New Toy: Synology Diskstation DS212j

[Adam]

Let me first say, it's not technically mine, it belongs to the place I work, but I set them up on a weekly basis for clients.

Synology Diskstation DS212j

So, basically it's a two-bay NAS or Network Attached Storage. Which, for those of you not up on the stuff, it's a computer with two hard drives in it that can be on 24/7 and dish out tons of services.

• iTunes Media Server
• Plex Media Server
• DHCP Server
• DNS Server
• FTP Server
• BitTorrent Server (For you to download hosted files from via BT)
• Photo Server
• Web Server (Can do Wordpress, Joombla, ect)

That's just a few of them I've played with, but I did leave one out that I'm using currently that I am just in love with. It can be a CloudStation, which basically means your own personal Dropbox, except you don't have to pay a monthly fee and you can control it.

I may end up getting one of these, I'll have to post some pictures when I get it.

If you're thinking of getting one or any sort of NAS box, I'd recommend getting WD Red Drives or WD RE4 drives. Both are ideal in a NAS/SAN situation, with the Reds being better. They both come in a 3TB flavor.

 

[Cloakedsphere]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqZFsLDRZNI[/ame]

 

[Adam]

Cool. Thanks for the 1up brah.

Anyways. The Synology box is $199 on NewEgg. You'll be into it for $400ish if you want to put 2 x 1TB WD Red drives in it.

 

[Cloakedsphere]

Cool. Thanks for the 1up brah.

Anyways. The Synology box is $199 on NewEgg. You'll be into it for $400ish if you want to put 2 x 1TB WD Red drives in it.

Yeah I was watching the video on 'em. I thought the cloud storage that could be set up for personal use would be awesome plus backup hard drives. Nifty idea even though I have zero clue on these machines. I see them working well for commercial use.

 

[pillar]

Totally agree when it comes to commercial use. I mean ive been keeping my eye on these for like a lil over a year. Like Cloakedsphere, I have like next to no real idea of how the overall technology would really work, esp the stuff that the guy explained in the video. I love the fact that the guy in the video explained everything that I knew nothing about, so +1 on this video. I so cant wait to get into school so that I can learn more bout this stuff. Im thinking, if anything, this will probably be taught in the net+ course (or something real similar to that).

 

[CyganyZed]

Grab an old PC, download and install FreeNAS.

You can learn a lot from rolling your own.

 

[pickles]

Grab an old PC, download and install FreeNAS.

You can learn a lot from rolling your own.

Have a look at unRAID as well!

 

[Adam]

I've used FreeNAS before, and I can honestly say I liked it. the downside is, if you're worried about power, most of these dedicated NAS boxes have smart features that use less power, for instance, when this one isn't being accessed, it kicks the hard drive "off" and just goes into a sort of sleep state. It takes no time to "wake" it back up and get going.

I may be getting one soon, so I'll post pictures when that time comes.

I did want to throw this out there, I'm setting up one today for a guy. Backing up stuff from work, over the internet to his box at his house. rsync and ssh ftw.