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Synology Brings Flexible, Scalable NAS to SMBs

End users at small and medium businesses (SMBs) hit Save countless times a day so they can store information on their computer or on network drives. It's such a simple task that you wouldn't know that storage is likely the one area of information technology that causes the most issues for SMBs – unless you're responsible for storage at such an organization. 

February 1, 2010  


fact sheet
Vendor: Synology (http://www.synology.com/us/index.php)

Vendor's Information:
About Synology


Storage is where enterprise problems meet small business budgets. While enterprises have an IT staff, the tech department at an SMB might consist of one person and chances are that person isn't an expert on storage.

SMBs that do business with public companies, government agencies, or in certain industries can be subject to the same legal and regulatory requirements as large enterprise, which means communications and documents need to be saved in a secure and retrievable manner. They also deal with an increasing amount of electronic data in its many forms, from simple documents to multimedia files, CAD files, video, or even medical images. The good old PC or external hard drive just can't keep up.

Enter network-attached storage (NAS), which is simply the industry term for storage that lives on the network and can be accessed by other machines on the same network. For many small businesses it's the first step up from storing information locally on individual machines. Some SMB users might even be adopting NAS solutions at home to manage their growing collection of digital media like music, videos, and more.

Synology is one NAS vendor that caters to home and business users with three separate product lines aimed at the "prosumer" audience, home offices/workgroup, and the SMB/small enterprise market. The company's NAS products offer users flexibility, scalability, and easy management.

CANDAC, the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change, is a partnership of university researchers, government entities, and nonprofit foundations that research atmospheric change. It runs Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), the planet’s northernmost permanent geostationary communications link in the Canadian Arctic.

With data storage systems that collect research information and share it across research stations and universities across thousands of miles, CANDAC is upgrading its NAS from Synology CS407s to Synology's DS409+, a member of Synology's business-class DiskStation family. The upgrade will allow CANDAC to prepare for the future by protecting its valuable research with RAID 5, secure FTP connections, and remote backups.

“We have about 6 TB of raw data. However, we expect that amount will increase dramatically after data processing and quality control,” said Yan Tsehtik, CANDAC Data Manager. With that much data being transmitted over such a large area the increased performance of the DS409+ will help keep CANDAC data available to their entire organization without delay.

CANDAC's solution needed to be reliable, scalable, and it had to meet the budget of a nonprofit organization. “We needed large storage systems that could be rapidly switched between computer systems and even transported from site-to-site when necessary,” Yan said.

The New Synology DS1010+
The latest addition to Synology's business-class family is the DiskStation DS1010+, a five-bay NAS machine designed for small and medium businesses with growing storage needs who want an affordable alternative to a PC file server to centralize data backups, protect critical assets, and share files remotely. The DS1010+ can be extended to 10 bays with an expansion called the DX510. Once expanded, users will have disk space for up to 20 TB of data.

Twenty terabytes of data will satisfy the storage needs of most small and medium businesses, but capacity is only part of the battle when it comes to storage. Synology designs its NAS devices so they can be set up and managed by users with elementary network knowledge, which means up to 20 TB of data are available and users still get to hear those magic words:

"You don't need a full-time IT person," said Heather Morford, Director, Public Relations/Marketing North America at Synology.

The DS1010+ is a new product, but it comes from good genes. In addition to the DS409+ CANDAC is installing in the arctic wilderness, its predecessors include the DiskStation 509+, which was released in 2009 and was named Top NAS Choice by PC World.

How did Synology improve on its award winner? Start with a new Intel Atom Dual-Core Processor D510, which gives the DS1010+ write speeds that are 250 percent faster than the DS509+; two Gigabit LAN ports; four USB ports; and 1 GB DDRII RAM. With an optional RAM module, the RAM capacity can be scaled up to 2 GB or 3 GB.

Synology produces both the hardware and software for its products, which is rare among NAS vendors. Its integrated firmware, called DiskStation Manager, is mature, tested and uses a wizard-driven Web user interface for easy management. (Remote access is also available using mobile phone and iPhone/iPod applications.)

Thanks to the seamless integration of the hardware and DiskStation Manager, the DS1010+ can perform many storage and networking tasks for small and medium businesses, including file-sharing, Web hosting, print server, media serving, mail hosting, audio station, RAID management, surveillance video storage, and more. There are more benefits to a seamless integration than just having built-in server functionality. It simplifies the management of the NAS server with feature like auto notifications for failed disks or when capacity is full.

The DiskStation Manager is open firmware based on Linux, so users that have the IT staff or the knowledge to build new applications for your DiskStation are free to get creative

The DS1010+ is seamlessly cross-platform, so whether the existing IT infrastructure is based on Windows machines, Macs, Linux, or a combination thereof, the NAS won't have an issue playing nice with others.

The DiskStation Manager firmware, which ships with all Synology DiskStation products, has no extra client or user-access licenses. As part of Synology's in-house support program (based in the U.S. office in Redmond, Wash.), customers get free firmware updates as long as the hardware will support the software. There's also a three-year warranty.

The DS1010+ ships with version 2.2 of Disk Station Manager, but will upgrade to version 2.3 once it emerges from beta in 2010.

The DiskStation 1010+ is sold pre-configured or diskless and it's available through Synology channel partners and retailers such Amazon.com.

   
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