End user demand for storage capacity is expanding exponentially year after year, as multimedia content, email, and document and file generation show explosive growth in this age of new media.  In addition, protecting that data is becoming increasingly more critical, with investments in digital music and video collections, as well as those all important family photos and business-critical documents in both the Consumer and SOHO markets.  As such we've been looking at an array of NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices here at HotHardware over the past few months, many of them designed for do-it-yourself end users.

In the following pages we're going to take a look at the Synology CubeStation CS407 NAS Server.  This system comes configured "bare-bones", ready for installation of up to four SATA hard disks with RAID 0,1 and 5 capabilities. With a max total capacity of up to three terabytes of storage, this unit ought to handle plenty of those cute baby-covered-in-mashed-green-peas shots that the family holds near and dear to their hearts.  And with this type of multi-drive product, you can "RAID it up" and rest easy, knowing your backside is covered with at least some level of data storage redundancy. 

Synology CubeStation CS407 NAS Server Specifications

In addition to its compact form-factor and clean lines, Synology's CS407 provides product differentiation through support for a multitude of cross-platform features like UPnP MultiMedia support, iTunes server functionality, a Web Server with PHP and MySQL support and even an integrated photo management system called PhotoStation2 that has a decidedly "flickr-like" look and feel to it. 

The kit itself comes with an external power supply, as you can see above.  This is a good approach we feel, to keeping thermals in check inside the unit, especially in a four drive installation.  Beyond that, you get assorted SATA and power cabling, an RJ45 Ethernet cable, installation hardware with zip-ties, and an installation CD.  The kit does not come with any third-party software for backup processing and scheduling but instead Synology provides back-up functionality with their Data Replicator II utility.  We'll cover that in the pages ahead here shortly.

We set out to configure the CubeStation CS407 with a pair of Western Digital  SE16 WD7500 750Gb hard drives in a RAID 1 array.  Our hardware installation was straight-forward and easy enough for even the novice to understand with just the included installation guide for reference.

Synology CubeStation CS407  Features and Setup Two Drive RAID 1 Installation Example

The CS407's motherboard is a compact, low-power design that is devoid of heatsinks.  The design is based on Marvell's 5281/500 SoC (System On a Chip) reference design.  We're fairly certain this is a member of Marvell's Orion family of processors for "Media Vault" platforms.  Together with Marvell's Gigibit Ethernet MAC/Phy combination, 128MB of Hynix DDR2 DRAM and 64B of flash memory, the system is capable of serving as a complete storage management and server platform with its embedded, configurable OS.

Physical installation, though a bit cramped for obvious reasons, took a total of about 5 - 10 minutes to complete.  We slid in our WD drives, installed side-rail screws, plugged in the included SATA power and data cables, and then slid the chassis skins back together and re-installed the backside thumb screws.  It was then time to power up and configure the CS407 Storage Server software and other features.

System Software Configuration and Setup Wizard-Driven and  Easy

Setup, Volume Creation, Status, Priviledges and Power Management

From there we setup our admin rights for the volume.  There is a fair amount of granularity in this menu area and you can configure users and groups with various access levels (read-only or read/write etc.) to the volume or specific directories on the volume.  We then hit the Power Management menu which allows you to configure power recovery functions in the event of an outage, as well as hard disk idle spin-down time and power cycling of the entire unit itself.

Other configuration options of the CS407, include LAN setup configuration, either automatically (DHCP) or manually, and the ability to enable Jumbo Frame support and its associated MTU size.  We would caution, however, that Jumbo Frames needs to be something that is supported by the client-side NIC as well.  It's great that Synology provides this feature but if other devices on your network aren't capable or configured (this means clients as well as switches and routers) to support Jumbo Frames, using this setting may provide no benefit and could possibly even limit performance.  Netgrear has a good article on the topic here for your reference.  We specifically performed all our testing with Jumbo Frame support disabled.

Lastly, the unit also has the ability to send email notifications via an SMTP mail server to any address, for notification of error events and volume failure. This is a great feature to have, especially in support of other features like the unit's integrated web server application. 

The CS407 is driven by the all-mighty "wizard" approach for a number of its feature and to put it simply, it just works.  Synology Assistant is a wizard utility for configuring and auto-mapping network drives from the unit's available volumes, as well as a host of other features.  The software runs via an installation on a network client and the interface provides network discovery of the system as well as managerial functions for things like print server functionality.

Synology's Data Replicator II software is extremely easy to setup, again with auto-discovery of the system on the network, as well as its available network shares.

Users can choose from three options of backup for any system the software is installed on that is on the network; Immediate Backup, Synchronization and scheduled backup.  We were very pleased to see the synchronization option for incremental backup functionality and of course scheduled backup as a bare minimum requirement is available as well.  All told, Data Replicator II offers all the backup functionality a SOHO or Home user could want in a backup package and it worked flawlessly for us.

Download Redirector saves bandwidth for your client machines as well, since the CS407 is actually performing the download with this service, rather than having to download a file to a client and then dumping it to the NAS volume.

Synology positions the CS407 as a multi-purpose NAS Server, rather than a simple storage end-point.  In fact, with the CS407's embedded OS and applications, it can perform a multitude of functions beyond just data storage and sharing.  It's obvious that Synology understood that it's what a NAS server can do with the data that adds value and differentiates a product.

CubeStation CS407 Services and Enhanced Functionality Useful Features, Not Just Gimmicks

The Synology CubeStation CS407 can provide the following functionality:

• File Server - CFIS, FTP, AFP
• Print Server - LPR, CFIS, AppleTalk
• FTP Server - Encrypted and Secure
• Download Server - BT, HTTP, FTP
• Backup Server - Network, Local and Desktop
• Multimedia Server - UPnP for Music, Photos, Movies
• Web Server - PHP and MySQL Support
• iTunes Server

We'll take you through some of the unit's more interesting features, next...

Evaluating the performance of a device like the Synology CS407 can be difficult. There are a number of variables to consider such as the hard drives used, the hard drive configuration, network speed, the router, switch, the size of network - we think you get the picture.  Nonetheless, we wanted to quantify performance in some way that would be relevant to you.  In this case, we kept network performance testing to a few basic tests, considering the multitude of variables in each environment that can pose a major influence on results.

HotHardware Test Systems Intel-Based File Server, Workstation and The CS407

For our first test, we transfered a large 1.75GB file - the World in Conflict beta to be exact - to and from the Synology CS407 in addition to a high-end workstation and a generic PC equipped with a 100Mb LAN connection that's setup as a basic storage server on our internal network.

Despite having much less memory and a comparatively slower processor, the Synology CS407 completed our large file test significantly faster than our simple storage server with its 100Mb connection.  The CS407 couldn't quite keep up with our high-end workstation, but we weren't really expecting it to, considering the workstation's significant advantages in memory and CPU resources.

In our small file transfer tests, we took 285MB of data, broken up over 487 digital image files and again transfered them to and from the Synology CS407 and our two reference systems.  Like the large file test above, the CS407 fell right smack in the middle of the two other machines.  The CS407 and the high-end workstation had identical write performance in this test, but the more powerful workstation surged ahead in the read test. And once again, the basic file server couldn't keep up, largely because of its 10/100 Ethernet connection disadvantage, versus the CS407 and Workstation Gig-E connections.

A Note Power Consumption and Acoustics:
In a simple power consumption test, we hooked up the CS407's external power brick to an in-line power analyzer and data logger.  This test methodology specifically measured the entire system power consumption of the CubeStation CS407, which of course includes the two 750 Gig SATA hard drives we had installed in the unit.  During heavy read/write traffic, copying a large 1.75GB file to the machine while also streaming a high def video clip, the CS407 consumed about 33 Watts under load.  When we factor in that each of our 750G SATA drives consumes about 9 Watts each, we can estimate the average power consumption of the Synology CubeStation CS407 to be about 15 Watts.  We also tested the power consumption with the CS407 sitting in an idle state with the hard drives spun-down.  Sitting idle, the unit consumed only 10.6 Watts.  In other words, relatively speaking, this NAS box sips power.  Also, as you would expect, with this low power consumption profile, the unit is also extremely quiet.  The system's small 50mm fan was barely audible during our entire test effort.