Synology DS211+ Network Attached Storage Device Review

Benchmarks
For a simple benchmark, I compare performance of the Synology DS-211+ with my QNAP TS-809 Pro. The DS-211+ has a Feroceon 88FR131 1.6 GHz ARM processor with 512 MB of RAM, and the TS-809 has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 2 GB of RAM. Hard drive wise, the DS-211+ has two Seagate ST3100030AS 1 TB hard drives configured in a RAID0 array, while the TS-809 has four Seagate 750 GB drives from various generations, all within the last two years, configured in a RAID5 array.

The TS-809 may have been under some load during these tests, as its numbers are a little worse than previous tests.

As with all of my tests, I use a RAM disk for benchmarks. I create a RAM disk, generally on a recent Linux system, and copy any testing files to that RAM disk. Using a RAM disk removes hard drive access from the equation, thereby showing the fastest speeds possible without trying to fit a several hundred megabyte file into the CPU’s ~4-12 MB L2 or L3 cache.

For this particular benchmarking session, I used the ASRock Core 100HT nettop that ThinkComputers reviewed last summer. It sports a Core i3 and 4 GB of DDR3 — enough for my tastes for this business-class benchmark.

For most of the file transfers, I used a 476 MB file which just so happens to be the Linux installer for Heroes of Newerth, a favorite game around Pittco circles and one I just recently bought.

[colin@bricktop colin on syno]$ ls -lah /tmp/ramdisk/HoNClient-2.0.21.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 colin colin 476M 2011-03-31 19:47 /tmp/ramdisk

My methodology is to copy the file to the share a couple of times, noting the first and finding the average of the others, since the cache is then primed. The number I report is the average of the first and the others’ average.

On to the results!

SMB

Device Write Read
Synology DS-211+ 3.55 MB/s 17.88 MB/s
Qnap TS-809 Pro 6.31 MB/s 48.14 MB/s

The Qnap TS-809 clearly outperforms. It should – it’s meant for SMB storage.

NFS

Device Write Read
Synology DS-211+ 50.77 MB/s 100.01 MB/s
Qnap TS-809 Pro 45.04 MB/s 60.72 MB/s

Here we can see the DS-211+ shine. Its NFS times are just short of Synology’s claims of 108 MB/s read and 55 MB/s write. In disbelief, I tried another quick benchmark, tranferring a directory of MP3s which just so happened to be approximately 476 MB as well. It was

I’ve always found QNAP’s NFS performance to be above average, despite an arguable focus on SMB. Synology must have really focused on NFS performance for their recent products!

One more NFS test

In this last test, I wrote 1495.375 MB to the each NFS share directly from /dev/urandom to measure a larger file read. The write speed doesn’t mean much here — this machine is only capable of outputting ~6.2 MB/s from /dev/urandom anyway.

Device Write Read
Synology DS-211+ 45.38 MB/s 80.96 MB/s
Qnap TS-809 Pro 17.90 MB/s 53.92 MB/s

The Synology DS-211+ takes the cake here, too.

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