Synology DS414 review

[Fezmid Reviews]

In case you missed it on the front page, here's a review I did of the Synology DS414:

https://www.neowin.net/news/review-of-the-synology-ds414-nas-device

 

If you have any questions about it, please don't hesitate to ask!

[Odom Member]

I'd be curious to know how it compares to the equivalent QNAP. Would you by any chance have a comparison of the two?

[episode]

I am thinking of doing an install of a DS414 for a small business (4 users). Do you think its worth the upgrade over the DS214? They don't have much data so it would be probably a 2x4TB or 4x4TB array. Obviously the 214 only supports RAID 0 and 1, but I didn't know about the Synology Hybrid RAID feature until reading your review, which is awesome and would make things much easier if a drive did die.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

but I didn't know about the Synology Hybrid RAID feature until reading your review, which is awesome and would make things much easier if a drive did die.

i use SHR on my DS409 at home. it's fantastic. you can mix-and-match drive capacities too. this allows for less wasted space and easy upgrade paths.

[Fezmid Reviews]

I'd be curious to know how it compares to the equivalent QNAP. Would you by any chance have a comparison of the two?

Unfortunately, I've never used a QNAP.  Let me reach out to the company to see if I can get on their review list as I think it'd be a good comparison.

I am thinking of doing an install of a DS414 for a small business (4 users). Do you think its worth the upgrade over the DS214? They don't have much data so it would be probably a 2x4TB or 4x4TB array. Obviously the 214 only supports RAID 0 and 1, but I didn't know about the Synology Hybrid RAID feature until reading your review, which is awesome and would make things much easier if a drive did die.

I think it might be worth the upgrade for the CPU and memory performance alone since you could potentially have four people hitting it at once.  The DS214 only has 512M and a (slightly) slower processor.

 

Combine that with SHR, and you'll be able to easily grow the array if the need arises.  That said, the DS214 does support hot-swappable disks as well, so replacing wouldn't be too difficult.

[Odom Member]

Unfortunately, I've never used a QNAP.  Let me reach out to the company to see if I can get on their review list as I think it'd be a good comparison.

 

 

Thanks a lot. I currently have a QNAP TS-459 Pro. Next year I will move into a new house and I need to figure out how to best hook up the computer, the NAS, the AV-Receiver and TV in the house. At the moment I have a smaller place and everything is right next to each other, but with the new place the idea is to have the NAS and PC further away and I need to figure out how to watch movies on the TV that I have stored there. Right now the TV shows as a second screen on my PC, I just open the movie on VideoLand and move it over to watch it.

 

I am considering getting an 8-bay QNAP, but I keep hearing good things about Synology. I would consider switching, even though I haven't been let down by QNAP so far.

[vanx]

As I commented in the news article, the box looks nice and user-friendly. Personally, its 20TB limit is a bit of a bottleneck for me, because it does not future-proof it very much. However, I fully recognise that there are people who will never hit those highs.

[Fezmid Reviews]

I'm currently reviewing another product that might fit your needs - it's the Thecus N5550, and while I haven't done much with it, it actually has an HDMI port so you can use it as your multimedia hub.  It'll probably be a few weeks before that review is finished, but keep an eye out for it.

As I commented in the news article, the box looks nice and user-friendly. Personally, its 20TB limit is a bit of a bottleneck for me, because it does not future-proof it very much. However, I fully recognise that there are people who will never hit those highs.

I saw your post on the article and I wasn't sure if you were kidding or not.  If you build the array with SHR, you could theoretically plug in larger drives when you need to -- assuming Synology updates the software to support them.

 

The Thecus N5550 I'm reviewing has 5 drive bays, so could get you a little more space there too, depending on how the review pans out.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

As I commented in the news article, the box looks nice and user-friendly. Personally, its 20TB limit is a bit of a bottleneck for me, because it does not future-proof it very much. However, I fully recognise that there are people who will never hit those highs.

out of curiosity, what do you do that requires so much storage space? 20TB is a LOT.

 

we have another Synology unit here at work that's used by 13 people. It's an RS3412RPxs w/ 22TB of usable storage. Theyre only using 3TB of it so far.

 

it should also be mentioned that several of their units support expansion shelfs. I just installed the RX410 last week to expand our RS810RP+. Super easy!

[vanx]

out of curiosity, what do you do that requires so much storage space? 20TB is a LOT.

 

You only have 20TB to play with if you use RAID0, which I think is playing with fire. I would want to use at least RAID6, so that is going to drop usable capacity down to 10TB right away.

[vanx]

I saw your post on the article and I wasn't sure if you were kidding or not.  If you build the array with SHR, you could theoretically plug in larger drives when you need to -- assuming Synology updates the software to support them.

 

Well I am not so familiar with Synology's SHR, whereas I know how typical RAIDs work. Also -- as per Synology's website -- additional usable capacity when swapping an existing drive with a larger one is only available once at least 4 bigger drives have been introduced.

[Fezmid Reviews]

I'd be curious to know how it compares to the equivalent QNAP. Would you by any chance have a comparison of the two?

 

It's not an apples-to-apples comparison (mainly due to the Celeron processor), but I just finished a review of the QNAP TS-451 and found it was really good.

 

https://www.neowin.net/news/qnap-ts451-review-storage-and-virtualization-in-one

 

However based on that CPU, it's also quite a big more expensive, so it all depends on your needs.  If you're currently happy with QNAP, I don't see a reason to switch just for the sake of switching.  But they're both high quality companies with little to complain about, IMHO.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I have the DS214+ myself. Love it. Upgraded from a DS211j and the responsiveness and overall speed is really a vast improvement.