| Synology Cube Station CS-406 Review |
| Written by Maxit | ||||||
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Price: £525 inc vat Supplier: Synology Manufacturer: Synology Synology are experts in storage media solutions and have pioneered the way users manage their data. Over the years, the company has extended its key technologies in storage software and integrated them into cost efficient hardware components for consumers and business sectors. With a highly trained development team specialising in file systems, RAID and digital library technologies for content sharing, retrieving and searching, they know a thing or two about handling data! Their impressive product stable ranges from the Disk Station 101 series for SOHO and HOME users right up to the top of the range Cube Station CS-406 All-in-1 Terabyte server for demanding home users and small businesses. The Cube Station CS-406 is a network attached storage (NAS) device that goes beyond file sharing and data backup with a unique and full feature list. Everything is networked these days and if you haven't experienced the benefits of NAS, a brief explanation might be in order. NAS is a storage system, usually including RAID configurations of hard drives for data security, with its own LAN IP address - rather than being attached to a computer. It allows the managing and mapping of file locations to any network attached devices, such as your PC. The beauty of NAS for Home Entertainment or business users is that it does away with the need of a central computer to manage everything. Imagine having a network repository for all your data that runs independantly of any computer. Then imagine a device that can host websites with PHP and MySQL support, download files, share photos, share files over the web, act as a multimedia server, backup data, connect USB devices and provide terabytes of storage space and you have a good idea of what the Cube Station 406 is all about. 
The official feature list reads as follows:
Phew. It's like the Swiss Army knife of NAS Appliances. The unit itself is stylish and well built. It's amazing so much has been packed in with dimensions of 230 x 168 x 184mm taking up a only small footprint - perfect for any desktop area. Synology have obviously spent a good deal of time creating an asthetically pleasing unit and it shines - it'll slot right in next to your Apple Mac and iPod setup. It might even make them jealous!  A big power button on the front of the unit is a welcome addition and powering up is achieved by a single push. The unit takes a few moments to boot up the first time as it configures any attached hard drives for operation. The led's to the left and right provide clear visual indication to the system status. Once the blue light surrounding the power button stops flashing, you are good to go. The Cube Station has room for up to four SATA hard drives and two Terabytes of potential storage space - it supports 500GB hard drives. With RAID 0,1 and 5 on offer, data security is well catered for. For our tests, we installed two 400GB Western Digital hard drives and configured them to run in RAID 1 mode for absolute data safety. RAID 1 provides a mirror backup of any data - if one drive goes down you still have the other one in reserve. The downside is that instead of 800GB of space two drives would normally give, both drives are treated as one for a 400GB total. Performance users might want to opt for RAID 0 and the enhanced speed this mode offers for non-critical data applications or RAID 5 that offers a little of both. Synology has a list of recommended hard drives that have been tested and approved for use with the Cube Station - you can see the full list here. With support for all the latest drives, storage options are very impressive. Imagine four 500GB hard drives running in RAID 5. Brilliant stuff! Let's take a look at some more pictures of the CS-406 in action - Flash player required to view larger images.          
The Cube Station has account management built in and Windows domain support is compatible with Windows ADS and NT4 domains, making it ideal for any office environment where Windows domain colleagues need to share a server. Setting up the device is a five minute affair. Simply unscrew the back panel, slide the top panel off and connect up the hard drives. Instructions for assembly are under the lid showing you how to install the drives and all cables are included - some SATA are longer than others so a bit of care is needed in selecting the correct length based on the position of the hard drive. We would have liked to see the ability to hot swap hard drives with some some sort of caddy or slider system. Perhaps the R&D boffins over at Synology will think of a way to incorporate this in future technology. When everything is secure and connected up, you are basically ready to go. Press the power switch, wait for the blue light to stop flashing, check the LED's and pop the installation disk in your PC. A handy setup wizard walks you through the whole configuration process setting up the device on the network. Here's some examples of how you might configure and use the Cube Station.  Installation is a breeze, even the most technically challenged user would be able to have the Cube Station up and running in under ten minutes. Synology have obviously spent a lot of time making this aspect as pain free as possible - networking can be notoriously frustrating - and it shines as one of the easiest products to setup that we have had the pleasure of testing in the MaXit labs. Now the real fun begins. Accessing the heart of the Cube Station is achieved through your normal web browser - in our case Mozilla Firefox. During installation your Cube Station will have been assigned a local IP address which you can tap into your browser to bring up the admin login screen - something like 192.168.1.2:5000. Don't panic if you've already forgotten the IP address as there is a handy Synology Assistant on the software CD that acts as a jump point to tweak, map drives, add printers, find attached NAS servers on your network and manage the CS-406 unit. Perfect for the Home user.  Experienced users will probably just want to log straight in using their browser but the assistant is always there for support and additional configuration should you need it. The administration page allows you to access all the features of the Cube Station. Download, backup, photo station, web server, user management, ftp - it's all here in a familiar web browsing environment.  Features In DetailWith so much on offer, the Cube Station offers solutions for just about any aspect of data management, along with a host of other useful applications.Photo Station One of the top features on offer from the CS-406 has to be the Photo Station, offering a mix of public and private picture albums than can be accessed from a HTTP address. If you want to make them available over the internet, you'll need a static IP address too - most broadband connections for home users come with dynamic (means it changes everytime you connect) IP addresses so you might need to enquire about a static IP. Building a photo album is very simple. Enable the Photo Station from the admin console and it creates a folder on the Cube Station ready to receive pictures. To create an album is a simple case of dragging and dropping files on to the mapped drive. You can then type your address into your browser - ie: 192.168.1.2/photo - and the CS-406 indexs your files, create thumbnails and builds your gallery. You can keep pictures in folders but unfortunately subfolders are not supported at this time. Folders keep track of the amount of visitors who view each album - great fun for friends and family - and picture control including slideshows allows all sorts of viewing options. It really is a great tool and perfect for getting all your pictures up on the web without the need for complex html coding.   |
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