Synology new RackStation devices for high-end storage

Synology Inc. has unveiled the latest generation of RackStation products. These NAS models support Synology’s successful backup, virtualization storage, monitoring and remote work solutions.

Synology also announces the launch of the HAT5300 series: hard drives that deliver top performance for businesses and are designed specifically for Synology applications. Admittedly, none of these are likely to end up in your home. However, it is interesting to take a look at what is going on with these types of ‘heavy duty’ NASs; in the end, some of their features often trickle down to the smaller models.

What is nice about Synology: the operating system of all NASs of that brand – DSM – is exactly the same on all NASs from small to large.

The 12-bay 2U-NAS appliances RS3621RPxs and RS3621xs+ and the 16-bay 3U-NAS appliance RS4021xs+ are designed for SMBs that require a high-performance general-purpose storage solution. Synology’s latest devices provide a reliable platform for data-intensive applications, such as large-scale backup, ISCSi SAN storage, local collaboration solutions and video surveillance.

“These xs and xs+ series devices are extremely versatile and offer great capacity for SMBs and enterprises,” said Julien Chen, Product Manager at Synology Inc.

With their built-in redundant power supply and Intel Xeon processors, they are ideal for handling critical data in a variety of applications, such as large-scale video surveillance, business file servers, backup jobs, productivity software and cost-effective virtualization storage,” said Chen.

All three devices deliver significantly better performance than the previous generation.(1) The RS3621RPxs delivers 68% more random read IOPS than its predecessor, the RS3621xs+ 50% more and the RS4021xs+ 21% more.(2) In addition, the RS3621xs+ and RS4021xs+ each have two built-in 10GbE ports for integrated higher connection speed.

The new devices feature two PCIe Gen 3.0 8x slots for possible upgrades with compatible 10GbE network interface cards(3) and/or NVMe SSD cache.(4) The RS3621RPxs and RS3621xs+ can be scaled up to 36 drive positions and the RS4021xs+ to 40 drive positions by using two RX1217(RP) expansion units and validated drives.(5)

Available in 16TB, 12TB and 8TB models, Synology HAT5300 SATA enterprise HDDs are designed for businesses that want excellent performance and maximum reliability from their Synology systems. Extensive validation tests have been conducted for the HAT5300 series to ensure smooth interaction with Synology systems and DiskStation Manager. These hard drives are designed to offer highly stable storage performance and high capacity for Synology storage systems. Another plus is the automatic firmware updates performed through DSM.

“The HAT5300 series hard drives are ideal for business-critical data that requires high capacity, reliability and cost-effective performance,” said Peggy Weng, Product Manager at Synology Inc.

“During the development of the three SKUs, we tested over 300,000 hours(7) to ensure they are completely reliable for our customers,” said Weng. “We have developed highly optimized hard drives that work perfectly with our systems and integrate seamlessly with DSM.”

HAT5300 drives offer uninterrupted data transfer rates of up to 274 MB/s. With their DSM-specific optimization, compared to similar drives, they are up to 23% faster during continuous sequential reads in demanding multi-user environments.(8) Thanks to automatic firmware updates via DSM, HAT5300 drives always benefit from the latest firmware enhancements and reduce system administrators’ workload. With an MTTF rating of 2.5 million hours, support for a 550 TB per year workload, and persistent write cache technology to minimize data damage from sudden power outages, HAT5300 drives excel in 24/7 operating environments.

Synology’s storage solutions offer the ability to protect Windows and Linux workstations and servers, file servers, and VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines with Active Backup for Business. Additionally, Microsoft 365 can be backed up with Active Backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace accounts can be backed up with Active Backup for G Suite. Use Surveillance Station on Synology NAS to manage, store and analyze video surveillance footage. Protect physical property with support for up to 90 cameras with RS3621xs+ and RS4021xs+, and up to 75 cameras with RS3621RPxs.(9) Synology systems provide high-performance, certified iSCSI storage for virtualization solutions such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and OpenStack Cinder.

Businesses around the world use Synology NAS systems to make their remote work more efficient, using Synology Drive to share and sync files across offices, and Synology Office to enable real-time collaboration on documents, spreadsheets and slides. Synology Chat provides a secure private platform for teams to communicate with each other.

RackStation RS3621RPxs, RS3621xs+, RS4021xs+ and HAT5300 series hard drives (8/12 TB) are immediately available through Synology resellers worldwide.