14 DAY TRIAL // Synology has recently announced the introduction of the DS2411+ NAS server for small and medium businesses that can house up to 12 3.5-inch drives and provide a maximum 72TB of storage space when paired together with the DX1211 expansion unit.
The Synology server supports a wide range of volume configurations, including redundant arrays over different capacity drives, and also includes four additional USB 2.0 ports that can be used for attaching more drives to the NAS or for setting up a print server (2 printers are supported).
Also on the back of the unit, users will find an InfiniBand port for connecting the DX1211 expansion unit as well as two Gigabit Ethernet ports with failover and link aggregation support.
According to Synology, when used in the latter mode with a RAID 5 HDD setup, the DS2411+ can deliver read and write speeds up to 202MB/s and 167MB/s, respectively.
In order to achieve this high transfer rates, Synology's NAS server is powered by a dual-core 1.8GHz processor that is paired together with 1GB of DDR2 RAM, but this can be expanded to 3GB to achieve efficient data sharing in stringent environments.
This configuration consumes 105W of power when in full load, while in hibernation this figure drops down to 39W through CPU underclocking and HDD suspension.
When designing the DS2411+, Synology has also taken data safety into consideration and the NAS can operate even when two drives have failed without losing any of the information stored.
Thanks to its comprehensive iSCSI support, the DS2411+ can be seamlessly integrated with a wide series of virtualization solutions, including VMWare vSphere, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.
“The DS2411+ prepares SMBs for tomorrow’s data growth and demanding workloads, allowing them to tap into additional resources as needed,” said Chad Chiang, product manager of Synology Inc.
The Synology DS2411+ and its DX1211 expansion unit are now shipping globally. Prices start at $1,699 for the diskless version or the NAS, which is available from various online retailers, including Amazon.