Synology DS211 NAS Review – the ultimate budget NAS?

1. Introduction2. Synology Diskstation DS2113. The DiskManager 3.0 Operating System4. Testing Methodology and Performance5. Acoustics, Power Consumption and Power Drain6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

We are testing the Synology DS211 within our gigabit network which is pretty much as good as you will get for a home or small office environment. It is a mixed network with several 1GBit switches for ultimate performance.

Reference Test PC:
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 @ 4ghz
Storage: Kingston 128GB SSD V+ Series
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Gene
Graphics: Geforce GTX285 2GB
Memory: Corsair Dominator 1600mhz @2000mhz
Network: 2x Belkin 16 Port Gigabit Switches
Operating System: Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate

Firstly we perform a native network test to ascertain pure data throughput. Jumbo Frames have been set to 9k.

Data throughput is staggering, especially considering the modest price point.

We averaged around 51 mb/s when writing to the DS211, this puts it into the highest performance bracket in the sub £300 market.

CPU time hovers around the 60% mark when writing to the Raid configuration with around 15% of memory utilised (around 45mb).

When reading to the DS211 we average around 98 mb/s which is fantastic for this targeted sector, vastly superior to anything else we have ever tested at this price.

We then read the same file back from the DS211, averaging around 98mb/s. CPU use drops to around 50% and memory demands are unchanged. We like the way Diskmanager colour codes read and write graphs with green and red respectively.

Next we created a folder of files, 500mb/s in size with a variety of data , from small database documents to larger jpgs and bmps. We expect to pay a slight penalty as we are using Jumbo frames set to 9k, however performance should still be good.

Mixed file transfer is very strong, falling in line with what we would expect.

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