Synology: Cheaper Alternative to Windows Home Servers
Shoebox servers using Microsoft’s Windows Home Server software provide easy networked access to photos, music, video, and all other data files throughout the house or small business office. If you want more performance and versatility for less money than, say, the HP MediaSmart Home Server, check out the Synology C𔗏e Cube Station.
The CS407e runs $500 street (bare, no drives) and is a small box with four bays, just like HP, and, unlike HP, a hardware RAID controller that handles RAID 0 (data striped into one big volume), RAID 1 (data mirrored, thus protected from drive failure), or RAID 5 (data striped, survives the failure of a drive). HP stops at RAID 1. HP has four USB jacks for adding additional external drives; Synology has two for external drives or a USB printer. The Synology advantage is affordable capacity: up to 3TB with the data protection of RAID 5 (using 1TB drives) vs. 2TB for HP with its RAID 1. With RAID 5, your secure data capacity is N-1 (N is the number of drives), meaning if you have four 1TB drives, you’ve got 3TB. With WHS/MediaSmart, capacity is N/2, or 2TB in the same scenario. Either can survive the loss of a drive.
The Synology CS407e and its harder-to-find big brother CS407 with a faster RAID controller ($650 street), can store and serve up media files on your network, has built-in services for the Web, FTP, iTunes, photo sharing, backup, and Bit Torrent downloads. It’s easy enough to set up as a file server. But there are two downsides compared to HP’s offering: Synology’s remote access that allows distant relatives to see your photos (PhotoStation), for instance, is trickier to implement and may be beyond the abilities of some casual users. While the elegant WHS photo viewer looks like a Media Center PC, Synology’s is cruder. Synology says it’s working on better documentation and wizards along with a less geeky PhotoStation display.
The price/performance math is pretty compelling. A Synology CS407e at $500 plus four 500GB drives at $100 each runs $900 and gives you 1.5TB secure capacity. An HP EX475 with two 500GB drives is $700 and two more drives would be the same $900 total but with 1TB total secure capacity. You’ve got to buy the HP server with at least one drive and your only choice is 500GB. To match Synology’s 1.5GB capacity you’d need to buy the EX470 with one drive ($600), set aside the 500GB drive, then buy four 750GB drives ($200 each), for a total cost of $1,400. Ka-ching. That’s about what I spent for a Synology CS407 system with four 750GB drives giving me 2.25TB total capacity. I′ve had it four months and it’s already half full.
Original post by Bill Howard