Synology's brand-new Disk Station DS508 may be the most expensive NAS device we've reviewed, but it's also the best. It's smaller than you might imagine, being only a little larger than the five 3½in SATA disks that it houses. The case itself looks businesslike with its plain black finish.
Unlike previous Synology products we've reviewed, the DS508 has quick-release drive bays, which makes it a lot easier and quicker to install disks. They're hot-swappable for easy replacement or addition, and lockable for security.
Around the back, you'll find two USB ports for external disks or a printer, plus an eSATA port for the latest hard disks. Conveniently, the power supply is built in, so there's no unsightly black brick to find a home for. There's not one but two gigabit Ethernet ports for access from different networks. In a future firmware update, Synology has also promised failover (in case one port should fail) and teaming modes (for increasing the available bandwidth).
One of the main criticisms we've levelled at NAS products in the past is poor file-transfer speeds, but the DS508 is by far the fastest we've seen. Most people will configure the DS508 using all five disks in a RAID 5, since this provides the extra performance of striping as well as the security of each disk holding parity information. You can create multiple RAID 0 or RAID 1 volumes if you prefer.
With all five disks in a RAID 0, the DS508 wrote large files at 40.4MB/s and read them at an astonishing 53MB/s. These speeds became 34.7MB/s and 50.1MB/s respectively when using RAID 5. Small file transfers were slow, though, at around 1MB/s for writes and under 3MB/s for reads in both configurations.
Managing the DS508 is easy thanks to the new AJAX-based interface. It has more features than we've ever seen on a NAS device and supports everything business users need, including Windows ADS, Samba, FTP and AFP support. If needed, it's also easy to set individual user account size limits and give users and groups read or write permissions to shared folders.
There's much more, including secure FTP, a web server with PHP and MySQL, encrypted network backup, HTTP file access and even the brand new Surveillance Station, which acts as a network video recorder for IP cameras. There are so many features that there isn't room here to list them all. You can see our longer review with full test results at http://tinyurl.com/6ombls.
At this price, the DS508 begins to tread on the toes of entry-level Windows 2003 servers. Also, it doesn't include any hard disks. Still, its dual LAN ports, many features and superb large file performance mean it's well worth the outlay.
System Specifications
2x 10/100/1,000Mbit/s network connections, 512MB RAM, 3x USB ports, eSATA port, FTP server, print server, web server, HTTP file server, UPnP media server, iTunes server, network video recorder, takes up to five 1TB 3½in SATA hard disks, 203x242x177mm, two-year return-to-base warranty
Author: Jim Martin
Computer Shopper Online