Thoughts and Conclusion
To be clear, my impression of the DS713+ is an overwhelmingly positive one. Setup is simple, functionality is robust, and performance is, on the whole, fairly solid. The one fly in the ointment is, as you might guess, the abnormally slow performance on large file writes over CIFS. This was honestly somewhat surprising to me, especially given the results of the “large file” tests in the synthetic benchmarks. As a control, I attempted the same file copy tests on a machine running Gentoo Linux with a fairly recent kernel revision (3.7.10), sharing multiple Ext4 volumes over Samba; it did not display this behavior. I can only speculate about the details, but clearly there is a fix for this behavior; implementing it in the next release of DSM should be a top priority for Synology’s engineering team.
Even with the performance issue, the DS713+ is a solid choice for SOHO users looking for a NAS device that can grow with their needs. The five bay expansion unit (sold separately) allows you to add more drives as your budget allows, and the Synology Hybrid RAID technology will integrate the new drives into the pool without the need to copy the data off and rebuild the array from scratch. If you would like the functionality of a “real server” for a small number of users without the hassle and expense of purchasing and setting up a full rackmount unit, the DS713+ is a great choice.
Ah, this is so important to me.. hope to have one real soon..