On the heels of announcing a compact network-attached storage solution, the DS409Slim, Synology debuts the rack-mounted 4-bay network attached storage server, the Rack Station RS409.
Network-attached storage company
Synology America, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based Synology, announced
the availability of the Rack Station RS409, a 1U 4-bay network attached
storage server, aimed at providing small to medium-size businesses with
large
capacity and rich business applications to allow user-friendly sharing
and
safeguarding of data. Earlier in the week, the company announced
the launch of its 2.5-inch four-bay Disk Station DS409slim, also aimed
at
midmarket companies.
The storage capacity of the RS409 can be expanded from four HDD (hard
disk drives) to eight HDD, for a total of 16 TB (using 2TB HDD) for two
separate volumes, by adding the Synology RX4 expansion station via an eSATA
cable. The RX4 also features plug-n-use connectivity, hot-swappable HDD design
and disk hibernation, which works with the RS409 for extra storage or backup.
Resource Library:
The DS409 ships with the system software Disk Station
Manager 2.1, which provides Windows ADS integration, cross platform data
sharing, RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) data protection, and rich
business applications. A Mail Station add-on enables the RS409 to be a mail
server that supports Web mail, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP. The companys Web Station
allows users to host up to 30 Websites on a single RS409. The rack-mounted
server also supports two USB printers, and offers an Add Printer Wizard to simplify
the setup process.
"For businesses, reliability and performance of their
file servers can be critical: The RS409 delivers that needed peace of mind," said Synology Americas product specialist
Douglas Self. "In our
laboratory tests, the RS409 under RAID 5 configurations showed Windows upload
speeds with 2 GB files reaches 35 MBs/Sec, while download speed reaches 47
MBs/Sec. The RS409 delivers on performance and the dependability that Synology
has come to be known for."
The RS409 is equipped with a 1.2 GHz CPU, 256MB DDRII RAM,
two Gigabit LAN ports, two USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA port, and supports up to 128
concurrent connections. The RS409 comes with four hot swappable disk trays,
each supporting 2 TB SATA hard drive (which the company claims is the largest
capacity on the market), making its total volume up to eight TB.
Synologys Disk Station Manager 2.2, the successor to the DSM
2.1, is scheduled for beta release in July 2009 with the official version
shipping in September 2009. The company said DSM 2.2 would include a system
resource-monitoring feature that allows administrators to monitor the CPU
usage, memory usage, network flow and volume usage of the RS409.
In addition, iSCSI target support provides flexible storage
access, and a built-in firewall allows the administrator to decide which services
or IP addresses are allowed to access the RS409. An auto block function
protects the RS409 from attacks, and SNMP support allows remote monitoring of the
RS409. The company said the DSM 2.2 firmware will be a free upgrade for the
RS409's users.
