Synology DS413 Reviewed - Freescale platform musings?

[zjohnr]

The "Closing Thoughts" section of the SmallNetBuilder review of the Synology DS413 ends with the following thought.

The main risk I see is Synology's long term commitment to the Freescale platform. If they decide it's not worth keeping up three versions of their NAS OS, development is going to stop on one. And I'm betting it won't be Intel's.​

I am just trying to learn enough about the current NAS offerings to hopefully not regret whatever I eventually purchase. So I am wondering if I purchased a DS413 how quickly I might find myself kicked to the curb and thrown under the "upgrade bus".

While we all know that history is no guarantee of future performance, I was wondering if anyone had insights to offer about how Synology had handled dropping support for their hardware in the past?

Frankly I am not sure what I am asking or, more importantly, what I should be asking. I'm just trying to form a clearer picture of what I might expect if went with a DS413.

 

[kanewolf]

I have a DS409 and bought a DS213+ to replace a DS210J. Firmware is still being updated on the 409 and I would expect them to continue with a 4 to 5 year post-sale support philosophy since that is pretty standard for the IT industry.

 

[stevech]

Look at how many people Microsoft hosed when they became bored with/discontinued WHS.

 

[jrbdmb]

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/News/Article.asp?TextID=1933

I interesting that in this announcement the jump from DS213+ to DS214+ also included a move from Freescale to Atom. (DS214 is staying with a Marvell processor.)

 

[zjohnr]

And this site, www.techorz.com/peripherals/synology-diskstation-ds414-computex-2013, says that the DS414 will still be Freescale but the clock is bumped to 1.33 GHz.

I am not aware of any announcement from Synology about a DS414 so who knows? Not saying it is wrong, just that I have no idea how reliable the info supposedly from "Computex 2013" may be.

 

[zjohnr]

It was also interesting that the Atom referred to was the recent CE5315. In this press release, Intel describes the Atom CE5300 series as a low power system-on-chip (SoC).

I have been used to classifying a NAS as either an SoC or an Atom based NAS. Guess that is still valid, but the distinction feels less clear cut now.

 

[thiggins]

It was also interesting that the Atom referred to was the recent CE5315. In this press release, Intel describes the Atom CE5300 series as a low power system-on-chip (SoC).

I have been used to classifying a NAS as either an SoC or an Atom based NAS. Guess that is still valid, but the distinction feels less clear cut now.

The "Berryville" Atoms are more highly integrated (no companion / Southbridge) and focused on settop box applications.

Performance is a step down from D2550 / D2700 Atoms. See the results for the new Thecus N2560, which uses a CE5335.

 

[zjohnr]

OK, so apparently Synology did drop the Freescale PowerPC processor

The "Closing Thoughts" section of the SmallNetBuilder review of the Synology DS413 ends with the following thought.

The main risk I see is Synology's long term commitment to the Freescale platform. If they decide it's not worth keeping up three versions of their NAS OS, development is going to stop on one. And I'm betting it won't be Intel's.​

I tend to be a tad slow so I only just now noticed that the following SmallNetBuilder announce article was updated with some spec changes for the DS114 & DS414.
Synology Announces More SOHO NASes

Also announced today are the single-bay DS114 and four-bay DS414. Both are based on Marvell processors, with the DS114 having a single-core 1.2 GHz Armada 370 processor and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM and the DS414 using a dual-core 1.33 GHz Armada XP CPU with 1 GB of DDR3 RAM.​

So it seems that Synology did move away from the Freescale processor in favor of Marvel ARM SoCs.

 

[stevech]

Look at how many people Microsoft hosed when they became bored with/discontinued WHS.

And the dumped one of a kind products like HP's home server based on WHS.
And marketing flashes in NASes from many vendors.