I've had a Synology Diskstation DS-211j for a couple years, and been really happy with it.
I've got a pair of 1.5TB drives in it that are raid protected, it runs secure FTP for me, my little blog mentioned in my sig line below, a VPN server, and a Plex media server. I've ripped all my DVD's to MKV files and stored them on this thing, and it's a breeze for my BluRay player to connect to it and play back anything in my library. Totally rocks.
A small problem I'm having with it is processing power.
The DS-211j model from Synology has a single core 1.2Ghz ARM processor and 128MB RAM. Pretty anemic. Rather impressive that it works properly (most of the time) given the work load I'm throwing at it.
Sometimes the Plex media server software needs to do intermediary transcoding, especially if I'm watching any of the "channels" available through that software. I get funky playback issues due to the lack of horsepower in the little DS-211j.
I also sometimes get failure to resume playback if I pause a program (one stored on the device) and leave it for awhile and then come back to it later. I have to close the client software and then re-connect and browse back to the program.
And, sometimes I get really slow menu response in the Plex client.
I think all of this is a function of dramatically insufficient RAM. The transcoding failure is also a product of insufficient CPU power.
As such, I'm thinking about replacing my DS-211j with a more powerful version of the same product. Looking at the DS-412+ and DS-413 versions.
Mine is currently maxed out with 2 internal hard drives in it, and those drives are close to full. The 412+ and 413 models each take 4 internal drives, so I can buy more drives and expand my array. The 413 has a dual core 1.0Ghz CPU, while the 412+ has a dual core 2.13Ghz CPU and is about $120 more than the 413. Both of them have 1GB of RAM compared to my current 128MB.
Anyone have experience with either of these two mid-grade Synology products? My first foray into their products was very successful and I'm definitely over-using the device I have given its capabilities. I think a $500 price point for what is essentially a turnkey linux box with a great web management UI and minimalist home footprint is perfectly fair.
One of my coworkers is willing to buy my old DS-211j for $100 so that knocks down some of my out-of-pocket for the replacement box.
