Network-attached storage (NAS) server manufacturer Synology announced the addition of two DiskStations to the company’s small office-home office and small to medium-size business product line, the DS114 and DS414.
The DS414 is Synology’s newest four-bay DiskStation and uses the same design as its predecessor. Its hot-swappable bays now include Synology’s tool-less drive caddies, making installing and replacing drives easier.
Along with RAID and redundant fans, the DS414 now includes two gigabit NICs—Ethernet adapters in servers and PCs—for failover and link aggregation.
Synology has also upgraded the DS414’s dual-core processor to 1.33GHz and added an integrated floating-point unit (FPU) as part of the system that is specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. In addition, enhanced processing power could improve multitasking operations and speed thumbnail generation for faster document previews, the company said.
The DS114 is a single-bay solution for users who want maximum accessibility with their data. It features a 1.2GHz processor, an FPU, two USB 3.0 ports, 512MB of random access memory (RAM) and an external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (eSATA) for improved connectivity.
“The DS114 and DS414 are valuable updates to the DiskStation family,” Thadd Weil, public relations manager at Synology America, said in a statement. “As computers continue to ship with less internal storage, now is the perfect time for businesses to expand their overall data capacity with Synology’s robust line of network attached storage solutions.”
Combined with Synology’s DiskStation Manager (DSM) 4.3 software, the two appliances offer productivity-enhancing features such as Cloud Station with selective sync, which allows users to keep files, file-types and folders in sync across all devices.
Other features include support for the iOS, Android and Windows Phone mobile operating systems for users who require remote access; File Station folder link sharing, which removes the need for custom permissions; and privacy features such as 256-bit AES encryption on shared folders and the ability to set up a virtual private network (VPN) for secure connections.
The DiskStation DS114 and DS414 are now shipping globally, and will be available in the United States over the next few weeks. The suggested price for the DS114 is $199.99, while the DS414 carries a suggested list price of $499.99.
The announcement follows Synology’s release earlier this month of the DS214, a two-bay NAS server also aimed at the SOHO and small business market. Similar to this week’s releases, the appliance improves on the DS213 by transitioning from single-core to dual-core processing and includes many of the same features, such as mobile OS support, File Station and Cloud Station.