one because it is easy to setup and near silent in operation and has been designed for its purpose. I previously had another NAS made by Zxyel which was a total hassle to setup and use by comparison. I struggled to justify the cost of this box initially, but I have been blown away by how user friendly Synology's DSM OS and mobile apps are and being able to easily run Drupal sites on it for internal testing is great, as is being able to backup all the Macs in the house to the time machine function. Naturally, you could build your own box, but I've done that before and it costs alot more for decent components, the case will likely be bigger and it will be noisier and it takes ages to configure just right. I actually don't use the media features I just bought it to play with them as I have a mac mini hooked up to the TV for XBMC duties but I've ended up using far more of the features than I'd anticipated, not just for file shares. The only reason I might build a physical server would be to also run AD, Exchange and SharePoint VMs for development and while it would be more capable, it would also be more hassle to maintain and more costly to build (RAM and processing requirements) and most of that can be done in Azure now. The box is really user friendly and to be honest these days, that's what I want rather than spending days of my expensive time assembling a server.DanNeely - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
The main advantage of small soho NASes is size and idiot proofing. You might not care about having another tower case sitting in your network closet, geek cave; but Joe Mundane would much rather have a really small box than a big one and these sort of systems can offer much better performance than a USB drive hung off a router. They also require much less skill to configure and operate than a full fledged server PC.Solandri - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
This. These things look bad from a financial aspect if you're thinking of purchasing one as an individual where you undervalue your time.. But in terms of a business, you can burn through $370 in an hour, if not a few minutes. You can spend 5 minutes to buy this and 10 minutes to set it up when it arrives and get it up and running. Or you can spend an hour picking out and ordering the parts for a custom box, then spend an hour assembling it, then 2 more hours installing software, setting it up, and testing it. Usually at that point a business has burned more money on labor than it would've spent on this one-stop solution.Case in point, one example where it makes sense as an individual is if I want to set up my parents with a NAS. I don't want to remotely troubleshoot it and have to babysit them through fixes every time something goes wrong. I want it to be dirt simple to set up, and have a proven track record of reliability without continuous monitoring and management. The time it saves me from having to fix or tweak it at my parents' house can easily be worth $370 to me.
The custom box solution is only cheaper if you put little or no value on your time. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I <i>enjoy</i> tweaking with and trying out new things on my custom NAS. I just wouldn't enjoy it if I had to do it remotely at my parents' house every time they have a weird problem they can't fully explain to me, or if I were paying someone $30/hr to do it.)
Beany2013 - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
On a related, and wider note....I have the ability to build a seriously nice HP Microserver with encryption, trascoding streaming, and all that good stuff, too - and it'd cost the same, more or less, as one of these devices, if you don't include my time at chargable rates. I'm a multidisciplanary IT admin/troubleshooter - I'm the sort of person who can singlehandedly build an entire office infrastructure including GPO'd domain (or Puppet'd Linux environment) from scratch given the funding and a few days of time. So I'm not niave about this.
But after a ten hour day of fixing servers and workstations, I wasn't in the mood to build one on any given night of the week or weekend, so just bought the DS214+
Admittadly, no transcoding (the Play wasn't available at the time, and the DS713+ was a bit much for my needs and budget), but handily, Chromecast and VideoStream do that nicely using my laptop as a proxy.
Does everything I need to, very nicely, with absolutely sod all maintenance or tweeking required, it'll happily WOL and sleep, can talk to UPS/Wireless/Bluetooth dongles if you get the right ones, and has enough commonality with ARM Linux (it's Debian on ARM) to have a good developer pool for unapproved apps. My next project is to set up Asterix on it and practise with VOIP, too see if I can help reduce the office phone bill.
You're paying for the convenience, the simplicity and the support (that you'll rarely need with this class of device); I'm finding more and more cases where these devices are 'good enough' for a lot of SOHO and small SMB clients, and also power users such as ourselves. The nice thing about Synos range is that they scale up to monster, gazillion disk, 10GBe rackmount devices, too - all with the same interface; very handy for support purposes.
Consumer NAS devices are at the stage where they can, in many cases, replace a light use Windows/Linux whitebox/OEM server for a lot of people. Simple as that. They aren't suitable for everything, but they are suitable for a hell of a lot.
I'm not paid by Synology (or anyone in that respect) but when I find a device or service I think is worth kudos, I'll wax on about it happily. The Syno gear is worth investigating IMHO, it's a cut above the Netgear/WD/QNAP stuff, and unless you require device specific functionality (realtime replication between boxes like what the netgears do) I'd go for Syno stuff every time these days.
lyeoh - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
I set up a custom RAID10 NAS at work and it's configured to run SMART tests on the drives, monitor temperatures of the drives etc and send email alerts if there are problems. Took some time to set up but doesn't need any babysitting. Why would it? It's been running year after year. Earlier this year it sent email alerts when the server room air conditioner broke down and the drives started to get warm. Probably the only machine in the entire server room that sends out such alerts ;), I set it up because the crappy WD NASes others set up were slow and kept dying or hanging.