The Test System and Comments -
The Synology DS1513+ was tested as received with five Seagate 2TB drives setup in SHR with a single drive in fault tolerance. We also tested it with additional RAID types after the initial “ship” testing was completed. The follow on testing was raw performance and did not include many of the real-world tests we use. The version of DiskStation Manager installed was 4.2 (DSM 4.2-3211). We used VMWare’s vShpere 5.1 with two hosts and our usual 20+ guests for the VMotion Testing. For all media and photo station testing we used a combination of AVI and Jpeg files that total about 24GB of data. These were accessed from various devices including Apple iPad and iPhone, Android Phones and Windows 7 PCs.

The file transfer tests were accomplished using the same 24GB of files that we later used for our media streaming and access testing. For network connectivity we used the most bandwidth possible and teamed the four 1Gbe LAN Ports using LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) this was connected to a cluster of ports on our NETGEAR GS728TS Switch stack. The port group was setup to allow for LACP traffic (and in particular 802.3ad) to pass through as if they were one port.

For HA data throughput testing we used a single connection to the switch stack (due to the current limitations of the DSM software) and ran through the RAID types supported by the HA application. You will see the results listed below with each section.

Performance testing overview -
We test things a little differently here at DecryptedTech, we try to combine repeatable data with real-world usage to give you a much broader picture of how the device will perform when you get it back home or in your office. Numbers like MB/s and IOPs are not going to matter if the device is not easy to use and does not meet your set of requirements. This is why we spend a lot of time with each product to see how it performs over time and during different events (like power loss, losing network connection etc.). Each of the tests below are intended to give you a broad picture of how well the Synology DS1513+ performed under daily load, when maxed out and when trying to serve multiple requests.

Intel NAS Performance Test -
This test is a common test across the internet to find out the raw throughput of a Network Attached Storage device. To use this you have to setup a folder share on the device and allow the NASPT to read and write specific data back and forth to it. We ran this using all of the different RAID levels available to the 5-drive NAS. You can see the testing configuration and results below.

On the NASPT side of things we saw solid performance across the board when connected using 4 x 1Gbe connections in single node mode. All of the tests in the suite had performance levels that were above what we have seen form similarly priced units. On the HA side of the house we were happy to note that for a single connection test (one client to the NAS) there was no performance hit in this mode. We had expected a slight write hit as the device had sync up the data between nodes, but this was not the case.

VMware vSpere 5.1 VMotion -
Our testing with VMware has two parts to it. In the first we establish that we can create a new virtual system on the NAS using both iSCSI and NFS shares. From there we begin moving active servers back and forth between our two storage devices (the custom built NAS and the target or test NAS). We time how long it takes to move the servers between the devices and record the best times. All of the test servers (for movement) have the same size, thick provisioned with 120GB OS drives. We also have a final phase of the testing that we call “the plugs out” test. During this test we disconnect the NAS from the switch (disable the LAN ports on the switch) and then reconnect the system in normal usage the host should be able to reconnect to them without any data loss. If not then there is likely a problem with the way the system is buffering the information before writing to the drive.

We were very impressed with the live move of servers we were able to move our 120GB test servers to the Synology DS1513+ in as little as 15 minutes. This is actually very fast considering they were thick provisioned (meaning they were taking up the full 120GB). Moving back to the Custom Built Storage Server was a little quicker with the fastest time coming in at around 12 minutes. Performance and accessibility of the systems that were stored on the DS1513+ also seemed to improve especially the exchange server cluster. Here the failover between servers in the DAG (Database Availability Group) was significantly faster than what we have seen on other storage boxes.

The DS1513+ also passed the plugs out test without any issues. This was very nice to see as we have not always had success with this when we attempted it. Still it does represent a possible failure point and one that can cause havoc with Virtual systems including corrupting virtual servers and making them unusable (always have a backup…)

The HA mode failover test was interesting. The servers in question appeared to pause and Vcenter locked up until the passive node took over. This transition was between 5-10 seconds, but always resulted in the system reconnecting and the servers coming back online. We did have to clear multiple errors in the system including VMware HA failover errors ((VMware tried to fail the guest systems over to another host). Still it was much better than the issues you can have if you lose a switch, RAID or other larger failure. As long as you anticipate clean up and also reboot the guests (as time permits) you will not have any long term issues to deal with.

File Transfer-
As we mentioned before our file transfer testing involves a group of files (image and video files) that are around 24GB is total size. We send this to the target NAS and then copy them back over to see how quickly it can complete the task. We also send files back and forth to the target NAS during our streaming tests.

The 24GB file group made the trip in about 6 minutes from our desktop to the DS1513+. The average transfer speed was around 60MB/s This is a nice transfer time and shows that the DS1513+ can handle large file transfers even with files that cannot be compressed like jpeg or AVI files.

Media Streaming -
For our media streaming we used four Windows 7 systems and two media players (NETGEAR NeoTV Max and Prime). Two of the Windows 7 boxes were connected via 1Gbe LAN connections while the remaining devices were connected via wireless (two 802.11ac and two 802.11n). On the Windows 7 systems we used a combination of Media Center and the standard windows share to stream the media to the device. On the two media players we used the built in DLNA service and Synology’s Media Server Application.

Once again the Synology DS1513+ showed us that it is more than capable of handling the duties of serving multiple requests. We were able to view videos on all devices without any stuttering at standard definition. At full HD we were able to watch on the four Windows PCs without any issue while there was a delay in buffering the HD video on the two NETGEAR media players. Once the video was buffered there were not additional issues notes. Now it is important to note this was tested with four 1Gbe LAN ports bundled into an 802.3ad LAG. This allows for 4Gbe of bandwidth that the DS1513+ can serve data. The individual connections were not able to saturate that 4Gbe pipe while sticking with Synology’s Hybrid RAID gave us enough performance to keep data flowing. Under RAID 5 and 6 the performance was not a good. We saw the performance drop off after the fourth device connected when pulling HD video. RAID 10 fared better and was able to keep up with the SHR for the most part.

Backup -
The backup software that comes with the DS1513+ is nice and allows you to setup some pretty granular backups of your system(s). We were able to set this to a nice schedule and thanks to the option to enable a certain number of file versions we could go back in time to any point in the previous five days and see the version of that file. The backup of our local review folder (which has video, RAW, Jpeg and PNG files in addition to the word and excel files) took a little less than 4 hours to backup using a low priority backup option. We also had the option to sync a folder with folders on our system so that we had identical copies of all of the files available. It is a nice option as more and more people operate with both a desktop and a laptop.

Special Features -
Operation of the Package Center was seamless, fast and simple. We simply love this option and hope that it continues to grow. In fact the features here make the cost of the DS1513+ seem trivial considering everything that you can get from it. It is not going to replace a real server in a business, but if you are a home user and are a small business that is just getting started then the extras you get here in the package center are amazing. Each one has its own configurations page and settings that can be adjusted to suit your needs. This is one part that Synology certainly got right and as they continue to work on adding their own packages and services from third parties this feature will continue to be a value add.