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July 1, 2008
Quiet, Full Featured, RAID 5 Network Server
A Review of the Synology Cube Station model CS407
By Arthur Whalem
Synology is shipping the Cube Station CS407 ($599 MSRP). This powerful, yet quiet NAS box supports up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives that can be configured as Basic (single disks), RAID 0, RAID 1, or with a RAID 5 configuration. The CS407 is powered by a Marvell 5281, 500 MHz SOC processor with 128MB of DDR2 memory, two USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet and a 80mm cooling fan. The Cube Station CS407 provides file sharing services for Mac OS X, OS 9 and Windows computers. In addition, it can also be configured as a Web server, FTP server, iTunes server, Download station, Surveillance station and a Photo server. The Cube Station CS407 supports the UPnP multimedia protocol which allows devices that support this standard to stream audio, photos and video files from the CS407. The USB ports located on the CS407 can be used for printer sharing, adding storage or backing up data. The small foot print, RAID 5 data protection and large feature set provided by the Synology Cube Station makes it an ideal tool for expanding the functionality of office or home computer networks. The purpose of this review is to determine how the Synology Cube Station CS407 works with Macintosh computers.
System Requirements
Supports Mac OS X, OS 9 and Windows computers
Requires up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives
Supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and Basic single disks
Requires an ethernet network
SMTP support for email notification
What's Included?
The Synology Cube Station CS407 includes the enclosure, AC power adapter, power cord, ethernet cable, hard drive assembly kit and an installation CD.
HD InstallThe Synology Cube Station CS407 is shipped without hard drives. To install the hard drives, remove the four thumb screws on the rear of the enclosure. This will allow the back panel to lay flat. Next, push the top cover toward the rear of the enclosure so that it can be removed. Once the CS407 is open, users can install up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives.
For the purpose of this review, AMUG installed four Samsung 1TB model HD103UJ hard drives inside the Cube Station CS407. When formatted as a striped RAID set (RAID 0), this provided a formatted volume of approximately 3.65TB. With a RAID 5 configuration the volume size is approximately 2.7TB, as the space of one hard drive is used for parity data.
The Cube Station hard drive assembly kit includes hard drive screws and SATA power and data cables. These cables are used to power the hard drives and connect the SATA hard drive data connections to the motherboard. Disk drive #1 is mounted on the top and disk drive #4 is mounted on the bottom of the Synology Cube Station CS407. Two screws on each side of the enclosure hold the hard drives in place. If the user will be installing several hard drives, it is best not to tighten the screws until all of the hard drives are in place.
Once the SATA hard drive(s) are secure, the Cube Station CS407 cable kit is utilized to attach the SATA power and data cables. The SATA power cable connectors are located on the left side of the circuit board. The short SATA data cable is connected to the "disk #4" circuit board port and to the bottom hard drive. The slightly longer SATA data cables are utilized to connect each remaining hard drive. Once the cables and the hard drives are installed, the top panel can be replaced and the back panel secured with the four thumb screws.
Connections
The rear panel of the Synology Cube Station CS407 provides a quiet 80mm cooling fan followed by two USB 2.0 ports that can be used for local backup, printing or for expanding the amount of storage available on the network. The next port is the RJ-45 10/100/1000Mbps ethernet port. On the right side is the reset button. On the left side is the power adapter connector. The Cube Station CS407 rear panel is well marked and easy to use.
On the front of the Cube Station CS407, a blue power light is provided along with green status, LAN and disk activity lights. The front of the Cube Station CS407 is professional looking and provides the user with several indicators for monitoring the activity of the unit.
HardwareThe Synology Cube Station CS407 mother board is located under the hard drive chamber. This board functions as a small computer. It includes a Marvell 88F5281 SoC (System-on-Chip) 500 MHz processor, 128 MB of DDR2 Hynix SDRAM, 64MB of flash memory and a Marvell 88SX7042 PCIe to Serial ATA Controller chip. The CS407 supports up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives while providing low power consumption. The 88F5281 is a high performance integrated controller based on the Marvell Feroceon CPU core, which is compliant with ARMv5TE. The CS407 includes gigabit ethernet along with four channel SATA RAID 0, 1, 5 or Basic single disk capability and a large set of server applications for enhancing any computer network environment. Clicking on the motherboard image below will display a larger image.
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the Synology Cube Station CS407 utilizes 37-42 watts when operating with four Samsung 1TB model HD103UJ hard drives installed. The power management settings of the CS407 provide a "HDD Hibernation mode". This feature allows the hard drives to spin down after a preset amount of inactivity. The user can alter this setting to change the amount of time that is required to pass before hibernation is activated or remove the hibernation mode entirely.
Once the Cube Station CS407 has entered hibernation mode the energy usage for the hard drives installed usually drops a few watts. These features allow the Cube Station CS407 to automatically reduce its energy requirements when not in use. Users should be aware that the energy usage will vary depending on what hard drives are installed. AMUG also tested the power consumption with four Maxline III model 7V300F0 300GB hard drives in the CS407 and found that 47 watts were required while idle and 31 watts while in hibernation mode.
When the Cube Station CS407 is waking from hibernation mode with a four drive RAID 5 configuration it takes approximately 15 seconds for the hard drives to spin up and the CS407 to accept file sharing requests. This small delay does not seem unreasonable when you consider it will provide energy savings and may extend the life of the hard drives. If the user does not want the short wake up delay they can modify the power settings. In these tests, the Cube Station CS407 woke from hibernation mode each time without difficulties.
Initial Setup
In order to setup the Synology Cube Station CS407, the hard drive(s) must be installed and the unit should be powered and plugged into an ethernet network. Macintosh users will insert the Synology Install CD and copy the Mac OS X folder to the Macintosh hard drive. Users can also download the latest CS407 drivers posted on-line at synology.com. The firmware version used during this review was DSM 2.0-0637 released: 2008/06/17.
If you are downloading firmware files for use with a Synology NAS on a Macintosh you will need to know that Mac OS X 10.4.11 and Leopard have been changed so that the default unzipping behavior is "Keep expanding if possible". This setting causes Synology downloaded .pat files to be improperly decompressed. If Mac OS X 10.5.x "Leopard" is installed you can correct this issue by changing the setting by using the Archive Utility application. This application can be found at Macintosh HD:System:Library:CoreServices: Archive Utility. Once it is open, select the preferences and uncheck "Keep expanding if possible". This change will allow the .pat file not to be decompressed by Mac OS X. This tip also applies if you are using Stuffit Expander.
Once the Cube Station software is copied to the hard drive, users will launch the DSAssistant setup wizard to discover the Synology Cube Station CS407 and install the system software. The Mac OS X firewall may need to be turned off during the DSAssistant installation. Once the CS407 is discovered, DSAssistant will prompt the user to select the .pat installation file and the install process can begin. The .pat file used by AMUG was synology_88f5281_cs407_0637.pat. From this point, a web browser is used to configure the Synology Cube Station CS407 with the selected features desired by the user.
The new Synology Cube Station CS407 web interface provides several helpful wizards that allow users to easily setup the NAS features desired. Users will need to setup a password for the "admin" and establish individual user accounts. This process will determine what features are enabled and who can access them.
The default CS407 settings enable the guest account and include a public share. The guest account can be disabled by double clicking the "guest" account and checking the "Disable this account" box. If you are going to place files on the Cube Station CS407 that you do not want available to the public you may consider disabling the guest account. A usage quota can also be established for user accounts. The default setting is to provide unlimited user access.
Storage
Users can setup the hard drive(s) using the "Storage" Volume menu. Hard drives can be configured as Basic (individual drives), RAID 0 (combines 2~4 hard disks as a stripped RAID set ), RAID 1 (two hard disks are used to build a mirror volume) or RAID 5 (combines 3~4 hard disks to build a volume which stripes both data and parity information across the hard disks). If RAID 5 is selected, up to one of the hard disks can fail and the system can be rebuilt using the parity information on the remaining disks. The RAID 1 or RAID 5 settings are nice options for users looking for enhanced data security.
Once the Cube Station hard drive setup is configured, the "Shared folder" menu is used to create network volumes that can be accessed by users. At least one shared folder will need to be setup on the Cube Station CS407 so that users can access data on the hard drive(s).
In the example above, several shared folders have been created. These shared folders are used for different Cube Station server functions. The network2 shared folder was created to support private file sharing. The Cube Station CS407 works well with Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Windows clients. This is an ideal solution for sharing data in a network environment with mixed operating systems.
The beauty of the Synology Cube Station CS407 is that it provides a huge variety of network services. While file sharing between different computers is a great feature, the CS407 is also capable of providing ftp, web, streaming multimedia, download station and iTunes services. In addition, the new Synology software can also be used to host video surveillance IP cameras or SqueezeCenter.
Web Service
The Web Services menu of the Cube Station CS407 allows users to setup their own web site. Https and MySQL are available for those wanting to setup a database or an on-line store. Once a "web" network volume is established using the "Shared Folder Setup" menu, users can mount the web volume on the computer desktop and copy their web site data to it. Typing in the IP address of the Cube Station CS407 will display the web site. This is great for creating an internal web site, testing web design ideas or hosting your own web site without dedicating a computer to the task. As you can see in the image below setting up the Web services on the CS407 is as easy as checking a few preferences.
Surveillance Station
Synology is continually enhancing their software. The latest cool addition is Surveillance Station. Once Surveillance station is enabled in the Disk Station Manager 2.0 software and a network camera is attached, the user is ready to add video monitoring to their Synology NAS capabilities.
Surveillance Station is easy to configure. Simply setup the network camera and write down the username, password and the IP address. These items are entered into the Surveillance Station camera configuration window. AMUG installed a Panasonic model BL-C1 camera for these tests. However, the Synology software supports several different network camera models which are shown in the image on the right.The Cube Station CS407 comes with one free camera license. Additional camera licenses are available for $49.99 per camera. If an additional license key is inserted under the license menu the software features expand to support multiple camera viewing and recording. The Cube Station CS407 hardware can support up to five cameras.
By selecting the edit button, each camera can be configured to record during certain times using continuous or motion detection recording modes. The video data can also be limited to a certain quota size. The Panasonic BL-C1 camera used with this review was set at five frames/ sec. with a resolution of 320x240. The video recording format is AVI and required 204 MB of disk space for an hour of recording. Continuous recording for a day would require approximately 5GB of hard disk space. However, the motion detection option will require less disk space as it only records when it detects motion.
Clicking on the Events menu allows the user to play, delete or export Synology Surveillance Station recordings. The camera name, recording mode, start time, duration and size of the video are all provided.
The Surveillance Station software is a firmware upgrade. This update method allows existing Synology customers to add new features by simply upgrading their firmware. Synology NAS software is continually being improved which adds value to a Synology purchase.
Photo Station
Users can also create a "photo" network volume using the "Shared Folder Setup" menu. With the "Enable Photo Station" option checked, the Cube Station CS407 will turn on the Synology Photo Station 3 web services. Any images that are copied to the "photo" network volume can be viewed with a web browser by typing in the CS407 IP address with /photo at the end. An example URL would be http://192.168.0.78/photo with the IP numbers changed to reflect the IP address of the CS407.
The Photo Station 3 web service allows users on the network to browse the photo library, add descriptions, view slide shows and navigate between images. The user only needs to copy images to the photo network volume to add photos to the Photo Station 3 web service. Images can be configured as public or require the user to log in to view them. The Photo Station 3 web service design provides network users with lots of photo sharing options.
Movies
Another feature that the Cube Station CS407 Photo Station 3 application supports is streaming video. Users can place a video folder full of movies on the "photo" network volume and watch them using the same Photo Station 3 IP address. Movies streamed to the users browser will be limited to the video file formats that their particular browser supports. However, users can get around these file format limitations by using the VLC application with Photo Station 3.
To use VLC to play videos located on the CS407 photo volume, open VLC and select the File:Open command. Click on the network tab and select the HTTP button. Now paste the URL that shows up for the video in the Photo Station 3 browser window, into the URL field of the VLC window. This will allow VLC to play the movie while the source is streaming from the CS407. In this example, the CS407 is located at http://192.168.0.78/. Using the photosrc/video/LAST.avi path allows the video file named LAST.avi located on the "photo" network volume to play. VLC supports many more video formats than my web browser. Using this method allows the CS407 to stream MPEG 1, 2, 4, .VOB, AVI, and even HD formats to a computer client running VLC on the network. Large video formats streamed well over a wired network in these tests. Once the user understands how the URL formatting works, it is easy to stream movies from the CS407 to VLC.
iTunes ServiceTo setup the Cube Station CS407 iTunes Service, create a "music" network volume using the "Shared Folder Setup" menu. Next, navigate to the iTunes Service tab. Check the "Enable iTunes Service" box. Users can setup a custom shared name or use the default which is CubeStation. Another setting allows a password to be required for access. During these tests, no password was used in the setup. As the object of this feature is to share music on the network most users will probably not require a password.
With the CS407 iTunes Service setup complete, simply mount the "music" network volume on the Macintosh and copy individual songs to the volume or an entire iTunes folder. After the copy process is complete the CS407 will automatically index the new songs and share the music with iTunes clients connected to the network. To access the Cube Station iTunes Service launch iTunes and click on the CubeStation shared folder icon under "SHARED".
This feature allows network users to easily share a music library without having to copy the songs to each computers hard drive. Using the Synology Cube Station CS407 as an iTunes Server is a great way to provide an instant music library to users on the network. If music is added or erased from the CS407 "music" volume the iTunes Service listing is automatically updated by the Cube Station software. One nice feature provided with iTunes sharing is that the music network volume does not need to be mounted on the users computer. Only registered users mount the "music" volume on their desktop for making changes to the music available. In addition, if the music copied to the Cube Station has album cover art assigned before it is copied, the album cover art will also show up when using the Cube Station iTunes Service. However, once the music is copied to the Cube Station, cover art cannot be altered or added.
iTunes Service Limitations
The Cube Station CS407 iTunes Service only supports MP3 and AAC audio formats without DRM. Audio files with an extension of .mp3 or .m4a will play using the CS407 iTunes Service. However, AIFF audio files (.aif) and iTunes Music Store purchases (.m4p) will not be displayed in the CubeStation shared music directory. AIFF audio files can be converted to the Apple Lossless format using iTunes before copying them to the Cube Station CS407. Apple Lossless data is stored in an MP4 container with an extension of .m4a. This codec is designed to reduce the AIFF file size without a loss of acoustical information. As the Apple Lossless file has a .m4a extension it is able to be shared via the CS407 iTunes Service. This conversion of AIFF audio files to the Apple Lossless format has the advantage of providing high quality, smaller audio files that are compatible with the CS407 iTunes Service. One issue that was discovered during these tests was that the iTunes "Artist" field for .m4a formatted songs was empty when accessed via a shared iTunes connection. This is a known bug that Synology is planning to correct in September, 2008.
Apple Store Music
If users have purchased DRM encrypted music from the Apple Music Store they can still store the files on the Cube Station CS407 and play them using iTunes (even though they will not work with the iTunes Service).
To do this simply copy the iTunes Store purchased music to a folder on the music network volume of the Cube Station. Then open the iTunes Preference menu and select Advanced. Now uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library".
Next, create a new playlist in iTunes. In the example below, the new playlist is called CS407. While the CS407 music network volume is mounted on the desktop, drag and drop the folder of DRM music files to the CS407 playlist window. A new iTunes playlist will be created using the audio files selected from the CS407. The Apple Store purchased songs and AIFF files will now play. This method of configuring iTunes will support every audio format that iTunes supports. In addition, the Artist information is available. The only requirement is that the "music" network volume will need to be mounted on the computer when playing music listed in this playlist. If the music volume is not mounted, Mac OS X will prompt the user to mount the volume once one of the songs is selected for playback.
Front Row Compatibly
The Cube Station CS407 "iTunes Service" is compatible with Front Row using the current DSM 2.0-0598; released 04-15-2008. However, Front Row is not compatible with Synology video sharing. The user can get around this issue by following the steps below.
Getting CS407 Videos to play with Front Row
To play videos stored on the Cube Station CS407 with Front Row, users can create a video folder on the CS407 "photo" network volume. Once the video folder is created on the "photo" network volume and a few videos have been copied to the folder, select the video folder and use the File menu to make an alias (command L). Place this alias in the users movie folder. Now launch Front Row and select the videos icon, next open the "Movies" selection and scroll down to the "video" folder and click on it. Inside are all of the movies stored on the CS407 network drive.
Selecting a movie will play it using Front Row. One fact to remember is that if the CS407 photo network volume is not mounted the alias will not be displayed in Front Row. Another interesting fact is that if you change the name of the alias Front Row will still show the name of the original folder on the CS407. I like using the photo share for this purpose as these same movies can be used with VLC on another computer without mounting the photo volume.
Download Station
Synology provides a Macintosh and a PC "Download Redirector" application with their NAS units. This application allows users to drag and drop a download link from any web browser to the Download Redirector application window for downloading files directly to the NAS. This also works with BitTorrent files.
This is an awesome feature for downloading large files to a central location and not having to keep the computer on during the download process. Users can initiate the download(s) and know they will be on the CS407 later when needed. I love this feature for downloading large Mac OS X combo updates, developer CDs, video files or any large files that I want to share with other computers on the network or files that I do not want to store on the notebook.
Synology is the only NAS company that I have seen that offers a Macintosh application for easy interaction with the Download Station feature. The other NAS units that AMUG has tested either do not support this feature or only provide a download station application for the PC. If you are a Macintosh user, Synology is a great NAS choice.
Multimedia Service
The Synology Cube Station CS407 also supports the UPnP DMA (Digital Media Adapter) format. To setup Multimedia service open the Multimedia Service window from the CS407 web setup application. Check "Enable UPnP support" and set the DMA Codepage setting to match the UPnP device that will be connected to the CS407.
The Cube Station can play multimedia files located on the music, photo or video shared folders of the CS407. The official list of compatible Digital Media Adapter clients that Synology has tested with the Cube Station include the following:
In addition, users are reporting that several other players also work with the Disk Station UPnP Multimedia Service.
All of these multimedia UPnP players are designed to allow PC users to stream audio, video and photos to the home theatre. Macintosh users should be able to get these UPnP clients to work with the Cube Station CS407 based on user feedback. However, as AMUG has not tested them you may want to purchase from a reputable store that accepts returns.
Elgato sells EyeConnect. It is a software solution that allows Macintosh users to to stream media from their computer to UPnP compatible players. They have a compatibility list posted here. However, if Cube Station works with the UPnP player I selected, I would rather just copy the multimedia files to the Cube Station so that my computer does not need to be left on to play movies or audio selections while using the home theatre. The Cube Station CS407 Multimedia Service provides Macintosh users with a method for interfacing with a wide variety of UPnP players without requiring a PC.
SqueezeCenter Support
Users that own a Squeezebox or Transporter sold by Slim Devices may wonder if the Synology Cube Station can be used to stream music to these units. While the Cube Station CS407 does not officially support the Squeezebox, Synology has posted a tech note on this issue. It recommends that users refer to the SSODS information posted at http://oinkzwurgl.org/ssods. SlimServer On DiskStation (SSODS) or SqueezeStation is an add-on to the Cube Station firmware (operating system) which allows the Synology NAS to be used as a SqueezeCenter server. The package installs using the Disk Station firmware upgrade routine. SSODS runs on a wide range of Synology hardware. The CS407 is an amazing powerful NAS which works well as a SqueezeCenter server.
I downloaded the ssods-3.0beta13-armv5tejl.zip for ARMv5tejl based devices and updated the Cube Station CS407 firmware using the ssods-3.0beta13-armvtejl.pat file that is included in the zip archive.
After the firmware update is completed a link is displayed showing the user where to go to setup SSODS. The link will be the IP address of the Synology CS407 with port 9099 attached to the end of the url.
With SSODS installed the next step is to download SqueezeCenter_7.0.1.tqz. I simply copied the file to the CS407 "public" share and then used SSODs to install it. You need to be sure that SqueezeCenter is still compressed. If the browser decompresses the file during the download process it will not install. This is not a problem using the Macintosh but Explorer on Windows decompresses the file to a .tar file instead of leaving it as .tqz.
Once SqueezeCenter was installed I configured it to access all of the songs on the music share and to store playlists on the music share of the CS407. I can turn the SqueezeCenter on or off using a web browser on port 9099 of the CS407.
Once the SqueezeCenter is turned on, all of the music on the Cube Station CS407 is available to Squeezebox players which can be hooked up to stereo systems throughout the home or office. This same music can be accessed and controlled via a web interface using port 9000 on the CS407.
SqueezeCenter server functionality worked well with the Cube Station CS407 during my tests with Squeezebox players. While you could also use SqueezeCenter on a Mac mini, it would not provide the capability to mount four 3.5" SATA hard drives or provide built-in RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID 5 capabilities in a single small case. The ability to setup a large NAS for network services and to use it as a Squeezebox server is awesome.
The Synology Cube Station CS407 provides three methods for backing up data stored on the NAS. These include configuration backup, local backup and network backup. Network backup requires a second Synology NAS with "Network Backup Service" enabled or a rsync-compatible server. The advantage of this method is that if Cube Station data is lost the network backup can be used to repopulate the data. When data is backed up to a Synology NAS it is placed in a new share called NetNackup. By default this share is not available to users. The data can be encrypted if the user has a second Synology NAS or a server that supports encryption. This is a great feature for configuring on or off site backup.
Local Backup
The local backup method involves connecting a USB drive to the Cube Station and using it for backup. The problem with this method is that the web interface does not provide a direct method for copying the USB backup drive data back to the Cube Station via USB. Instead, users have to reinstall the volume, rebuild the system using DSAssistant, restore the system configuration using a .dss file that hopefully was saved. Next, the passwords may need to be reset, all of the network services have to be reconfigured, SMTP has to be setup for email notifications and the time server needs to be reconfigured. Next, the user mounts the USBbackup network volume on a computer while logged in as admin and then copies all of the data back over the network to the various CS407 shared volumes. This method provides a slow data recovery process. Each network volume has to be copied separately. By any measure, local USB backup is a slow recovery method but it will work. The Cube Station local backup function should provide users with a complete recovery capability that allows for the reinstallation of all data and settings via the USB port. Until that feature is available, Cube Station recovery using a USB drive can be time consuming.
RAID 1 and 5
The Cube Station CS407 quad drive hardware has the advantage of supporting RAID 1 and 5. If a hard drive fails in this configuration, a new hard drive can be installed and the RAID 1/5 volume rebuilt. As a test, one of the RAID 5 hard drives was removed from the CS407 to simulate a hard disk failure. The CS407 began to beep. The unit was turned off, a new hard drive installed and the CS407 was powered back on. The unit began to beep again. I opened the web manager and pushed the beep off button. Next, using the web manager the new hard drive was initialized and the "Repair" button was pushed to start the RAID 5 rebuilding process. After two hours and 40 minutes, a four drive (821GB) RAID 5 configuration was finished rebuilding. All of the settings and the data was intact with no further user maintenance required. I also tried this test by inserting new larger hard drives one at a time, rebuilding the RAID 5 and once all four larger drives were formatted with RAID 5, I was able to push the expand button to increase the volume size without reformatting. During these tests, the RAID 5 volume was rebuilt eight different times and always recovered.
The new Synology Disk Station Manager provides lots of hard disk expansion capabilities and a great RAID 5 implementation for added data security. Hard drive temperatures are also available in the "Get Info" screen.
Using the Basic or the RAID 0 configuration available with the Cube Station CS407 will require the user to depend on the local USB backup method or network backup for data protection. I found recovering from a hard drive failure using the USB backup method was significantly more time consuming than when recovering with a RAID 5 configuration. When critical data is stored on the CS407, using a RAID 1 or RAID 5 configuration and creating a local USB backup copy or a network backup provides increased backup protection.
In this section, the Cube Station CS407 network file copy performance was tested. A 1.09GB video file was copied between the Synology Cube Station CS407, a Mac Pro 2.8 GHz and a Mac mini 1.66 GHz. Four Samsung 1TB hard drives were installed and configured in various disk modes. A gigabit ethernet network was utilized. The purpose of these tests was to determine how the file server performance of the CS407 would compare against using a Macintosh file server instead.
The Mac Pro and the Mac mini were able to copy the 1.09GB video file to and from each computer in approximately 34-35 seconds. That was used as the baseline performance result that I would expect from a Mac server performing this task.
The Cube Station CS407 performed this copy test faster with the Mac Pro 2.8 GHz model. Enabling jumbo frame support with an MTU value of 9000 was also tested with the CS407 and the Mac Pro. However, that setup resulted in slower write performance for the CS407 than when the jumbo frames setting was disabled and a MTU value of 1500 was used. The results are provided below.
Cube Station CS407 Copy 1.09GB Video File Speed Test
| DS Config. |
Copy From
|
Copy To
|
Time in Seconds
|
File Size
|
| Jumbo Frames |
Mac Pro 2.8
|
CS407
|
126
|
1.09GB
|
| MTU 9000 |
CS407
|
Mac Pro 2.8
|
38
|
|
| Mac Server | ||||
| Mac mini 1.66 | Mac Pro 2.66 |
34
|
1.09GB
|
|
| Mac Pro 2.66 | Mac mini 1.66 |
35
|
||
| Single Drive | ||||
| Disable Jumbo |
CS407
|
Mac Pro 2.8
|
38
|
1.09GB
|
| MTU 1500 |
CS407
|
Mac mini 1.66
|
39
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac mini 1.66
|
CS407
|
67
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac Pro 2.8
|
CS407
|
65
|
|
| RAID 0 (4) | ||||
| (1500) |
CS407
|
Mac Pro 2.8
|
35
|
1.09GB
|
| (1500) |
CS407
|
Mac mini 1.66
|
39
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac mini 1.66
|
CS407
|
68
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac Pro 2.8
|
CS407
|
66
|
|
| RAID 1 (2) | ||||
| (1500) |
CS407
|
Mac Pro 2.8
|
37
|
1.09GB
|
| (1500) |
CS407
|
Mac mini 1.66
|
39
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac mini 1.66
|
CS407
|
70
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac Pro 2.8
|
CS407
|
70
|
|
| RAID 5 (4) | ||||
| (1500) |
CS407
|
Mac Pro 2.8
|
35
|
1.09GB
|
| (1500) |
CS407
|
Mac mini 1.66
|
36
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac mini 1.66
|
CS407
|
92
|
|
| (1500) |
Mac Pro 2.8
|
CS407
|
87
|
The Synology Cube Station CS407 file copy performance with a single drive, RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration is very similar. However, the RAID 5 write performance is approximately 20% slower due to the extra IOs required for parity calculations.
In the next performance test, the Helios LanTest X 4.5 application was used on a Mac Pro 2.8 GHz and a Mac mini 1.66 GHz to test how they perform as servers. Next, the Cube Station CS407 was tested with a single 1TB Samsung disk using basic mode, RAID 1 using two Samsung 1TB disks, RAID 0 using four 1TB Samsung disks and with RAID 5 using the same four 1TB hard disks. For comparison, the results of a Disk Station 207 in RAID 1 mode was added. The results are provided below.
Based on these tests, the $2799 Mac Pro 2.8 provides the fastest network performance results. That is not a surprise! The Apple Mac mini 1.66 also provides higher network performance than the CS407. However, the Mac mini does not support four internal 3.5" SATA hard drives or RAID 5.
Helios LanTest 4.5 Performance Results
| Server | Mac Pro | Mac mini | CS407 | CS407 | CS407 | CS407 | DS-207 |
| Mode | Single | Single | Single | RAID 1 | RAID 0 | RAID 5 | RAID 1 |
| Write | 50.38 | 48.32 | 21.75 | 20.16 | 21.55 | 17.06 | 8.44 |
| Read | 69.16 | 42.60 | 36 | 33.8 | 32.72 | 30.37 | 14.75 |
In the AMUG copy tests, the read performance of the Synology Cube Station CS407 was very good. However, when writing to the CS407 the performance was approximately twice as slow as when using the Macintosh as a server. This is not unexpected. The Apple computers have processors that are 3x to 20x faster than the 500MHz Marvell 88F5281 SoC (System-on-Chip) installed in the CS407. On the other hand, when you compare the Cube Station CS407 performance against the older Synology Disk Station DS-207 you start to realize that the CS407 design provides double the network performance and four drive RAID 0, 1 and 5 capabilities. The ability to provide all of these network services and support four internal 3.5" SATA hard drives while only requiring approximately 40 watts of energy is very nice.
The Synology Cube Station CS407 provides an amazing amount of network services in a small, quiet design. It supports up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives, gigabit ethernet and RAID 0, 1, 5 or Basic single disks. The RAID 1 (mirror) and RAID 5 (parity) configurations provide data redundancy which can help users recover should a hard disk failure occur. While the Cube Station CS407 does not provide as much horse power as a standalone server, it only utilizes a fraction of the energy while providing file sharing, a web server, FTP, iTunes server, a download station, surveillance station, a Photo server and streaming video services.The addition of terminal services provided in the last firmware update will help users to expand the possibilities of the Synology NAS even more. The web interface provided with the Cube Station CS407 is easy to use and adds an amazing amount of advanced network services that are continually being updated and expanded by Synology.
The Cube Station CS407 does have some limitations. AIFF files are not supported by the iTunes server and the iTunes "Artist" field for .m4a formatted songs is not displayed. In addition, if RAID 5 is configured, write performance will be approximately 20% slower than a RAID 0 or a Basic (single disk) configuration.
Synology has informed AMUG that the iTunes "Artist" field for .m4a formatted songs will be supported in a new firmware update scheduled for September 2008. In addition, local backup recovery via USB is scheduled to be added by March of 2009. Synology is continually improving their software which allows users to enjoy these improvements with a simple firmware upgrade.
Pros
Supports up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives as Basic, RAID 0, 1 or 5.
Shares files between OS 9, OS X and Windows.
Provides file, web and ftp network services.
Supports CIFS, AFP and FTP.
Supports iTunes and UPnP DMA clients.
Front Row iTunes support.
Front Row video is supported if the network volume is mounted.
Includes Photo Station 3 web software.
Provides Download Station support.
Provides Surveillance Station support.
Slimserver and SqueezeCenter support is available.
Web Manager displays hard drive temperatures.
Supports hibernation mode for hard drives.
Excellent RAID rebuilding capability.
Quiet fan keeps hard drives cool.
SMTP support for email notification.
Postscript USB printer sharing feature.
PHP/MySQL support.
Excellent read performance.
Hard drive failure alarm.
Low power usage.
Easy to install.
Small foot print.
Cons
AIFF not supported.
iTunes "Artist" field for .m4a not supported.
Streaming video support should be added for Front Row.
Hot swap trays would provide easier hard drive mounting.
RAID 5 write performance is slower than when using a single disk.
Multiple users with large file sharing demands may slow performance.
Cube Station CS407 gets 4.5 AMUGs out of 5!
Since the AMUG review of the Disk Station DS-207 was published in April of 2007, Synology has been busy upgrading their software and hardware. The CS407 provides twice the hard disk capacity, RAID 5, twice the network performance, Terminal, Surveillance Station, Front Row iTunes support and an enhanced web manager. In addition, the Marvell 5281 allows Slimserver to work well with the CS407. If you are looking for a NAS with an advanced set of network features the Synology Cube Station CS407 is a great choice.
Synology America Corp.2701 152nd Ave. NE
Redmond, WA 98052
Phone: (425) 284-2107
http://www.synology.com/
Copyright 2008
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG). Visit AMUG at www.amug.org for news, discounts and friends. JOIN AMUG!