Reviews

Synology DiskStation DS2015xs review

Synology’s DS2015xs makes 10GbE storage networks even more affordable

by: Dave Mitchell

1 Jun 2015

Price

£783

Very good value; dual 10GbE SFP+ ports; Good NAS performer; Feature-rich DSM software

10GbE transceivers increase price; Alpine SoC delivers poor iSCSI write performance

Synology makes a break from tradition as its DS2015xs is the first NAS appliance on the market to use an Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-514 ARM-based SoC. Netgear and Qnap have recently launched appliances with Alpine SoCs but they've gone for the lower end dual-core chips.

The AL-514 is a quad-core model turning over at 1.7GHz and supporting up to 8GB of non-ECC DDR3 memory. However, what really makes the DS2015xs unusual is the SoC has dual embedded 10GbE SFP+ ports.

Pricewise, the DS2015xs looks good value with a diskless unit hovering around the 800 ex VAT mark. A close competitor is Netgear's ReadyNAS 716 which provides dual 10GBase-T ports but it only has six bays and a diskless unit costs over 1,000 more.

Even including the additional cost of 10GbE transceivers, it still beats Netgear hands down with the Intel and Avago short-range 10GBase-SR transceivers we use in the lab costing around 120 apiece. If you have other transceiver plans, we recommend checking Synology's compatibility list as there aren't many other models on it.