14 DAY TRIAL // Although not especially powerful, the two systems offered by Synology are capable of mostly every task that home or small office networks need to perform. The two systems are dubbed the Synology DS210j and Synology DS410j, and both of them have mostly similar resources, with differences concerning storage capacity and certain I/O features.
Even as affordable solutions for small offices and as home servers, the Synology DS210j and Synology DS410j manage to pack just enough performance for their target consumer market. These two stations are both outfitted with central processing units running at speeds of 800MHz, 128MB of DDR2 memory and one Gigabit LAN port. As differing features, Synology DS210j features three USB ports, whereas Synology DS410j only has two.
Both can have two 2TB hard drives, allowing for storage of up to 4TB and 8TB and, according to the press release, “The cable-less design delivers hassle-free installation. Without the need for data cables, the installation of hard drives is extremely easy. The built-in disk holders of the DS410j enable you to install both 3.5" and 2.5" hard drives. To install 2.5" hard drives on the DS210j, an optional 2.5" Disk Holder Type C is available for purchase.”
These hardware resources enable the two servers to show off an average speed of 25MB/s in Windows for writing and 45MB/s for reading for the DS410j, when configured on RAID 5. The 210j fared even better, with 27MB/s write and 59MB/s read speeds while on Windows and configured on RAID 1.
The renowned Disk Station Manager 2.2 (DSM 2.2) is included in both models and provides both servers with excellent file-sharing and multimedia-streaming capabilities. Also, the units feature DLNA compatibility, ensuring interoperability with a wide range of DLNA-certified home devices. “Photo Station 3 and the PHP+MySQL built-in Web Station helps users to enrich their web presence, allowing the hosting of up to 30 websites with dynamic web pages. Surveillance Station 3 provides an easy and economical solution to network video recording and now offers SMS notification upon occurrence of pre-determined critical events” the release adds.
“This much power and functionality in a NAS server has never before been available at this low price, which makes Synology DS210j and Synology DS410j ideal solutions for budget-minded businesses or home users,” Edward Lin, marketing director of Synology, comments.
To complete the set of flexibility features, both servers have support for iPhone and Apple Time Machine backup procedures, which allow MAC users to back up their data using their native software. Through DS audio and DS photo, music and photos, respectively, can be streamed to an iPhone or iPod.
The Synology DS410j and Synology DS210j have already been made available for shipment.