Full on the amount of time, slight weaknesses in detail

I deal / interest me for several years for NAS devices for home use. Central application is for me has always been the central storage of files and data backup to other devices.
Around 2004/2005 I made my first steps with Ready NAS devices. Those were, however, all real cucumbers that could really convince neither the function nor the speed. In 2008 I bought a QNAP NAS that was indeed functional to the amount of time, but not the necessary power / speed offered to to handle large amounts of data really comfortable. 2011 I went on a Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra RNDU2000 diskless with Atom processor to. This was the first device that was both functional and of the power to the amount of time. Reliable and fast the first truly adult NAS device that I have owned. In this unit I will refer more often during the review, it is as it were the benchmark for assessing the DS214 +.
2012 I have then an additional Synology DS110J bought in order to use this for off-site backups. In this way, I came for the first time with the Synology DSM system into contact and was immediately impressed. Between the user interface of Synology and Netgear were again my worlds and was then in the course of this year clear that the administration interface for the Netgear will no longer be developed.

From this then grew again the desire to facilitate the exchange Netgear against another Synology with 2 Bays same user interfaces / operating philosophy easy handling and promise way more function / performance.
Originally I wanted to upgrade to the DS713 +, this was me at about 400, - EUR but simply a little too expensive. Because I wanted to have two LAN ports again, the choice of possible units was clear. A few weeks ago then the DS214 + was re-announced and with a price of about 300, - EUR the unit was in my tolerance range, so I decided to buy it.

Since I knew the equipment and the software in principle, there was no major surprises out of the box, yet here summarizes some points that I noticed:

+ Good workmanship with housing partly made of metal, with punched lettering on the side. The device is slightly bulkier than my old Netgear. The plates are further apart, so that there is adequate space for air circulation inside. The fan is pleasantly quiet.
+ Mounting of hard drives without tools (the Festplattentrays are only made of plastic and in particular the plastic strips with which the plate is fixed in the tray, act quite fluttery. This is the price not really appropriate and good for sure not for frequent removal and installation the plates. But who does not constantly rumhantiert on the device, sure no problem get it. The Festplattentrays with my Netgear were made of metal and definitely high.)
+ Drive bays are lockable and so very well secured against accidental removal (lockable I would not call it because the bowl is only a plastic scribe a small screwdriver has the same function)
+ USB 3.0 ports (with the for me really is not an advantage because I do backups only over the net. What's really stupid that both 3.0 ports sit back and front only 2.0 ..)
+ Genial is the Cloud Station, with which you can synchronize a folder on the Disk Station and on the laptop to have the data available offline.

Where there is light, there's a bit of shadow:
- Synchronization shared folder on another Disk Station is very slow. I'll be so far only about 300kB / sec. My Internet connection would easily allow much higher speeds.
- During an ongoing backup task the transmission speed goes via SMB / CIFS back significantly and the device responds sometimes delayed.
- No possibility submit with board means a Wake-On-Lan signal to wake a remote NAS, eg before starting a backup operation (my old Netgear ReadyNAS could). Meanwhile, I have found a solution for this, which is simple and functional, but unfortunately nowhere described.
- The functionality of the DiskStation Manager is huge and not always finds the desired function where they are suspected initially. The clarity / sorting and even the naming of some of the functions are not yet optimal. This can be seen especially in services, which are divided into a server and a client part, such as network security or LDAP.
- The pre-set text for the notifications are unhappy / ambiguous and partly and sometimes quite scarce.
- No progress bar for backup operations by synchronizing shared folder
- The e-mail notification feature is still buggy: the first recipient's address must be entered the email address of the sender account, otherwise the mail does not go out. Only when second e-mail address, you can enter any address.
Although the list of negative points rather long: This is undoubtedly all whining at a high level. The Disk Station 214+ is a sophisticated device with a huge range of functions and numerous customization options.

My old Netgear NAS was performed mechanically clearly better and had the nose for some functions before. But the user interface was no longer state of the art and development of the software no longer took place. The Disk Station is performed compared mechanically simple, it shines with a user interface that corresponds to the prior art. Numerous functions can be installed via additional packages. It is a pity only that some features are missing or have been implemented only superficially and that's not consistently high performance. It remains only to hope for future updates, the chances of this are good but because the Disk Station Manager 5.0 is already announced.

Addendum: 31.12.2013:
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Because of demands here again a little more accurate execution of how to send a Wake-On-LAN signal to the DiskStation to wake a remote server.
Advantage of this solution is that definitely not additive package, IPKG or similar are required. The solution is based on the program "ether-wake" that is included by default in the Busybox, which runs on DiskStation.
Procedure:
- Anywhere in the DS file "wakeonlan.sh" with the following content Create:
ether-wake -i eth0 00: 1F: 16: F3: B3: BD
The MAC address is, of course, be replaced with the correct address of the PC to be woken up ...
- Let this file run by the scheduler at the desired times
- Ready!