DS1010+ vs QNAP 459 Pro

[bobber]

Hi all,

Looking to purchase NAS for home that will be used for a variety of things such as storage, media sharing and also possibly iSCSI host for testing Virtualised boxes (I am an IT Professional).
I will be using either in Raid 5 configuration with either 4/5 disks dependent on which is purchased.
I was looking at the 459 Pro especially as it seems to do iSCSI very well.
However I have been seeing good things about the DS1010+ from Synology.

Does anyone have any views on these or used side by side?

Thanks

bobber

 

[PowerMAC]

I think you missed the following thread, read the whole thread for interesting info. Here it is: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=2855

Beware: the latest Synology firmware gives a lot of problems to many users. (and with Synology it's not easy, if at all possible, to downgrade the firmware.)

 

[bobber]

Thanks PowerMAC.

I had not seen that thread

Is the firmware thatmuch of an issue then?
Will have a read in the Synology forum when I get 5

 

[PowerMAC]

Yeah, from what I've read there are several issues with the latest Synology firmware, and unlike with QNAP, you cannot (easily) downgrade firmware with Synology. But go read the thread I linked to and look at my Comparison list you'll see for yourself, e.g. the QNAP is VMWare Certified etc.

Personally I would go for the QNAP TS-459 Pro. (fyi, I already have a QNAP TS-509 Pro and it's rock solid and extremely powerful)

 

[bobber]

Cheers again PowerMAC.....

Just trying to read as many reviews as I can at the mo......

 

[ntm1275]

I have a Synology DS1010+, DS209+II and DS207+, and there is absolutely no serious issue with the current firmware as PowerMac tries to make out

All three have run faultlessly 24/7 since I've had them

The main thing that he may have heard is of poor performance with 'green' drives, but this is down to the original formating of the drives, not the Synology firmware
Once the drives are correctly formatted, everything is OK

There are always minor bugs in new firmware, which also included QNAP, so don't be swayed either way by hearsay

Look at the posts on the Qnap and Synology forums and judge for yourself - get the proper facts first from users of both manufacturers

 

[PowerMAC]

I have a Synology DS1010+, DS209+II and DS207+, and there is absolutely no serious issue with the current firmware as PowerMac tries to make out

All three have run faultlessly 24/7 since I've had them

The main thing that he may have heard is of poor performance with 'green' drives, but this is down to the original formating of the drives, not the Synology firmware
Once the drives are correctly formatted, everything is OK

There are always minor bugs in new firmware, which also included QNAP, so don't be swayed either way by hearsay

Look at the posts on the Qnap and Synology forums and judge for yourself - get the proper facts first from users of both manufacturers

Hi ntm1275, I'm glad for you that the current firmware solved most of the problems. There were lots of problems with firmware 1139 (memory and connection related) when it first came out and my earlier post was referring to that release so I was not trying to make out anything.

The fact remains that with Synology it is very difficult (if at all possible) to downgrade the firmware.

Since I think I've read it somewhere, if you don't mind me asking: the DS1010+ that you now own, did you get it for free from Synology? Does Synology expect anything in return? Thanks!

 

[ntm1275]

The downgrade of the firmware is entirely possible, but as you say is not a straight forward task, but then again it also isn't that difficult

Yes Synology supplied me with a DS1010+ to test with as an independant tester and I have posted a review which you have probably already seen

In the review I have tried my best to be unbiased and only to give the fact as I see them, and would have done the same if Qnap had sent me a 459

As for your question whether 'does Synology expect anything in return', I can understand your reservations that I may be somehow connected to Synology, but I can assure you that this is not the case

I post on many forums, and as a Synology user, I give my advise to those that ask

I appologise if my last post seemed a little hostile towards you, but your posts did have an tone of bias towards Qnap over Synology without providing any evidence

Different opinions are a healthy thing, but unbiased facts are better when users are asking for help

Both the DS1010+ and 459 Pro are excellent machines, with good points and bad points and would suit any user perfectly well, just as long as they can afford them as they are both expensive machines

 

[PowerMAC]

The downgrade of the firmware is entirely possible, but as you say is not a straight forward task, but then again it also isn't that difficult

Yes Synology supplied me with a DS1010+ to test with as an independant tester and I have posted a review which you have probably already seen

In the review I have tried my best to be unbiased and only to give the fact as I see them, and would have done the same if Qnap had sent me a 459

As for your question whether 'does Synology expect anything in return', I can understand your reservations that I may be somehow connected to Synology, but I can assure you that this is not the case

I post on many forums, and as a Synology user, I give my advise to those that ask

I appologise if my last post seemed a little hostile towards you, but your posts did have an tone of bias towards Qnap over Synology without providing any evidence

Different opinions are a healthy thing, but unbiased facts are better when users are asking for help

Both the DS1010+ and 459 Pro are excellent machines, with good points and bad points and would suit any user perfectly well, just as long as they can afford them as they are both expensive machines

I accept your apologies.

May be you missed my list of unbiased facts:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=17213&postcount=5

We all have our preferences and opinions, the notable difference in this discussion is that I paid for my QNAP TS-509 with my own money, you were given your DS1010+ by Synology for free.

Just remember "There's no such thing as a free lunch".

 

[ntm1275]

I except your apologies.

May be you missed my list of unbiased facts:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=17213&postcount=5

We all have our preferences and opinions, the notable difference in this discussion is that I paid for my QNAP TS-509 with my own money, you were given your DS1010+ by Synology for free.

Just remember "There's no such thing as a free lunch".

No Problem, but at the moment I don't know whether Synology will eventualy ask for DS1010+ back, so my main NAS is still my DS209+II

Yes, sorry I did miss your post in the link you provided

To tell you the truth, I would love to get hold of a 459 to do a direct comparison with the DS1010+, and again I would lay out the facts as I see them, with no bias towards either Qnap or Synology

Anyway, nice talking to you PowerMAC

 

[convergent]

Seems like things got off on a tangent here about the firmware. I just looked at the DS1010+ vs. the QNAP 659 Pro, which is a similar comparison. I ended up going with the QNAP and overall I'm happy, but I've had some things that have left me a little disappointed too. I was migrating from a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ so had that experience as a baseline. From the benchmark comparisons I read, it seemed that the Synology had a slight edge, but I don't think enough to really worry about. They are both really fast.

I use a Mac and a couple of things that have worked really well... the Time Machine function and iTunes server. I'm using both of them and they seem to work quite well. I have had some issues with shares when accessing them via AFP. It seems like it takes some time for them to show up after you create them, while they show up immediately with SMB. This isn't that big of a concern since creating shares isn't something you do a lot once its setup and running. Supposedly all these companies use the same open source code for this support so they should behave similarly. I did have some flakey issues with AFP on the ReadyNAS, but not that specific problem.

One thing I had wanted to do was create my NAS backups to USB attached drives and format them as NTFS so I could easily mount them in an emergency to my Mac. QNAP has licensed drivers that make their NTFS performance a lot better than the others. I have tried this and was unsuccessful in getting it to work with NTFS, so I dropped back to ext4 instead which is working well. Not sure why I couldn't get the NTFS to work, but you may want to study that a bit if its important to you.

When configuring backups to USB attached drives, the QNAP control panel only seems to let you create one backup job. That would mean that you couldn't be backing up different shares to multiple drives, and with a 6 bay unit that would be a pretty big issue. After much trial and error I figured out that it can do Remote Replication (rsync) to itself. So I've setup multiple rsync jobs to backup shares to my different USB drives and that seems to be working fine.

Performance has been very good, although I've not been doing any specific benchmarking. Its much faster than my ReadyNAS for sure. The unit is also much quieter and uses less power than my old 4 bay ReadyNAS, although the Hitachi 2TB drives I'm using are louder than the old Seagate Baracudas were. But that has nothing to do with the NAS.

One thing that has been a mystery to me is the QNAP forum. It seems to be very, very active, but I've had a couple of questions I posted that never got an answer after numerous attempts to resurface the question. I eventually got answers to my questions, but that was kind of disappointing. I also submitted a problem to QNAP on something I had a question about and they did get back to me.

So in the end, I'm reasonably happy with the unit, but the experience could be a little better. I have no experience with Synology. One of the reasons contributing to me buying was that I bought from Eaegis.com (because of their excellent support) and they don't sell Synology. Bottom line is that they are both great units. Another thing for me was the horizontal bay configuration worked better to allow me to place the unit under my credenza where I wanted... the Synology wouldn't have fit under there.

Good luck with your quest... both are great units.

 

[thiggins]

One thing I had wanted to do was create my NAS backups to USB attached drives and format them as NTFS so I could easily mount them in an emergency to my Mac. QNAP has licensed drivers that make their NTFS performance a lot better than the others. I have tried this and was unsuccessful in getting it to work with NTFS, so I dropped back to ext4 instead which is working well. Not sure why I couldn't get the NTFS to work, but you may want to study that a bit if its important to you.

I have never had a problem when testing backup to an NTFS-formatted drive. What specifically happens to prevent a successful backup?

When configuring backups to USB attached drives, the QNAP control panel only seems to let you create one backup job. That would mean that you couldn't be backing up different shares to multiple drives, and with a 6 bay unit that would be a pretty big issue. After much trial and error I figured out that it can do Remote Replication (rsync) to itself. So I've setup multiple rsync jobs to backup shares to my different USB drives and that seems to be working fine.

Interesting work-around! QNAP should allow multiple jobs, given that you can attach multiple drives.

 

[convergent]

When I tried it with an NTFS formatted drive, it just said it failed... no other information. I was working through the web interface. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out because I saw other reports of problems on their forum. I will go back and try it again at some point, but for now the ext4 approach seems to be working.

 

[thiggins]

When I tried it with an NTFS formatted drive, it just said it failed... no other information. I was working through the web interface. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out because I saw other reports of problems on their forum. I will go back and try it again at some point, but for now the ext4 approach seems to be working.

That's ok. I was just trying to see if it wouldn't mount the drive.
There might be something that would help in the log. I suspect it may have something to do with what you're copying, perhaps a funky file permission.