World Backup Day is slowly creeping up on us. This year we will be celebrating this holiday on March 31st. The whole point of this holiday is to raise awareness of the importance of "Data" in our lives and ways we can protect it. Here at Modders-Inc, we try to review different types of storage devices which help consumers to store and backup data based on their need. One of our close sponsors recently released a multi-disk Network Attached Storage device that offers not only capacity but also able to scale and deliver content quickly and efficiently to users. DiskStation DS918+ by Synology is an ideal solution for home or small businesses to store data as a primary point and a backup. In addition to backup features, DS918+ is capable of transcoding up to two channels of H265 and H264 videos at the same time. This high-speed storage server has enough power to run a small company share with numerous features like Media Server and Surveillance Station. Review Sample Provided by: Synology Product Name: Disk Station DS918+ Price at time of review: $ 549.99 USD MSRP The product was given in exchange for work done to produce this review. Packaging Our sample came in a double cardboard box. Production packaging will vary for DS918+. The actual unit was securely held in thick plastic foam with accessory box. Accessory box included two Ethernet cables, a pair of plastic keys and one power supply brick. You really don’t need much to get started with DS918+. The keys are for the units bays. It is possible to lock bays in place if needed. Specifications Hardware Specifications CPU CPU Model Intel Celeron J3455 CPU Architecture 64-bit CPU Frequency Quad Core 1.5 burst up to 2.3 GHz Hardware Encryption Engine (AES-NI) Yes Hardware Transcoding Engine H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), MPEG-2 and VC-1; maximum resolution: 4K (4096 x 2160); maximum frame rate per second (FPS): 30 Memory System Memory 4 GB DDR3L Memory Module Pre-installed 4GB (1 x 4GB) Total Memory Slots 2 Memory Expandable up to 8 GB (4 GB x 2) Storage Drive Bays 4 Maximum Drive Bays with Expansion Unit 9 M.2 NVMe Drive Slots 2 Compatible Drive Type* (See all supported drives) 3.5" SATA HDD 2.5" SATA HDD 2.5" SATA SSD M.2 NVMe 2280 SSD Maximum Internal Raw Capacity 48 TB (12 TB drive x 4) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) Maximum Raw Capacity with Expansion Units 108 TB (48 TB + 12 TB drive x 5) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) Maximum Single Volume Size 108 TB Hot Swappable Drive Yes Notes "Compatible drive type" indicates the drives that have been tested to be compatible with Synology products. This term does not indicate the maximum connection speed of each drive bay. The maximum single volume size is not directly related to the maximum raw capacity. (Learn more) Expansion of the internal volume is only supported if the combined single volume size does not exceed the maximum limit of 108TB. External Ports RJ-45 1GbE LAN Port 2 (with Link Aggregation / Failover support) USB 3.0 Port 2 eSATA Port 1 File System Internal Drives Btrfs EXT4 External Drives Btrfs EXT4 EXT3 FAT NTFS HFS+ exFAT* Notes exFAT Access is purchased separately in Package Center. Appearance Size (Height x Width x Depth) 166 mm x 199 mm x 223 mm Weight 2.28 kg Others System Fan 92 mm x 92 mm x 2 pcs Fan Speed Mode Full-Speed Mode Cool Mode Quiet Mode Brightness adjustable front LED indicators Yes Power Recovery Yes Noise Level* 19.8 dB(A) Scheduled Power On/Off Yes Wake on LAN/WAN Yes Power Supply Unit / Adapter 100W AC Input Power Voltage 100V to 240V AC Power Frequency 50/60 Hz, Single Phase Power Consumption* 28.8 W (Access) 12.6 W (HDD Hibernation) British Thermal Unit 98.27 BTU/hr (Access) 42.99 BTU/hr (HDD Hibernation) Environment Temperature Operating Temperature 5°C to 40°C (40°F to 104°F) Storage Temperature -20°C to 60°C (-5°F to 140°F) Relative Humidity 5% to 95% RH Certification EAC VCCI CCC RCM KC FCC CE BSMI Warranty 3 Years Notes Power consumption is measured when fully loaded with Western Digital 1TB WD10EFRX hard drive(s). Noise Level Testing Environment: Fully loaded with Seagate 2TB ST2000VN000 hard drive(s) in idle; Two G.R.A.S. Type 40AE microphones, each set up at 1 meter away from the Synology NAS front and rear; Background noise: 16.49-17.51 dB(A); Temperature: 24.25-25.75˚C; Humidity: 58.2-61.8% DSM Specifications ( See more ) Storage Management Maximum Internal Volume Number 512 Maximum iSCSI Target Number 32 Maximum iSCSI LUN 256 iSCSI LUN Clone/Snapshot, Windows ODX Yes SSD Read/Write Cache (White Paper) Yes SSD TRIM Yes Supported RAID Type Synology Hybrid RAID Basic JBOD RAID 0 RAID 1 RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID 10 RAID Migration Basic to RAID 1 Basic to RAID 5 RAID 1 to RAID 5 RAID 5 to RAID 6 Volume Expansion with Larger HDDs Synology Hybrid RAID RAID 1 RAID 5 RAID 6 Volume Expansion by Adding a HDD Synology Hybrid RAID RAID 5 JBOD RAID 6 (with Expansion Unit) Global Hot Spare Supported RAID Type Synology Hybrid RAID RAID 1 RAID 5 RAID 6 (with Expansion Unit) RAID 10 (with Expansion Unit) File Sharing Capacity Maximum Local User Accounts 2048 Maximum Local Groups 256 Maximum Shared Folder 512 Maximum Shared Folder Sync Tasks 8 Maximum Concurrent CIFS/AFP/FTP Connections 1000 Windows Access Control List (ACL) Integration Yes NFS Kerberos Authentication Yes High Availability Manager Yes Log Center Yes Syslog Events per Second 800 Virtualization VMware vSphere 6 with VAAI Yes Windows Server 2012 Yes Windows Server 2012 R2 Yes Citrix Ready Yes OpenStack Yes Add-on Packages (learn more about the complete add-on package list) Antivirus by McAfee (Trial) Yes Central Management System Yes Chat Yes Maximum Users 1500 Notes The number of concurrent HTTP connections for Chat was configured to the maximum. CPU and RAM usage were both under 80% when the number of maximum users was reached. For tested models with expandable memory, the maximum amount of RAM was installed. Cloud Station Server Yes Maximum Number of Concurrently Connected Devices 1000 Maximum Number of Concurrently Connected Devices (with RAM expansion) 2000 Maximum Number of Synced Files (btrfs) 1,000,000 / single file reaction time 744 ms Maximum Number of Synced Files (ext4) 1,000,000 / single file reaction time 630 ms Notes The maximum number of concurrently connected devices refers to the maximum number of devices that can remain connected at the same time. For more information on file processing capability, please refer to the reaction time for file processing. File reaction time refers to the preparation time required for other devices to start downloading a 10KByte file from a Synology NAS after the file has been added to the NAS. RAM expansion was not used during testing. Non-encrypted shared folders were used during the aforementioned testing. Document Viewer Yes Download Station Yes Maximum Concurrent Download Tasks 80 Drive Yes Maximum Number of Synced Files 500,000 / single file reaction time 362 ms Maximum Number of Concurrent Connections for PC Clients 450 Notes The Btrfs file system was used for the purpose of testing. The maximum number of concurrent connections refers to the maximum number of connections that could be maintained when the maximum number of synced files was reached. File reaction time refers to the preparation time required for other devices to start downloading a 10KByte file from a Synology NAS after the file has been added to the NAS. For tested models with expandable memory, the maximum amount of RAM was installed. Non-encrypted shared folders were used during the aforementioned testing. exFAT Access (optional) Yes MailPlus / MailPlus Server Yes Free Email Accounts 5 (Licenses required for additional accounts) Recommended MailPlus Client Number Up to 90 (Btrfs) / 90 (ext4) Maximum Server Performance 840,000 (Btrfs) / 1,014,000 (ext4) emails per day, approx. 25.6 GB (Btrfs) / 30.9 GB (ext4) Notes The CPU and RAM usages were both under 80% when testing recommended client numbers. For tested models with expandable memory, the maximum amount of RAM was installed. Read-write SSD cache was enabled in 5-bay (and above) NAS models with 2 SSDs units installed. The performance of the mail system will slightly decrease in high-availability mode due to data synchronization between the two servers. Functions that were enabled in all of the tests above: anti-spam, anti-virus, DNSBL, greylist, content scan, full-text search (English only). Media Server Yes DLNA Compliance Yes Moments Yes Facial recognition Yes Subject recognition Yes Office Yes Maximum Users 1800 Notes Multiple files were opened for testing and each file was edited by 30 users simultaneously. CPU and RAM usage were both under 80% when the number of maximum users was reached. For tested models with expandable memory, the maximum amount of RAM was installed. Client performance may affect maximum simultaneous editing users. Client PCs used for testing: Intel Core i3-3220 / 8GB RAM Snapshot Replication Yes Maximum Snapshots per Shared Folder 1024 Maximum Snapshots of all Shared Folder 65536 Surveillance Station Yes Maximum IP cam (Licenses required) 40 (including 2 Free License) (See All Supported IP Cameras) Total FPS (H.264)* 1200 FPS @ 720p (1280x720) 840 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080) 550 FPS @ 3M (2048x1536) 300 FPS @ 5M (2591x1944) 180 FPS @ 4K (3840x2160) Total FPS (H.265)* 1200 FPS @ 720p (1280x720) 1200 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080) 900 FPS @ 3M (2048x1536) 550 FPS @ 5M (2591x1944) 300 FPS @ 4K (3840x2160) Total FPS (MJPEG)* 720 FPS @ 720p (1280x720) 500 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080) 330 FPS @ 3M (2048x1536) 200 FPS @ 5M (2591x1944) Notes Surveillance Station throughput is tested with Axis network camera, using continuous recording with live view from Surveillance Station and motion detection by camera. Live view and recording are sharing the same stream from the camera. Video Station Yes Video Transcoding 4K Group 1 (See more) Maximum Transcoding Channel Number 2 channel, 30 FPS @ 4K (4096 x 2160), H.264 (AVC)/H.265 (HEVC) or 2 channel, 30 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080), H.264 (AVC)/H.265 (HEVC)/MPEG-2/VC-1 Virtual Machine Manager Yes Maximum Virtual DSM Number (Licenses required) 4 (including 1 Free License) (Learn more) Notes Virtual Machine Manager is not supported on hosts running Synology High Availability. VPN Server Yes Maximum Connections 20 Environment & Packaging Environment RoHS Compliant Packaging Content Main Unit X 1 Accessory Pack X 1 AC Power Adapter X 1 AC Power Cord X 1 RJ-45 LAN Cable X 2 Quick Installation Guide X 1 Optional Accessories Surveillance Device License Pack D3NS1866L-4G DDR3 non-ECC SO-DIMM Expansion Unit: DX517 X 1 VS360HD VS960HD Closer Look at the Synology DS918+ Entire outer shell of DS918+ is made from ABS plastic. ABS plastic is very light and provides strong construction to the case. The front of the device I found four removable bays. Air intake is happening from three different locations. (Front and both Sides). If you look closely at the image above you can see openings in the Synology logo on the side of the device. DS918+ supports up to two M.2 NVME 2280 SSDs for caching. Note I wasn’t able to test NVME slots. The IO panel is positioned on the right and consists of a Power Button, USB 3.0 connector and five LEDs that should status and activity of the unit. In the back of DS918+ I found two Gigabit Ethernet ports, eSATA port, proprietary Power connector and a USB 3.0 port. To reset DS918+ to factory defaults Synology has placed a small pinhole on the right of the Ethernet adapters. It’s very easy to miss. The whole chassis is cooled by active two 80 mm fans. Hard Drive installation is very simple. DS918+ comes with four Hard Drive sleds which can accommodate 3.5" and 2.5" Hard Drives and SSDs. Mounting for 3.5" Drives is very easy and takes just a second to pop in securing sleds. SSDs will have to be mounted to the sleds via screws. For a complete supported list for HDDs and SSDs please check this page. Internal skeleton is made from aluminum. Motherboard and daughter boards are securely attached to the frame so that there aren’t any lose components in the system. The only potential issue I saw was with the USB 3.0 connector which extends from the motherboard to the rear of the enclosure by a notched cable. This cable is secured in the motherboard slot via glue. This does not poses any immediate attention but with time the glue will dry up and will come off. The motherboard assembly is very clean. I did spot just a few over fluxed areas that have no impact on the operation. CPU of DS918+ is being passively cooled with an oversized heatsink. As I have mentioned earlier, DS918+ comes with 4Gb of DDR3L RAM. It is possible to upgrade DS918+ RAM to a maximum of 8GB by purchasing a matching DDR3L chip. SATA board and M.2 board are as well assembled as the motherboard. Both of these boards have gold plated connectors that provide superb connectivity to the main board. Ethernet Controller is provided by Intel (WGI211AT). Maximum transfer rate is 1Gbe. There are two of these integrated chips, each responsible for one Ethernet jack. Power management in DS918+ is controlled by Texas Instruments (T650942A0). Serial ATA controller is by Marvel (88SE9215-NAA2). This controller is responsible for high performance IO in DS918+. Onboard flash is provided by SPANSION (S34ML01G200TF100). Voltage requirement and regulations are being controlled by Altera (5m80z) module. CPU of DS918play is by Intel (SR2Z9). This is a 64-bit Quad Core chip that has the stock clock speed of 1.5Ghz and burst up to 2.3 GHz. Communications with flash are being handled by Flash Micro-controller (PIC16F1829SS). DS918+ comes with stock (D3NS1866L-4G). This is a 4GB module and has latency ratio of 13 clocks. RAM of DS918+ could be expanded by purchasing additional modules from Synology or Amazon. Maximum allowable memory in this unit is 8GB. Synology DiskStation Start-up Wizard This section was taken from a previous review of Synology DiskStation, DS418J. Startup Wizard is nearly identical throughout the platform. After installing the drives, you’ll need open a browser window and go to the IP Address of the DS918+. To get the IP address of your device you can navigate to (find.synology.com) and the browser will find the device for you. The first task the wizard will step though is updating your firmware. As long as the NAS has access to the Internet, it will go to Synology’s website and download the latest and greatest firmware. If the NAS cannot connect to the Internet, a manual install option is available. The DiskStation DS918+ will show an installation progress meter while installing the firmware. After installation is complete, the NAS will reboot. After the device reboot, you will be taken to the next step of the process which, is to set the NAS’s name on the network and set up an administrative username and password. The next page will ask how you would like the updates to install from Synology and when to schedule them. To get up to speed you are offered to install some of the useful applications with just a click of a button. The next step in the setup process is to create a QuickConnect ID. QuickConnect is Synology’s solution allowing users to access the data on the NAS anywhere they can get Internet access without having to worry about configuring networking equipment. The final pages are the configuration confirmation page. After you click the next button, you’ll be taken to the DSM desktop. DiskStation Manager (DSM) User Interface This section was taken from a previous review of Synology DiskStation, DS418J. Most of the DiskStation Manager OS interface is unchanged throughout the interface. DiskStation Manager or DSM is the interface you will use to configure the NAS with; the latest released version is 5.2 with 6.0 beta 2 available for download. There are a lot of configuration options in DSM. I am covering what I feel is the most important options in order to get the NAS up and running on the network. After the initial configuration, anytime that you’ll want to log into the NAS, you’ll need to enter the username and password that was set up in the Startup Wizard. After logging in, you’ll be taken to the desktop. The desktop functions in a similar manner to the Windows desktop on your PC. You can create shortcuts to the most used configuration items in the menu. By default, a small monitoring application launches in the lower right side of the page. The application displays quick details on the utilization and health of the NAS. The main application on the menu that will be used to configure the NAS will be the control panel. The control panel has most of the options that will be needed to get the NAS up and running. By default, a lot of the services needed, such as file services have already been turned on. After the disk volume has been created (next section) you’ll just need to create shared folders and assign permissions and the users can start using the NAS. Users and groups can be created to give access to the NAS’s shared files and folders. If no users are created, you will need to give the guest or public account read/write access to the shared files. If you run a Windows Active Directory domain, you can configure the NAS to synchronize user information from your domain. At that point, you will also be able to grant domain users access to shared folders and eliminates the need to create separate users for your domain and your NAS. The network menu is where all the networking configuration is done. Synology DS918+ has two network interface, it can be configured for load balancing or failover. With multiple network interfaces can take advantage of creating a Link Aggregation Group (LAG) and LACP in order to do load balancing (managed switch required). Keep in mind that creating a LAG will not increase bandwidth from a single host. It increases the overall bandwidth the NAS can use on your network to multiple hosts. If you don’t have the ability to cable your NAS for example in a dorm room, you can install a USB wireless or blue-tooth adapter and get network access that way. The security tab allows you to configure such items as user interface timeouts, firewall, and certifications. The firewall tab can be used to restrict network traffic to and from the NAS in order to help protect it from network attacks and can help reduce the chance of a network breach. The NAS also offers denial-of-service protection and the ability to install your own certificate to further secure the NAS. Testing Methodology System Configuration Case Cooler Master Cosmos II CPU AMD FX-8370E Motherboard ASRock 990FX Killer Ram 2 GB G.Skill F3-12800CL9q DDR3-1600 GPU Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 Hard Drives Samsung 850 EVO 256gb SSD Network Cards Dual Port Intel Pro/1000 PT Switches ALLIED TELESYN AT-9924T ADVANCED LAYER 3+ GIGABIT 24-PORT NETWORK SWITCH, Boot (2.6.6-02) Cat6E cables used for network testing. Power Supply Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W 4 Seagate 8 TB 7200 RPM desktop drives were installed and used in the NAS tests. A dual port Intel network card was installed in the test system. The Synology DS918+ in all RAID arrays used a Single Static Volume. Network Layout For all tests, the NAS was configured to use a single network interface. One CAT 6 cable was connected to the Allied Telesis AT-9924T from the NAS and one CAT 6 cable was connected to the workstation from the switch. Testing was done on the PC with only 1 network card active; the Killer network card and the corresponding software were disabled for the testing. The switch was cleared of any configuration and left in a un-configured state. Jumbo frames was not enabled and no changes to the network interfaces were made. Software All testing is done based off of a single client accessing the NAS. To test NAS Performance I used The Intel NAS Performance Toolkit. The Intel NAS Performance toolkit simulates various tasks for storage devices such as video streaming, copying files and folders to and from the NAS as well as creating content directly on the NAS. To limit caching, a 2GB G.Skill memory module was used in all tests. All options in the Performance toolkit were left that the defaults. The NAS performance test is free to download. You can pick up a copy for yourself here. All tests were run a total of three times then averaged to get the final result. RAID 0,5,10 and RAID Hybrid were tested. Tests were run after all the RAID arrays were fully synchronized RAID Information Images courtesy of Wikipedia JOBD or Just a Bunch Of Disks is exactly what the name describes. The hard drives have no actual raid functionality and are spanned at random data is written at random. RAID 0 is a stripe set and data is written across the disks evenly. The advantage of RAID 0 is speed and increased capacity. With RAID 0 there is no redundancy and data loss is very possible. RAID 1 is a mirrored set and data is mirrored from one drive to another. The advantage of RAID 1 is data redundancy as each piece of data is written to both disks. The disadvantage of RAID 1 is write speed is decreased as compared to RAID 0 due to the write operation is performed on both disks. RAID 1 capacity is that of the smallest disk. RAID 10 combines the 1st two raid levels and is a mirror of a stripe set. This allows for better speed of a RAID 0 array but the data integrity of a RAID 1 array. RAID 5 is a stripe set with parity. RAID 5 requires at least 3 disks. Data is striped across each disk, and each disk has a parity block. RAID 5 allows the loss of one drive without losing data. The advantage to RAID 5 is read speeds increase as the number of drives increase but the disadvantage is written speeds are slower as the number of drives is increased. There is overhead with RAID 5 as the parity bit needs to be calculated and with software RAID 5 there is more of a performance hit. RAID 6 expands on RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block to the array that is distributed across all the disks. Since there are two parity blocks in the array more overhead is used with a RAID 6 array. For a full breakdown of RAID levels, take a look at the Wikipedia article here. RAID configurations are a highly debated topic. RAID has been around for a very long time. Hard drives have changed, but the technology behind RAID really hasn’t. So what may have been considered ideal a few years ago may not be ideal today. If you are solely relying on multiple hard drives as a safety measure to prevent data loss, you are in for a disaster. Ideally, you will use a multi-drive array for an increase in speed and lower access times and have a backup of your data elsewhere. I have seen arrays with hot spares that had multiple drives fail and the data was gone. Intel NAS Performance Toolkit Results Synology Hybrid RAID Synology has a RAID array they call Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR). Essentially it is for those users that do not know a whole lot about RAID or those users that don’t want to fuss with setting up a RAID array. There are two options available for SHR, 1-disk (similar to RAID 5) or 2-disk redundancy (similar to RAID 6). The redundant disk basically means you can lose n number of drives (n is the number of redundant disks) and the array will continue to work and data will still be available with no corruption. SHR also allows the use of mixed size drives meaning, that all the drives in your NAS do not have to be the same capacity. You can do the same with a traditional RAID array however, all the drives in the array can only use the amount of space available on the smallest drive. For example, in a 5 drive array the smallest disk is 250 GB. You would create a 5×250 GB raid array. With SHR, the system divides the disks into smaller chunks and creates additional redundant storage. There’s a catch however, you must have two of the largest drives installed. Taking the example above, with 5×250 GB drives, you could swap out 2 of the drives to 1 TB drives and be able to use all of the disk space available. Image provided by Synology Image provided by Synology SHR does suffer from a performance hit compared to traditional RAID. In the result below, I took a 4 disk SHR 1-disk redundant array and compared it against a 4 disk RAID 5 array. However, to my surprise, SHR performed better vs RAID 5, in this case. Conclusion and Final Thoughts DiskStation DS918+ is another well build NAS by Synology. Every year Synology releases newer models of their storage devices filled with features to make our lives a little bit easier when it comes to data backup and management. To list all of the features in DSM (DiskStation Manager) would take a very long time however based on the hardware of DS918+ it is clear to see that it is like a small computer with plenty of resources to be a media/file server, website server, video surveillance and more all at the same time. Performance of DS918+ is up to par with some of the similar models we have tested in the past. From the throughput perspective, I saw DS918+ using pretty much all the bandwidth of a Gigabit connection. I have not tested the second network connection in this unit as this wasn’t the purpose of this review, however, with proper configuration and a proper switch higher throughput speeds can be achieved. My experience with DS918+ was a little more than a month and based on my observations it would make a great file server for home and small business use. If you are after more capacity then you should look into an expansion module (DX517). What I noticed in my inspection of DiskStation Manager is that Synology is introducing a High Availability option in DS918+. You can combine two DS918+ to create active/passive high availability cluster. Currently, DS918+ retails for about $ 550 USD (diskless) and DX517 for about $ 500 USD (diskless). The price is definitely hefty comparing to other similar four bay models from different manufacturers. If you are looking for a fast and efficient solution for your small business, DS918+ definitely should be considered. Another great product from Synology. amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "dewaynecarel-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_design = "enhanced_links"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B075N1Z9LT"; amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0f2ee41ce8fe3e19c42937f76cd10200";
