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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.
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 company’s 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 America’s 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.
Synology’s 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.