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Synology DS413J review

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Dexter

I was overjoyed to get a bigger NAS device. Mainly because my Dlink 323 was running out of space, and I yearned for something with a little more usability and functionality. I shopped around looking and compared the QNAP, Synology, Thecus, WD, and even some Drobo units. Smallnetbuilder’s NAS charts were a huge help in getting what I wanted. I’m not here to plug them, I just think they have a lot of useful content and reviews that were suited to what I was looking for.

Moving away from the very consumer based Dlink 323, which was tapped out at 12MBps, I found myself in want of something faster and up to date. Synology’s hardware was sound, with a proprietary hybrid RAID, and a kick ass WebUI that simply destroyed the competition. I originally was hooked on getting the DS1512 +, the price being the breaking point factor in this scenario. I eventually went with the DS413J with 4 x 2TB 7200RPM Seagate Drives. Consider that I was able to purchase the DS413J and four hard drives, the cost of the DS1512+ without hard drives was still MORE expensive.

All the reviews put the Synology Disk Station Manager (DSM) as the multi-faceted powerhouse to which all other NAS devices should follow, and it’s easy to see why. You can drive the unit entirely from a browser any where, has plentiful plugins and offers usability for beginner to expert levels.

First Impressions

The DS413J came in a very marketing-manager-friendly box, plenty of pretty pictures and an overall glossy feel at least made me feel like I had made a worthwhile investment. I was a little shocked to discover there was no manual with this unit, Synology smartly eschewed a physical one for a PDF attached to disk. A nice little touch. The unit was immaculate, pristine and wrapped with care in a sheen of plastic wrap and free of dust and any other particulates. Unboxing the NAS felt more like working with a professional scientific instrument instead of a toy, it’s well put together and presented that it just has that feel to it. I wasn’t crazy with the white plastic encasing the unit, the brushed aluminum top and back likely does more for cooling, but if it was entirely black or entirely aluminum that would have been a nice touch. As it is, the white will do – if you’re nit-picky about that sort of thing.

The Box the Disk Station arrived in. Plenty of pretty picture on all sides and top. There’s even links to partner companies listed in bullet format

Hardware

The power brick is a large, unflattering chunk of plastic – if only the power supply was embedded in the unit it would have saved me a little more space on my Rack. There’s ample screws for hard drive installation, from 1.5mm to 2.5mm, flat and flushed heads: more than enough for 4 drives. The drive trays are simple flat gray plastic with no rubberized anti-vibration absorption, but the engineers have tightly integrated them into the NAS chassis, so there’s no movement anyway. The front of the unit has seven LED indicator lights: Power, Status, LAN, and one LED for each hard drive inserted. The colors are straightforward for anyone to understand as well: Green=Good, Red=Bad. The middle power button is always blue, probably because it just looks cool.

Blinking LED indicators tell you at a quick glance what’s going on with power, LAN, and your Hard drives. No LCD display, but you can do everything from the DSM web GUI

Software

This is where the Synology really shines, after setting up and formatting hard drives (surprisingly quick), you are given a choice to either install the DSM from the Synology external update site or manually (you first download the package and point to it). I did the latter and installed it from my laptop via a wireless connection. Immediately after logging in, DSM tells you such items as uptime, resource monitoring, logs and current connections all as a pop up in the bottom right hand side. The wizard can help you configure backup, router configuration for firewall and external port access and offers easy to read configuration items in the control panel from the start.

DSM treats your experience like another desktop, complete with icons, and Windows-esque useful health ‘gadgets’ such as health monitors, transfers, logs and whatever else you can decide from the drop down menus

Usability

Easily the most user friendly NAS device I’ve ever come across; the hardware is straightforward – plug in your drives, provide power and ethernet, and press the power button. The Synology Disk Station Manager (DSM) AJAX web server is incredibly powerful and lightning quick, even from external access where my uploads are slower. Mounting files from within the DSM was a snap, just open their File Station (equivalent of Explorer, or if you prefer, Finder) and mount the remote folder share you have on your network. Creating users and groups is intuitive and fast, the linux style of read/access based on shares makes things much easier to figure out. The Packages are well put together and definitely have great business potential; such as the multiple CRM’s, Wiki abilities, Mailstation and VPN server. Even the backups are dead simple; I configured my old linux based NAS into an Rsync location for the DS413J. The dual USB ports even allow for plugging in of external hard disks for USB copy / backup jobs, and everything can be scheduled. The system log is also very useful for tracking down changes and logins, as well as the health monitor that tells you every task-manager-esque what’s going on, who’s doing what and what processes are using CPU and memory.

Quick pic of currently installed packages on the DSM GUI. You can add even more 3rd party applications that are handy like ‘currently connected’

Features

I only have great things to say about the DSM, it’s like logging into a new computer each time you add a new package. The new features add a new dimension each time, allowing for further tweaks and functionality that wasn’t before present. Some such as Media Server didn’t appeal to me, but others such as 3rd party add-ons like Switch Service and Current Connection make the experience much more informative. With such features like Radius Server, I could now change my wireless encryption to an enterprise level format capable of local and ldap authentication protocols. I’m sure the next time I’m a party, I’ll have to drop that nugget of information. Other features such as media station helps create an internal website complete with thumbnails and auto-playing movies and streaming audio (even over the internet). There’s so much power at the DSM’s disposal, that it would take a whole article for each add-on feature.

The DSM package center has endless possibilities with different configurations and applications with items for business, productivity, web and mail serving and more

Performance

I struggled with the price and (theoretical) performance of the much meatier Synology 1512+. When weighing price vs. performance, the 413J came out ahead and I save a few hundred dollars a result. Synology Claims a maximum 53MBps Upload (write) and 108MBPs Download (read) on their website when working with a 5GB file and 1500MTU max over a 1Gbps LAN environment. My own benchmarks were not far from the result, although I did tweak my settings with 9000MTU on the Synology and Intel NIC with Win7 64x Ultimate edition with a 5GB file and the speed was little over 50MBps for a write, and around 55MBps for a read.

Verdict

I am definitely sold on the Synology name brand. The DSM software gives a user complete control of data, backups, security, and a whole plethora of other features with the additional Synology packages available for download. With features like SSH ability at the flip of a switch, remote management that’s both easy, intuitive and icon based, I only have great things to say about the Synology DSM unit. The price is right for this unit, larger Synology units can accommodate more hard drives, have greater integration with virtualization platforms and even greater transfer speeds. For the home user with storage needs, it’s a near perfect offering.

Closing Thoughts
I wrote a ‘love letter to Drobo’ some time ago. I revisited the Drobo box with hope that I my opinions would have changed. Not surprisingly, I’m still disappointed with drobo’s performance and lack of options. I stand by my original post, the product feels unfinished and flaky, and under performs in simple tasks like file transfers. Presented with both choices for a NAS device, I would pick the Synology 10 times out of 10.

Exchange 2010 – get list of disconnected mailboxes immediately

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Dexter

Once a mailbox is disabled from the Exchange 2010 console, it shows up in the disconnected mailboxes after the nightly maintenance. Sometimes however, a company can change it’s mind at the last minute and decide to either hire someone back and that’s when the IT admin has to bring that disconnected mailbox back within the hour.

Instead of waiting around for the nightly maintenance to occur, you can force your Exchange 2010 server to pick up the mailboxes almost immediately.

1. First and foremost, re-enable the user’s Active Directory account, as it has all the proper SSID’s and is actually the name you want to restore.

2. Check the disconnected mail, if you just disabled it you likely will not see it

3. if you don’t see it there, you’ll have to manually do the mailbox cleanup (commonly known as maintenance. Open up a Exchange power shell and issue the cmdlet:

Get-MailboxDatabase | Clean-MailboxDatabase

Be careful with this command, as it cleans all your mailstores. If you have only one mailstore you want to run this command on, you have to use:

Clean-MailboxDatabase "Your Database Name"

4. Once you’ve done that, refresh your disconnected mailboxes and you should see the mailbox you want to reconnect:

5. From here, right click and reconnect the mailbox you want!

How to: get multiple Remote Desktop Connections

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Dexter

When you have to remote desktop to a Windows based server or computer, your default option is RDC protocol. This is a useful utility if you’re connecting to one computer at a time. So what if you need to connect to ten or more? Do keep in mind, not all those computers have the same credentials, and saving all those .RDP files to your desktop will get very cumbersome.

There’s a handy tool from Microsoft: Remote Desktop Connection Manager that allows you to do just that.

As you can see from the screencap directly from MS techblog, the application lets you open multiple RDC connections at a time giving you full control over: inherited credentials, gateway settings for VPN connections, individual display settings, individualized local resources… the list goes on. Super handy utility when I was building a new virtual environment with Hyper-V; after creation of the VM, I put in the server name with full credentials and saved it under the proper group.

I’ve used other tools similar to this such as the RSAT tool that felt unfinished, as well as RoyalTS, VisionAPP, and Terminals. All these programs worked well for what I used them for, but each had their own little quirks and last minute features such as screen-shot ability. The part I like the most about RDC Manager from Microsoft is the price: completely free. Plus, it just feels like it goes with the rest of the Windows experience, from the toolbars to the menus it definately feels like a MS product.

So if you need to remote to a hell of a lot of computers and like a freebie that’s right from Microsoft, give it a shot.

-Dexter

Excel 2007: “Too many different cell formats” error message

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Dexter

If you have an Excel heavy group of users, you will likely come across this issue. This happens when someone merges an existing excel file with another one, creating a super excel file that has links and formatting all over the place. When an excel workbook has too many different combinations of formatting, it freaks out and you get the error message above when you try to change formatting of a cell.

Fear not, there is a fix:

Download the .Net4.0 XLStylesTool

This file cleans up the offending excel file by cleaning up whatever nasty bits of information are corrupting the data. I’ve tested this tool, and it looks like it only cleans up formatting, leaving all data and formulas alone. After running the tool, the file became editable again!

-Dexter

source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213904

applies to: Excel 2007 files (all files ending with .xlsx) format

Getting around RDC protocol

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Dexter

From a Windows perspective, you kinda need Windows remote desktop protocols. Even if you don’t know what it does, your IT admin uses this on a daily basis if he/she is running a Windows based environment.

Remote Desktop in a nutshell is the ability to “drive” another Windows based computer remotely. So what happens when you’re trying to connect to a Windows computer, from a non-Windows computer?

I ran across this when working on a super old Windows 98 computer. As used as I was to many Windows 7 commands, taking a quad leap backwards felt as unnatural and old fashioned as you would think. I’ve even memorized the command line to bring up the remote desktop protocol from run line:

mstsc -v: thebigoldserver.somecompany.com

See? Nice and simple. But the command prompt on the Windows 98 computer simply gave me the error that such a command did not exist.

Once I realized that it wasn’t 1998, I had to rethink my approach. So, how could I connect to a server without the RDP program?

2x Client. This little guy is touted as an RDP solution (thus the anti-citrix bandwagon). The great thing about 2x is that it does not require any older version of RDP to work (as many software vendors tend to do: repackage their software using existing run times).

I’m also an avid visitor of portableapps: programs that can run directly from a USB stick. The website offered the 2x client as a portable application. Onto the USB stick it went, along with a few other useful utilities.

2x works with OS X, android and multiple distributions of Linux as well. So there really is another way to get around the RDC protocol.

How to: Be a freeware champion

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Dexter

Windows in general can a be a pain in the ass. There’s tonnes of software on the market that’s pricey depending on what you want get done. Sometimes you need an enterprise class solution for your vexing problem and it can only be achieved by dropping a few thousand dollars.

And sometimes, just sometimes you can peruse the freeware section of a website and be astounded by what is lying in wait that can be your perfect solution. The problem therein is which website offers the safest surfing experience? Can you trust a websites freeware? Is it really malware just waiting for you to execute? There’s never an easy answer. So here’s a sure fire list of websites that offer freeware that I know and use on a regular basis:

Gizmo’s freeware
http://www.techsupportalert.com/
A real nugget of free applications that do everything. All content is nicely organized in categories that make sense. Most freeware is crapware free and each software has independent reviews based on a 5-star rating system. All pro’s and con’s for each software is listed, and offers up screenshots for any software you’re wary of installing.

NirSoft
http://www.nirsoft.net
For all the IT Administrator essentials, most are packed away in this must-have website. Utilities range from wireless sniffers, DNS checkers, password recovery options to system tweaking tools. Everything is laid out right on the main page heading style. This website scores extra points as all software is developed by the same programmer Nir Sofer, and most are stand alone executable files that do not require installation!

Major Geeks
http://majorgeeks.com/
One mother of a download site, Major Geeks has been a staple of the internet and continues on with it’s tradition of offering all it’s freeware hosted locally on it’s internal servers. Just about anything can be found right here.

So go on, give it a shot and see what you can download.

How to: Save your contacts in Outlook

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Dexter

Here’s a protip: Save your contacts! Should your computer need to be reformatted or upgraded, you run the risk of losing the contacts you email on a frequent basis.

Why is this?

When you start typing a name in your address field and Outlook offers completion suggestions, that’s called auto-complete – and that does NOT get backed up anywhere.

Solution?

Copy that person into your address book. When you get a new person’s email, right click on their name in your outlook, and choose “Add to Outlook Contacts”

It’s really that simple: plus it takes away [some] the woes of your IT Administrator.

How to: locate product numbers and serial numbers on HP and Dell computers

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Dexter

You have to know the serial numbers of HP computers and servers in order to get warranty.

If you run Dell machines, you need the Dell asset taags in order to get warranty.

As it turns out, many times you’ll be no where near your computers but have remote access (hopefully). So how can you get either the HP Serial Number or the Dell Asset tag remotely? Read on.

As it turns out, many times you’ll be nowhere near your computers but have remote access (hopefully). So how can you get either the HP Serial Number or the Dell Asset tag remotely? Read on.

See the below table to obtain the corresponding information on the right:

command	information
`wmic bios get serialnumber`	HP: shows Serial Number, Dell: shows Dell Asset tag
`wmic csproduct get name`	HP: shows model name: Dell: shows base model
`wmic /namespace:\\root\wmi path MS_SystemInformation`	HP: shows product number, Dell – nothing man, just nothing

This handy spot of information might come in handy for you one day if your ILO or Dell Open Manage software isn’t installed.

How to: Check your .Net Framework version on Windows 7

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Dexter

.Net Framework was easy to spot in the older versions of Windows XP, if you went and checked your ‘Add or Remove Programs’ section of control panel you’d see it plain as day:

As Windows matured, the .NET Framework became intertwined with the operating system. So it became tougher to figure out if you actually had it installed. A hint for anyone using Windows 7 right now: if you’ve installed Service Pack 1, you will undoubtedly have it installed: it’s required to run most, if not all of the fancy graphics engine behind aeroglass and most of the search functions.

If you’re ever inquisitive enough to wonder which version you have installed, you’ll notice your listing of installed programs and windows updates will usually not have it listed – again, this is because it’s such a core component of it’s Common Runtime Language, it’s become a given.

Websites offer up ways to see what version you have by way of checking directories and registry items.

I however, prefer a more direct approach instead of copying and pasting version numbers into Microsoft’s website – a little tool that’s downloaded doesn’t require any other run time to show you exactly what version you have installed: Asoft version detector.

Just Download and run right from the desktop, and it gives you all the juicy details you need.

So why would you need to know the version? In my case it was work related as a program needed a particular framework to run a monitoring tool. I can’t even speak as to why you would need it. But it’s just a damn handy, if not very cool way of knowing what you got installed.

My love letter to Drobo

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Dexter

Drobo is a US based firm that makes storage devices for home and small business. The amount of bays available range from 2 to 10 and you can purchase disks of any size, and all the units offer protection using their home-grown BeyondRAID.

I personally don’t own a drobo, I have to use one at one of my jobs and it’s quite painful, the list below will explain why:

You have to use the Drobo Dashboard for everything. The Drobo Dashboard is a windows based platform, and installs a Drobo service into your windows registry. It only takes up 20 MB of space, but you have to use it to configure shares, administrator passwords, IP addresses, and most of the other tools including copy jobs and so forth. The dashboard is java based so it seems to take a long time between clicks to get somewhere useful. Waiting to get to the admin panel takes 4 clicks, and clocked in about a minute. That might not seem like a long time, but when you’re pressed for time waiting for some animation to finish, it gets very tiring, very quickly. I’d prefer to see a web browser interface. My home NAS has it, and it can be accessed anywhere as long as I can forward the right port.
It’s slow. Copying to and from this thing caps out at 20MBps. That’s on a good day. It’s surprising since I’m running full GB nics forced with 9000MTU’s on each Drobo. This is using a Cisco catalyst 2960 with full Gig duplexing turned on. I can copy files from PC to PC at close to 80MBps – why does this drobo with 10TB of storage only recieve a quarter of that speed? I thought “maybe it’s just the computer I’m using”. So after installing SSH with many reboots (see below) I logged in and did a “rm-r” command from putty. The command seemed to take up to 5 minutes to work on one 4GB file.
The apps don’t always work. The Drobo website says it’s a simple: from the GUI (that has to be loaded from Windows), enable the droboapps check-mark (in a place that doesn’t really make sense). Then the unit restarts (why, I don’t know). When it restarts, it produces a new share called droboapps. Put whatever droboapps you can find from the Drobo website into this folder and restart [again] so the folders expand and install. However, the apps don’t always work properly – I tried to get ssh working and after restarting how many times it still didn’t show port 22 as being open. The same thing happened with Rsync: after finally getting ssh to work after about 5 reboots I tried Rsync from the command line, only to be shown ‘Rsync is a not a recognized command’. Lovely.
You can’t view the log files. The log files on the Drobo are all encrypted when you generate them. Why would a company encrypt their log files in the first place? Some of the most useful features of any NAS or storage unit is the ability to view history in the log. Useful information such as boot times, RAID configuration, share points, local users, groups, even being able to see a TIME stamp would be helpful, instead all I have is the GUI, that can only be loaded from a local computer, and only has basic options.
You don’t know what kind of RAID configuration you’re getting. When you first set up the RAID array, it doesn’t specify what type you want, it just seems to create it’s own RAID structure (see BeyondRAID). The only option you’re presented with is “protect my data”. I don’t even know what that button really means, it just does SOMETHING and the amount of free space I have somehow changes.
Copy jobs aren’t saved on the the unit. There’s a Drobo copy feature you can access that allows you to copy information from a PC to the Drobo. I found this useful as I could copy another network share onto the Drobo. However, that option disappears when you change computers or open the Drobo GUI on another computer – the job should stay with the drobo device. Just annoying
Barely any features. No USB connections, no eSATA connections, no print service ability, droboapps are sparse if not dismal.

Perhaps I’m a little critical on the Drobo offering, as I had tested all performance with one unit. When another showed up on my desk I had to configure a replicated backup solution I was a little perplexed why both had terrible transfer performance. Drobo insists that the ISCSI transfers are fantastic, but I don’t plan on putting any virtual media onto this yet as I’m not certain it will break past the 20MBps threshold I consistently achieve. The original intent for this was to be used as a file server, given the poor performance I can’t in good conscience recommend it. The other painful point is the lack of Active Directory integration, the linux file permissions just don’t work for a business with a Windows Domain Controller.

I’m hardly the first person to complain about Drobo units, and by the looks of things I certainly won’t be the last.

Drobo seems to reply back to every piece of negative media, which makes me wonder if the company is attempting more damage control and not enough development. I’m certainly not fishing for anything here, with my experience with this device there’s certainly no way one would find it’s way in my home.

Specs: Model: Drobo Pro FS - (2 of the same model ) Disk config: 8 x 2TB WD Green 5300 RPM drives for both Role of Drobo Pro FS (1): backup to disk location Role of Drobo Pro FS (2): replication of backup to disk

-Dexter