Presentation
Robust and imposing, the metal chassis of the DS508 has impeccable finishing touches. The five chariots for the drives move without forcing and each has a turn screw in order to avoid any accidental unplugging.
The motherboard is fits vertically on the left side of the casing. It integrates a Freescale MPC8543 800 MHz circuit which changes a bit from the omnipresent Marvell processors usually found in NAS. This is helped out by 8 MB of flash memory as well as 512 MB of RAM, or as much as the Thecus N5200BR Pro, two times that of the Qnap TS409 Pro, and four times that of the CS407.
With increased energy needs, Synology was also resolved to integrate a power source which is lodged in the upper part of the casing above the drives. This is obviously not without consequence on the cooling needs of the system – and therefore on noise levels – and the DS508 has no less than… three fans! Two 80 mm models are directly positioned behind the drives, while a third 40 mm one is entirely devoted to the power supply. While we could have legitimately feared for an increase in sound levels compared to the CS407 (with its single 80 mm fan), we can see that Synology did things very well as noise is equivalent for the two machines.
The double network connection serves in relaying the DS508 to two distinct networks, in other words, each port has its own IP address. Unfortunately, the device is not compatible with the IEEE 802.3ad norm, which would otherwise enable load balancing or to increase the tolerance to failover. It’s true that 802.3ad compatible network material is only encountered in professional environments; however, the DS508 precisely targets this type of use.
When asked about this, Synology confided to us that they were working on this function which is planned for the next big firmware evolution next September. Otherwise, its main rival, Thecus, already features this option on the N5200B Pro.
Set up
Setting up this NAS requires the use of the Synology Assistant tool which enables transferring the firmware on the drives and setting the system’s essentials parameters (notably, the IP address). Once this is done, you can connect to the system by simply entering the NAS’ IP address in your preferred web navigator. We didn’t have any problems with Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Once again we find the version 2.0 of the Disk Station Manager which is visually very elegant and boosted by JavaScript (Ajax). It’s obvious Synology has invested a lot in this aspect and it is indeed a success as much in ergonomics as in the variety of options. Of course, it’s true that once the essential parameters are set we do not make a daily visit to the control panel. Nevertheless, as we have seen a number of botched, incomprehensible, bugged, sparse and poorly translated interfaces, we can easily say that the one offered by Synology is a real competitive advantage.
Obviously, the first thing to do is create one or several logical volumes. The DS508 supports Raid 0, 1 and 5, as wells as a Jbod mode. This is the strict minimum and we would have liked to have seen a few more functions that, in our opinion, are indispensable for a product in this category:
- the possibility for Raid migration from one level to another. This enables notably to spread out the costs of getting your NAS up and running, for example, by starting with a single drive or two in Raid 1. Machines such as the Thecus N5200BR Pro or Qnap TS409 Pro offer this capability while saving data during the migration to Raid 5. On the DS508, the only interesting migration function resides in the possibility of increasing the number of Raid 5 units. This therefore implies starting with a minimum of 3 drives.
- it also lacks the possibility of opting for a two drive breakdown tolerance, at best in Raid 6, or at least being able to associate a spare drive (back up) to Raid 5. You may recall that this last option is only activated when a drive breakdowns and it is then integrated to storage. The inconvenience is that the system is left unprotected for several hours, the time for the new drive to be synchronized, although storage is secure following this operation. While Raid 6 support is planned in September’s firmware update, spare drive support is not on the program.
