Synology Versus Drobo
From my research there are two competing options: Drobo 5N (network version) and Synology. Based on the reviews I've read, Drobo seems to have had problems yet David Sparks and Katie Floyd on the 5by5 podcast seem to love it. If you thought the Synology was user-friendly and featured an ease UI user interface), the Drobo makes it look complex! Everything about the Drobo 5N2 is designed with user-friendliness, ease and hassle-free use in mind.
Drobo desktop (now with a 5D) as well as Drobo FS and Drobo 5N (current). On the NAS side, the 5N promisses to add lots of new feature with the Drobo Apps, but to be fair, Drobo have been very lousy on that side.
If a drive fails, then the software will automatically protect the data in the RAID and give you significantly faster access to the data across the drives before and during any rebuilds that are higher than that of the Synology. However, the important thing is that it does all of this without the intervention or input from the user. Sure, it will send email and SMS alerts if setup to do so, but the self-reliant nature of the is one of the reasons it is so popular to those of a less technical frame of mind. Is designed to optimize and simplify workflow in connected homes and small office environments using Drobo’s simple, safe and smart BeyondRAID technology. Using the solution as a central backup in a connected home, multiple computers can speedily access the rich media files. Small office environments can utilize secure file sharing and Drobo’s Disaster Recovery (DR) feature to automatically backup the data to an offsite 5N2. To extend the functionality of the Drobo, 5N2 is compatible with the myDrobo App Platform, allowing for remote access to data, media streaming and cloud backup.
Since the Drobo 5N does not utilize iSCSI the test would be an apples to oranges comparison instead of apples to apples. As for jumbo frames and I am curious to see what the difference for each system would be. Although my WNDR4500 doesn’t support jumbo frames, if the difference were high enough I might switch to a different router.
In order to do some serious testing and benchmarking I would suggest you to give a try to the free Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (NASPT) which is specifically designed to enable direct measurement of network attached storage performance. Even though it is declared as end-of-life and therefore no longer supported it still is (imho) a nice piece of software.
A server is a piece of hardware (like a computer) or software (so a program that runs on a computer) that manages, shares and controls data (pictures, videos, word documents, PDFs etc) to a number of people who wish to access them (these are called ‘clients’). Sure, there are much more complex and expensive servers that are designed to communicate with other servers or computers without human intervention – but in essence they are all the same thing. Now where a regular server will give access to your users/clients via your internal network (router or switch) a NAS Server is the same, but it opens up a whole area of accessing it over the internet too. Different NAS servers provide different results and speeds, and typically are designed with individual purposes in mind (i.e some are designed with media playing in mind, some with faster backing up and others with ). So first and foremost you have to make sure that the NAS you buy is designed for the tasks you have in mind. A fork and a Spoon are both cutlery, but you wouldn’t eat soup with a fork (maybe a spork).
While that flexibility is great, it can also make some NAS devices confusing to use. Each NAS has its own manufacturer-specific version of Linux, and some are more usable than others. If you want to share and store data on your network, you may not need a NAS. Many have a USB port for connecting an external drive, but because routers have slower processors than our NAS picks and because their software isn’t purpose-built for file sharing, this setup will be slow, and suitable only for the most basic file sharing and backups. It will also lack data redundancy because you’re backing up to only one drive, so you’re taking your chances in case of a drive failure.
• Lawrence Ding says.
Cheers, John P. • dennis draz says. I want to say thank you john from the bottom of thy heart for doing this video those were a lot for that same questions i was asking myself and you did a wonderful job answering them keep up the awesome work. I’m sure there are other questions out there that i have but at this time i’m ok with the answers you give us. Please never give up on what you and caliy are doing because you are doing me proud and if the letter put a smile on your faces then it was worth messageing you. Your friend dennis d. 
Just watched your show on NAS and direct attached storage.
Today I want to compare from Synology with the Drobo 5N2 and help you figure out which device best suits your NAS server needs. What can I expect from a Synology DS918+ or Drobo 5N2 NAS? Before we get onto what makes these two devices different, let’s look at what they have in common. There is no denying that whichever device you choose, you are getting a fantastic and fully-featuring NAS server. Both devices support a multitude of 1st party and 3rd party, home and business applications. So, regardless of whether you buy the or the: • Both units feature the Quad Core CPU and DDR3 memory – so most NAS tasks can be performed with ease. AS well as multiple users access (with each user having their own login and access levels) • BTRFS and EXT 4 Filesystems so you can send and receive files from any Mac, Windows, Linux or Android system • Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10 and the always popular and adaptable SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) on the and BeyondRAID on the.
If you plan on doing that on your own instead of with a cloud service, you’ll want to have a USB port on your NAS so you can back everything up to an external drive. It’s also nice to have a USB port on the front of the NAS with a quick-copy function so you can copy the contents of a USB drive to or from your NAS without fussing around with software. • Third-party application support: If you want to add features or services to your NAS, you need to do so with third-party software, so support from third parties is key. This includes media center software, Web-server software, analytics, and more.
Since you must use space on the other drives to duplicate data it is impossible to spread the extra space from a single larger drive over the remaining smaller drives with any appreciable redundancy, Build arrays in both of them using a single 4 TB to replace one 3 TB (as I have done) and see what you get. Another error: You do not need to know your Synology DiskStation’s network IP address. You just run the provided Synology Assistant program to identify the DiskStations on your network and launch the browser interface from there. (Admitting my potential bias: I had a disastrous experience with two original Drobos and a Drobo S, twice losing almost all my data. Their customer service was excellent but their products failed me. I moved on to Synology three years ago and have never regretted it.) Also – could you expand the review to include web access from remote locations? The Synology is quite powerful at that work but I do not know how the current Drobo handles it.
Synology Versus Qnap
HBoth manufacturers also offer their own dropbox-like private cloud functionality which allows you to sync files and folders on any machine to the NAS server. Though they’re all a little buggy, they’re getting better and better and are a viable alternative if you’d like to move to a privately controlled cloud. Specialized NAS All right, we’re in the home stretch, but I don’t want to stop before we address two special situations. First of all, for people either on a budget, or who only want a two-bay NAS, because although they want access to all of those apps, they aren’t really going to store all that much data, or have too many people using it at once.
Andrew Great article. I recently did a lot of research on these devices after reading both Jim’s and Tony’s articles/watching their videos. I purchased and set up my NAS in the past week. I hope this info can help some of your Australian readers in making their choice.
It’s far easier to expand and repair. It costs less, uses less power and takes up less space.
Thanks for your inputs. I'm also leaning towards the 1815+. I have a Drobo 5N and a 5D, and probably both are going to be sold and replaced by other components. Considering it is 10 drives, 8 slots will be too small fast enough! The NAS portion is most likely to be the Synology, while the DAS will probably be a simple Thunderbolt device with two drives that can support disk mirroring (RAID 1 I think). Most data should be located on the NAS, while the DAS will accommodate current projects that would be too slow from a NAS.
Drobo Vs Nas
Second, I could invest in bigger or additional hard drives. This didn't appeal to me because I do not want to end up with multiple hard drives at both locations as it would get confusing and burdensome. I also did not want to just upgrade to a bigger drive just to face the same problem in another couple of years.
We might have to do it in the same way that this NAS story was done. Where we point out the relative strengths and kind of make recommendations about what to choose, in which circumstances. Cheers, John P. • dennis draz says. I want to say thank you john from the bottom of thy heart for doing this video those were a lot for that same questions i was asking myself and you did a wonderful job answering them keep up the awesome work. I’m sure there are other questions out there that i have but at this time i’m ok with the answers you give us. Please never give up on what you and caliy are doing because you are doing me proud and if the letter put a smile on your faces then it was worth messageing you.
There is so many possibilities with the Synology that I was unable to do with the Drobo 5N or FS that I'm almost stunned! Having the Synology seen as a TM destination without drivers, probably means it will be seen as a TM source in case of a restore is to be done in the install process of Mac OS X. With the Drobo, since I have to install the driver/dashboard before, it is impossible at the first boot to restore from TM. You have to complete the installation, install the software, then manually go to TM and restore from there.
Synology Vs Drobo
Sadly, the bad support on the Drobo platform is causing the app to crash every time a new version is pushed. I have to reinstall manually and hope it will stay up for a while. On the Synology site, I saw no mention of Crashplan, but in the forums I saw some people talking about it. How is the support of Crashplan?
First, we need to acknowledge that no one storage device is gonna be perfect for all situations. In fact, for every single unit I’m about to recommend I could spend an equal amount of time ripping it a new one for all the things it can’t do.
Now I’ve had a lot of first hand experience using three different drives of this type. The is a 5 drive bay unit that has both Thunderbolt and USB3 connections. It also holds an mSATA SSD for data acceleration, and when you connect it to your computer it can achieve hundreds of MB/s of throughput. So it’s as fast as your internal drive, and often even faster. This is what you need if you’re gonna try to manipulate lots of little files, like a photo collection, for sure.