Recently I was in need of some CCTV for the home, I had a few choices on this, such as buying a complete kit for £300 which comes with 4 camera’s and a base unit to record everything. As I already have a Synology NAS Box which comes with Synology Surveillance Station, a feature to connect an IP camera and record 24/7, I thought why not buy myself a IP Camera? Looking through the list of supported camera’s, on that was listed was FOSCAM. The next stage was to figure out how much to spend and which one to buy.

 Finding the cheapest site

I found this site by the name of Foscam Retail and looking through they seemed a touch worrying in that I had to pay by Paypal to some gmail address. What kept me there was the fact they have very cheap prices though.

Which camera to buy?

I went on youtube and started to look for videos of the various outdoor models.

From that video even though the tree’s looks a touch white, I was happy to pay the £65 for the 8905 compared to the £55 for the 8904, my theory was it had better night vision and quoted as 30M - this should be great for night time shots.

Setting it up

It was already dark outside when I got around to unboxing it and getting it set up. I plugged the camera into the network, used the supplied software tool to tell me the IP address and then used a browser to configure the rest of the camera. Once happy that it was all ready, I added this to the Synology and now had a running camera which can be placed anywhere as long as there is a power plug. I also had the iPad application for both the Synology side and the FosCam side – both able to display the video.

Can it see in the dark?

I placed the camera on my back window, with my naked eye I could make out most of my garden, the garage, the houses at the back and my car below. The camera as you can see only has the ability to see the lighted area right at the back. I did some further tests, I switched the lights off in the room – at this stage the LED’s should light up (they did not) and you could see nothing on the screen at all, even with a small amount of light from the passage – still nothing on the camera.

What about daytime?

I looked through the recordings it had made and as daylight started to come through, it got whiter and whiter until eventually it was just a white screen. After a reboot It showed the picture above, notice the trees are a night white/purple colour?

Contacting the reseller

I have emailed (twice) the person I bought it from, it is clear from his english that he is not from here. He sent me a guide on how to set up the wireless, that of course is not my problem. I do have various guarantee’s on this of course, such as 14 days to send it back and such.

My thoughts so far

It is early days and I will not be drilling this to a wall until I am happy it works as planned. I already know what a night vision camera looks like as we have a few at work, the image is meant to be B&W but at least visible. The fact it goes white during the day and it needs to be rebooted a lot to make it work is not a good sign, I need a camera that just works 24/7 – it is after all a security camera.

I shall write a more in-depth review later when I get to play with it some more.

** Update 16 Oct **

As it turns to darkness, the picture becomes too dark and requires you to change mode (Outdoor to 50hz and back again) to get the picture right, same goes for morning when it starts to get light. I got annoyed with the lack of LED’s working, so I removed the lens cover only to find the connector to the sensor was unplugged. Once this was plugged in – the LED’s came on when it was covered. I shall do yet more testing now it is working properly before I finally choose to RMA it back to the shop.

The latest upgrade for the Synology range of NAS Boxes has been released after been in Beta for a long time – this is namely version 3.1. Synology^® Inc. today announced the official release of DiskStation Manager 3.1 (DSM 3.1) OS. Its successful beta program attracted over 10,000 users in just 40 days. Synology commits to provide periodic free NAS server OS updates that benefits users to continue to enjoy the latest technologies and new functionalities.

DSM 3.1 builds on the award winning DSM 3.0 with additional consumer and business features to exhibit Synology’s enthusiasm to answer users’ requests and demands,

said Rosiel Lee, product manager of Synology Inc.

• Elevating management efficiency – Multiple volumes on a single RAID allows users to expand volume size dynamically and manage storage effectively. Sharing of print/fax/scan on multifunction printers increases the efficiency of various operations. Furthermore, enhanced File Browser performs database index to file name, advanced search criteria, and preview of documents, images or video, delivering quick search.
• Increasing data availability – Synology Hybrid RAID supports dual disks redundancy. Furthermore, the Shared Folder Sync feature allows users to synchronize specific folders from one DiskStation to another on real time basis. Users will be able to share documents seamlessly and have an immediate backup DiskStation up and running right away in case of hardware failure. In addition, backing up the same shared folder to multiple destinations is now supported for more layers of protection. Windows ACL support now allows data to be restored along with its preconfigured access permission settings.
• Enriching the capabilities of mobile devices, including iPad^® - Three iPad-native applications – DS cam, DS photo+ and DS audio are available, offering intuitive hands-on experience. AirPrint^® support allows users wirelessly print documents from iPhone^® and iPad^® to any AirPrint-enabled printers connected to DiskStation. Moreover, the new DS file application allows users of iPhone to download and upload documents from and to DiskStation.
• Extending multimedia enjoyment – Download Station not only supports searching of desired files and RSS feeds, but also allows users to preview and select files at torrent startup. Audio Station showcases an equalizer, a mini player, personal playlists and editable ID3 Tags. Furthermore, Photo Station allows every account user to host his or her own photo album and blog and supports sharing of photos to facebook, twitter, and Plurk^TM.
• Boosting surveillance intelligence – Surveillance Station 5 can be operated on Internet Explorer^®, Firefox^® and Chrome^®. The Smart Search feature allows users to detect any motions, missing and foreign objects, camera occlusion as well as focus lost, and adjust image quality for detailed viewing.

The official release of DSM 3.1 additionally offers DSM auto update option and supports thousands of UPS. For all details on the new DSM 3.1, please visit

http://www.synology.com/enu/products/features/index.php

The download is available at http://www.synology.com/support/download.php?lang=enu
The live demo site is available at http://www.synology.com/enu/products/demo/index.php

Synology at a Glance

Founded in 2000, Synology is a young and energetic company dedicated to developing high-performance, reliable, versatile, and environmentally-friendly Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. Our goal is to deliver user-friendly solutions and solid customer service to satisfy the needs of businesses, home offices, individual users and families.

In the world of online Backup there is many companies who offer the ability to backup all your data to the cloud and you can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that even in the event of loosing all your local storage (fire, theft or whatever), you can always get your files back. Mozy used to cost a simple $4.95 a month and with this you could back up as much data as you seen fit. Other Providers for example let you choose a directory but in fact stripped out Video files, ISO files and so forth – so there complete backup was not so complete after all. Mozy have now dropped the unlimited data plan and we have $5.95 a month for 50GIG Data or $9.99 for 125GIG. People are up in arms – how dare they restrict what we backup and why did they offer unlimited in the first place?

What is unlimited?

I shall use an analogy here, imagine I said you can drive your car as much as you like and as far as you like, Unlimited if you will. Of course we all know that a car need fuel to make it go anywhere and at some stage you would have to stop to get some more – but you can still do what I said in the first line right? Many Services such as Broadband providers, Web Hosting services, Mobile Phone providers and Backup providers are saying “You can use our service Unlimited” but at some point along the way you find out it is not in fact unlimited and you are restricted.

In the case of Broadband, they can share a fast line with so many people with the thought that not everyone will be on at the exact same time. When people all leave the computers grabbing files 24/7 – soon the providers has to put some restrictions on there and what they do is slow you down in fact – at this point you can still use the service “Unlimited” – just not as fast as you would have hoped.

In the case of WebHosting, much the same as above and we all agree there is no such thing as an Unlimited Harddrive on sale just yet right? In the real world people do not Back up 800GIG worth of data – that’s just a silly amount. 

What should people be backing up?

On the average Windows Computer in front of you now, if you wiped it clean and rebuilt ir from scratch without backing anything up – ask yourself “What have I just lost?” The reality is that The operating system is on a DVD (or should be) as well as your applications, what you should have left that is not there is any documents, picture’s, videos and music.

If you are of legal standing – all your music should be around still on them old things called cd’s and anything you bought in iTunes can be downloaded again. I am not sure what Videos people have lying around, I am guessing stuff they have recorded themselves but if you can apply compression and get the size down anyhow and do you really need to watch something you recorded three years ago? This leaves documents and such.

The free Solution

There is many free services while allow you to automatically back up all your ‘normal’ files such as DropBox for example. These services only give you 2 GIG or data but you can buy more if needed or you can sign up for a few different one’s and back up that way.

How do Business Backup?

In a business, everything is stored on a server and we are talking a lot of data. This data is stored on RAID 5type arrays which means if a drive fails – you can insert a new one and everything will be all fine. Expanding on this of course is Tape Backup – Each night a backup is run which takes all the Data you specify and places this on a Tape. The complete set of tapes is taken offsite each night so in the event the whole building is burned to the ground – all the data is still safe and sound. As Tapes are done each day, you can go back days, weeks or even months to find the right files to restore.

Storing it everywhere

In my collection, I have two NAS Boxes, one with 4TB internal and 1TB external (USB) while the Other NAS has 1TB Internal and 1TB External (eSATA). My Music collection is backed up to the other NAS, if I loose One NAS, I still can have my entire Music collection – very slim chance for both drives to go at the exact same time.

I have a vast collection of Wallpapers – again this is split across two drives and it is stored in effect on my Gallery I use for this site, so we can rule out loose them anytime soon. What we have left is movies, now if I lost them, this is no major concern or something to loose sleep over. The one’s I have made are stored on various video websites such as YouTube and such and personally, not worth worrying about anyway.   

Another idea for Backup?

A couple of Idea’s here really:

One idea is to have an external harddrive which are quite cheap these days and run a program to sync your drives to this one. You can then take this drive and pop it in your bag and take it with you when you go to work (though constant moving an external hard drive might kill it sooner than later). This is like an Offsite backup if you like.

Next idea is to find a friend who is prepared to set up an online backup service but once again moving 800GIG over two broadband connections is going to take you months to back it all up.

Bottom Line

You as a person need to ask yourself what data is really important and what you cannot live without. Hard drives will eventually fail and DVD media will get scratched but do you really need to Backup 800GIG and how often is this changing anyhow?

While I already have a gigabit network running, there is not enough ports to allow all the computers to connect via gigabit which means some are locked to 100mbit and the rest are on wireless (a mixture of Wireless N and Wireless G speeds). Converting your network to gigabit gives you a boost in speed and the cost is very low these days as you will see. A Quick recap on what I already have – I am on 50mbit / 5mbit Cable Internet via Virgin Media which is connected to a D-Link 615 Router (Supplied by Virgin media as part of the install) which features Wireless N Speed but only 4 ports at 100mbit. I have a 5 Port Netgear gigabit Switch which is a bit dodgy on the 5th port – this means I can only have 4 computers (or NAS Boxes) max that is on Gigabit.

Expanding the ports

The first thing that I bought was an 8 Port ZyXEL Switch for £29 from Amazon, I see it has already gone up to £34 but it was rated as £29 when I in fact bought it (just the other day). Why do I need so many ports you may ask? I have two Synology NAS Boxes and running these off 100mbit is almost too painful for words, this means I need one each for them – thus so far 2 Ports. My Main machine has a gigabit network port, my Core 2 Duo machine also has a gigabit. My Acer Aspire E700 has a faulty network port and at present has a Wireless G PCI Card fitted – so I added to my Cart TP-Link 32bit Gigabit PCI Card – this cost a mere £4.87 – both items are free delivery if using SuperSaver – this means it could take between 4 and 7 days to arrive. I am in no rush for these items – they will all arrive by the latest the beginning of next week.

What this extra equipment gives me

All the computers that are around me will have access to 1gigbit network speed, which feed back to the router which is running if you remember 100mbit. If I run the other switch off the router, I will cause a bottlenet in speed as it moves from gigabit to 100mbit and back to gigabit so I may wire a return wire to feed the other switch in this respect – this can drive the PS3 as well as a pc I may put over there.

Media Streaming

I still use my heavily modded WDTV to feed movies (all formats) from my NAS Box into my LG 42” TV downstairs. I have Wireless N Dongle plugged in and on my testing, I can stream normal moives as well as 720P with no issues, it is not until I come to 1080p that wireless N starts to fall apart and even then it depends on the encoding used, some play fine, other stutter too much to watch.

The alternative of course would be to buy a Network powerplug thing and wire up the PS3 downstairs but this is too much hassle for all involved. Remember that at the worst case, I can copy the 1080P movie to a memory stick and play it that way on the WDTV.

Any more equipment?

For some strange reason, I still look at audio Mixers, microphones, Scissor stands and the like but due to been such a wide range of choice on each part, I have or now left this alone and at the moment have no need for such a thing anyhow.

Synology have a low end product for sharing USB Hard Drives ( as well as printers) which is called USB Station 2. You can buy this product for £79.99 – I am not sure of USA Pricing at this time. This uses the same OS as the rest of the Synology Range (DSM 3.0) so you can use it as a download station, share printers across the network and even plug in a USB Wireless network card and make this thing wireless. You could spend the same money for a Print sharing device and it may look and act like the PogoPlug (except it is not shocking pink) but is in fact a full blown NAS – just with USB Speeds for the drives.

On the back – Connections

It is quite simple around the back, it features 2 USB Ports, a RJ45 1Gigabit connection and a power socket. If you need more devices, you can just add a USB Hub (Powered if you want to add 2.5″ External Drives) and away you go.

Different from a PogoPlug?

There is a few devices around at the moment that share USB Drive and one of these (which I owned briefly) was the PogoPlug – this shares out the drives two ways, one by means of a program you install which maps the drive letter P: for you and inside this is each USB Drive plugged in. The other way the PogoPlug works is you access the device online and this allows easy sharing of any media across the internet – the goal here is to provide a link via email and that person can get at the pictures, movies or whatever it is you shared out.

This device like any NAS shares using standard SMB (windows) sharing as well as the apple protocol and various others, this makes it super easy to connect to the device without the need to start installing programs. Let us not forget it can share your media as it has an iTunes Server, Media Server (DNLA/uPnP), and other methods of sharing the contents.

Sharing across the internet is were it gets a little tricky for the average non-tech person and this is not a fault of this device but more of the router which will have no idea how to pipe through port 5000 on it’s own. What I can say though is it allows complete control over who gets to do what and when.

Conclusion

Given the choice of this device, the Linksys USB Sharing and the Pogoplug, not only is this cheaper but has a LOT more features included – if it’s USB Device sharing your after for a low price – this is the one you need.

Having used these devices now on a daily basis across a handful of machines, used most of the services it has to offer and even added some extra packages, I wanted to write a post about how I felt this was holding up and was it living up to the hype or was it starting to crack under the pressure? This is written with one users in mind (me) across computers running Windows 7, Linux and Mac OS X – the main aim of this was a shared Music, Movie, Backdrops collection, example been if I add some wallpapers, all the computers can use them as required.

The NAS as a iTunes server

I have in my collection 38K worth of Songs, by iTunes server, I am not referring to the in-built iTunes server function but more me sharing out a folder called Music and tell iTunes to add that folder. There is a few issues with this – when first adding the folder the NAS Box will go wild and it takes some time for iTunes to add the complete folder. The other side effect is that iTunes does not monitor this folder at all – I had to drag and drop anything new to iTunes. Further to this – if I want iTunes on all computers, I had to repeat this process on each one but once it is all done, it works to a degree. I think we can blame more iTunes for this and maybe it is time I had a new player.

The Proper iTunes Server

Built into the NAS box is a proper iTunes capable server and this fixes a lot of the problems above in that it will add any new song to the share. Why do I not use this function? Well I do of sorts but I am not happy with the way iTunes displays the shared server files. It has to index all the files and this can take some time – best to leave that in the background.

Download Station

This is by far the most useful feature so far, if you combine the Google Chrome Plug-in, it can auto grab any download links and feed it ot the NAS Box to download into a share of your choice. It can handle torrents, News Servers files (NZB) as well as normal style links. The best part here is you can just switch off your computer and it will handle the download over night.

FTP Server

This is something I have already used, when I first set it up, I simply created a user, allowed them access to the FTP, popped the port on the router and let them know what do to. When I tested this the next day, I was shocked that I could delete a file – I checked the settings again and on ‘Shared Folders’ there is a setting to ‘Disable modification of existing files’

Once this was in place, this stopped the FTP users from deleting files but allowed the Windows Shared users to carry on with full management. The other aspect is what is to stop random people trying to connect and brute forcing there way in? Well this is where IP Auto Block comes into play. You can specify how many goes and how quick before they are blocked:

Surveillance Station

The NAS comes with this built in and the cheaper models have a licence for camera where-as the more expensive models come with 15. You can buy more licence if you need them and can form an excellent security system using IP based Webcams (Wired or Wireless) – cheaper than an Axis Solution for example. I Do not have any IP based Webcams to test this with but it looks good none the less.

Disk Thrashing

Where NAS does not compare to a desktop drive (as in installed inside the machine not USB) is when you start to push the NAS Hard and it will start to slow down. A good example of this is when using the download station to grab let us say 6 files at once (remembering I have 50mbit Service), add to this the download station putting some of the downloads onto the right share (it must save it to a temp folder), trying to play a HD Movie while adding some songs to iTunes on another machine. At this point you can tell it is struggling, the movie buffers and the downloads start to slow down. While this won’t happen that much really in the course of things, it is something to remember.

Power On & Off

Not happy about it eating up power while not in use? There is a function you can tell it what time to switch itself off and another to switch it back on. You cannot make a Schedule of many times, it is one time on and one time off. While this is a good idea, I personally just leave them on all the time, not like they are noisy really and using that much power.

Overall

I am quite vocal when it comes to things not working as they should and at no point did I sit back and say “wish I had bought …… {Insert another make here}…. It has done everything I need it to do and having 4TB on hand and not worrying about splitting up files across many drive is a godsend and worth every penny I paid for it. My advice to people is buy as big a drive you can – in my case it was 2 x 2TB drives. If you can afford it – maybe get the 4 or 5 bay model – imagine have 10TB on tap !!  

I bought one of these devices a long time back and what it does out of the box is basically play just about anything your chuck at it and play it at full HD (1080p). It works by means of plugging in your external HD with movies, music and photographs and you plug it into your TV via HDMI. This works well enough but it means your limited to the of the hard drive you plug in. They did bring out a new model called the WDTV Live which has wired / wireless (by means of a adaptor I guess) but I did not fancy buying yet another device – so what about modding this and making it wireless and accessing my NAS box?

Flashing the firmware

I headed over to B-RAD and got myself a ** WDLXTV-0.5.8.1 ** - this is based off the WDTV firmware and I proceeded to follow the instructions. You out the file on the memory stick (I used a 1GIG slim version) and the WDTV told me a new firmware was found – I flashed and waited. At this point I had no networking as such and I had a few USB Wireless sticks to choose from but the one Virgin Media gave me when I upgraded to 50mbit was the D-Link DWA-140 – this been listed as compatible.

Hours of Messing

I followed guide after guide after guide and still no wireless working, still no shares showing up with all my movies. I then stumbled upon this post HERE, followed it to the letter and although the WDTV box told me NO-IP at the boot screen, I checked my router and indeed it had assigned 192.168.0.107. I could ping this IP but no shares, no movies – head scratching time !!

More reading

I worked out I needed the Samba pack (on the b-rad site above) and I had to read the Telnet guide also. One I had the right parts – I booted the WDTV, still read NO-IP but now it had a new share I had created called MOVIES and I could see both the network and the NAS Flashing away.

How fast though?

I tested some movies and normal divx type stuff played fine but HD stuttered. You have to remember that it was scanning the network so probably not only using bandwidth on the wireless but also the NAS was using the drives. I shall leave it indexing the NAS (might take it some time) and tomorrow I can place it back under the TV and now have complete access to all my movies, photos and Music collection - definitely worth the hassle and of course the money saved in not buying a new one.

Update: You can find some more addon’s HERE such as the Elmar Weber’s Apple Trailers Plugin & WDLXTV App pack UPnP-djmount.app.bin-0.1 which adds more functions to the little WDTV.

The Synology DS110+ is a One Bay NAS Box aimed at the small to medium business market. It comes supplied with no hard drive (you fit your own capacity), has an eSATA and 3 x USB ports to add additional storage to the device plus it is fitted with a gigabit Ethernet port for high speed data transfer.

Unboxing the device

All synology NAS devices are well packaged with a carrying handle for easy transportation once it arrives or you buy it from the store. Inside you will find the device itself, a power cable, a power supply unit, RJ45 Network cable, a packet of screws to hold the harddrive in, a packet of screws to secure the unit and finally a manual plus CD to install the device.

Putting the device togther

The unit come unscrewed and its a simple case of sliding the top across and you end of with two pieces, one is the top and the other has the electronics stored inside. It is obvious were the drive goes:

With the drive placed in the holder and pushed into place, its is secured and you can refit the top, again there is screws supplied in the box which fit on the back. Once everything is ready – you now need to plug this into the power and into a network point, either on a router or a switch – the faster the network, the better it will perform.

Setting up the device for first time use.

Before you start, it is best to head off to the synology web site and download the latest firmware, make sure you remember to select the correct device from the drop down as it defaults to the DS1010+. Once you have the file saved, extract this to a place you know and now insert the CD that came with the device. This is one product that you actually need the CD that comes in the box as this prepares the harddrive to hold not only the firmware but also formats the drive. Once the process has finished (it will take a while) you can now go into a web page and manage the device from there.

The Basics

You need to create some users so that you can access the shares later, it can tap into Windows Server Active directory if you are a company or simply match the users on the NAS box with your windows login. You need to prepare the drive, I found with this device though it had already set up the drive for me on the first part of the install. You then need to create some shares and give people (users) permission – you can have as many or a few as you require at this stage.

Technical Info

It has a 1.06Ghz CPU with a 64bit DDR533 Memory Bus which supports floating point.

It comes with 512MB Ram, 3 USB Ports, 1 eSATA Port and supports a max of 12 IP Webcams.

Performance

Windows Upload/Download⁽¹⁾ (5GB File)

Netbench⁽²⁾

Encrypted file Upload/Download⁽³⁾ (5GB File)

iSCSI Upload/Download⁽⁴⁾ (5GB File)

Web Server Responsiveness⁽⁵⁾ (1,000x requests)

Photo Converting⁽⁶⁾ (54MB of Photos)

Price of this device

I did some searching around and I found the price on average of £230, I failed to find as USA Prices. You may well ask why a 1 Bay NAS box with no drives costs more then the 2 Bay DS210J (my other device) and the answer is performance, number of IP webcams out of the box supported and a eSATA Port – all pointing to a business use rather than home. The graphs above bear this out and its clear why the price is more.

The different products from Synology

Synology provide a page to compare all the products and the best way to think about this is to ask yourself were is the product going to be used, how many people will access this at one time, how much storage do you need and how much you are will to spend on a NAS Box.

Why Synology?

There is a lot of companies out there who sell a NAS device and while I was looking, I found some lacked in features (as in they had none), some limited the size of the hard drive and some were plain slow. Remember not only are you getting a NAS device which can support the largest drives but they come packed with features such as:

• Photo Station – share your pictures and videos easily.
• Download Station – leave this device to get the files without having to leave computers switched on.
• Webstation – have your own unlimited website which supports PHP and MySQL
• Audio Station – share you music via a web page, itunes and any other music player.

Plus many many more – head HERE to see everything that is on offer…

Synology® Debuts its DiskStation Manager 3.0 Beta, Including Multi-tasking Web UI, New iPhone® and Android Phone Support and Enterprise-level Features. Synology® Inc. today announced the beta release of its operating system, DiskStation Manager 3.0 (DSM 3.0), introducing multi-tasking web UI and new web desktop that make Synology NAS server even more intuitive and easy to use. The enriched iPhone® and Android phone support greatly increases multimedia files’ mobility. In addition, Windows® ACL support simplifies file privilege management. Comprehensive iSCSI support and extended volume size capability offer businesses with scalable NAS solution to meet enterprise-level demand.

“DSM 3.0 realises our commitment in delivering the best in class NAS solution with forward-thinking features,” said Derren Lu, CEO of Synology Inc. “The breakthrough multi-tasking web UI has raised the bar for NAS server’s using experience.”

The new multi-tasking web UI offers users a new way to quickly move between apps. Users can run multiple applications simultaneously on one tab browser and switch between them instantly, or perform real-time inter-app file exchange between two or more File Browsers. Dynamic loading saves users from the constant wait of refreshing the whole webpage. All of these features are performed on a web browser, imitating a full desktop experience.DSM 3.0 is the first NAS operating system allowing for customization and individuality, at the same time being easy-to-use and intuitive.

DSM 3.0 offers a customizable web desktop that allows users to make sure their favorite apps are easily accessible and the backgrounds scream their personalities. All accessible folders and files can be managed within File Browser.Synology smartphone apps, the new DS photo+, DS audio and DS cam, now support Android phone in addition to iPhone. With DS photo+, users can upload photos or videos from their iPhones or Android phones straight into and download from their DiskStations. Users can also view photos and videos that are stored on their DiskStations while leaving comments for their friends. The Android version of DS audio comes with a unique remote function, allowing users to conveniently remote control the music playing on their DiskStations through attached USB speakers.

DSM 3.0 simplifies file privilege management with Windows® ACL support, allowing access permission settings for shared folders and every file object on DiskStation in a Windows environment. The comprehensive permission precedence rules formulate a hierarchy, with each file’s explicit permission settings rule above inherited ones. This Windows-native experience aims at providing administrators a more flexible privilege management method to meet enterprise-level demand.For more flexible virtual storage solution, DSM 3.0 now offers multiple cross-mapping between iSCSI Targets and iSCSI LUNs. It also offers multiple connections per session (MC/S) and multipath I/O (MPIO) to provide connection failover and load balance benefits to strengthen the stability of a network storage environment.

To ensure file integrity, DSM 3.0 is compliant with SPC-3 PR standard to support Microsoft® Windows 2008 Server Failover Clustering or other systems such as VMware® Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) or Oracle® Cluster File System (OCFS).DSM 3.0 with EXT4 system provides a well-structured base for enterprise-class data storage. It adopts EXT4 file system and supports the maximum volume space of 1 exabyte, equivalent of 1 million TB, with greater stability, better performance and lower possibility of file fragmentation.Another key enhancement in DSM 3.0 is the upgrade to the new Surveillance Station 5 that supports over 580 IP cameras and 500 megapixel resolution, and is compatible with ONVIF and PSIA industrial standards, securing users’ future investment. In addition, Surveillance Station 5 makes propertysafeguard even easier to do. Users can live view up to 36 channels in one layout. Time Slicing feature splits playing event into four equal lengths of video clips to help users to quickly glance through the whole event.

Beta Testing

The beta release of the Synology DSM 3.0 additionally includes WebDAV support, IPv6 integration and more new features. For further details, please visit

http://www.synology.com/enu/support/beta/Synology_DSM3.0_2010.php

Synology DSM 3.0 Beta Reward Program

Synology will award a DiskStation DS110+ to a maximum of three beta testers who provide the most valuable feedback and assistance for making DSM 3.0 even better when the beta program ends. Visit http://www.synology.com/enu/support/beta/Synology_DSM3.0_2010.php for details.

Availability

The Synology DSM 3.0 beta is free to download for users who own a DiskStation x07 series and onward. The supported models are:

DS411+, DS1010+, RS810+, RS810RP+, DS410, DS410j, DS710+, DS210+, DS210j, DS110+, DS110j, DS509+, RS409+, RS409RP+, RS409, DS409+, DS409, DS209+II, DS209+, DS209, DS209j, DS109+, DS109, DS109j, DS409slim, RS408, RS408-RP, DS508, DS408, DS108j, RS407, CS407, CS407e, DS207+, DS207, DS107+, DS107, DS107e

The download is available at http://www.synology.com/enu/support/beta/index.php

The live demo site is available at http://www.synology.com/enu/products/demo/index.php

Synology at a Glance

Founded in 2000, Synology is a young and energetic company dedicated to developing high-performance, reliable, versatile, and environmentally-friendly Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. Our goal is to deliver user-friendly solutions and solid customer service to satisfy the needs of businesses, home offices, individual users and families.

Press Contact

marketing@synology.

I was hoping to do a full blown review after having my devices for 6 days now (It arrived Tuesday) but due to the capacity and time taken to get the device ready and put the data on there – this cannot be the case. Unlike a new graphics card or a new monitor, a NAS box is generally not something you get excited about, it’s storage after all but it does play a very important role in getting all your information in one place and be able to access it from the LAN.

The Pre-NAS Days

I think it is important to go over what I used to do before going for such a device. Like a lot of people (tech’s maybe?) I build up my collection of computers and wired them all up to a gigabit network for sheer speed. As I needed storage space, I would buy normally a cheap external USB Drive – whichever was on offer at the time which had the biggest capacity. In my case I had bought the iomega range, first the 50GIG model and later the 1TB model. I shared this out on the network but it involved the computer been on and of course USB Speeds are slower then say e-sata.

My problem came when my current collection got filled to the brim with files, do I buy some more drives? Do I delete maybe some of the files I do not need? Do I store them on other places across the network? I did not really want to waste more money on USB Drives so that is why I felt NAS was the Answer.

Building the NAS

It took me from 6pm Tuesday to 10:30pm on Thursday to get the drive ready before I could even start to put anything on there. My first course of action was to move the files from the USB Drives over the the correct shared drive. The NAS Box had set up some folders due to the services I clicked such as Audio, Video and so forth. The next issues was speed and to start off I had the NAS Box plugged into the router which only has 10/100 ports. Once I moved the NAS box across to my gigabit switch – I noticed a big difference in speed. At the end of each night, I stopped any file moving in progress and powered down all computers.

Finally it was ready

Now that I had all the files off the external USB Drives and the 1TB Drive fitted inside the Dell – this now allowed me to plug in all the drives into the NAS Box as well as fit the 1YB Drive into an external case I had to give me yet more space.

Of the Original RAID 1 formatted 2x2TB Drives – it came out with 3.57TB Free. We have the 1TB, 1TB, 500GIG and 320GIG Drives fitted to a USB Hub (as there is only 3 ports on this device) and these are shared as usbshare1 through to usbshare4. Now as all of the files are indeed stored on the NAS drive and I still have 1.88TB left, I do not really need to power the external drives on just yet but as you can see, it gives me extra space for now and the future.

Speed of the device

Connected to a gigabit network, the device shows up on the network share as the default name of DiskStation, this can changed on the device if needed of course. You map drives and in my case I used V: for Video, M: for music and P: for Pictures. I would suggest it is as quick as copying files to another machine, definitely a lot quicker then when I used the PogoPlug, but this is understandable. I do notice when starting iTunes or the background switcher that the NAS box will rattle the hard drives for a while before coming up.

The built in programs

The NAS Box has various services that allow you to share out your audio, video and music collection as well as download services and other bits. Now the beauty of the download service is that you can just add a program to your local machine, add a torrent or a NZB file and the box will sit in the background downloading  the file allowing you to switch off the machines around it.

The Photo album while handy I suppose is not something I can see myself using, I already have a gallery online and sharing files across an limited upload will not be a fast experience. I cannot for some reason to get the program to thumbnail all my pictures.

Sharing USB Printers

I tried this and on Windows 7 the printer came up as usbprinter and while the NAS box knew what the printer was, it had no idea on the driver for the features. In the end I have up on this method of sharing and plugged it back into my machine. Sahring via the network means no signs of ink been low and so forth.

Was it worth the money?

I could have bought 4x2TB Drives for the money I spent on this lot (I only bought 2 remember) and used a spare machine and had a total of 10TB worth of space on share (thats including the 2x1TB external drives). I can imagine the machine would have been a lot louder, this devices is very quiet indeed. 4 HD inside a machine and in use would have caused more heat and thus more noise. I do feel what I did buy was a good investment, yes I am limited to 4TB Internal but have the ability to add USB Drives as needed.