Synology RS3412xs

With support for both NAS file sharing and block-level iSCSI, the latest member of the Synology RackStation family, the RS3412xs, is a scalable appliance capable of meeting the storage needs of many medium-sized companies. It lacks support for SAS, data deduplication and other enterprise-class features, but with optional 10GbE connectivity plus VMware and Hyper-V certification it offers a lot more than your average SME product.

As always, the Synology hardware is impressively solid, encased inside a sturdy 2U rack-mount chassis. Four hot-swap fans handle the cooling and there's another in the single power supply on our review unit; dual redundant supplies are an option for those wanting extra protection.

The motherboard is accessible via a lift-off lid, and comes equipped with a dual-core Intel Core i3 processor clocked at 3.1GHz. A decent 2GB of ECC-protected DDR3 RAM accompanies this, upgradeable to 8GB for large-scale deployments — particularly those involving multiple volumes and optional server applications (about which more shortly).