ioSafe 1019+ 5-Bay NAS

Model: ioSafe 1019+ 5-Bay NAS
Manufacturer: ioSafe
Provided By: CRU

ioSafe is the world's leading provider of disaster proof hardware. Established in Auburn, California in 2005, the company made its mark on the industry with the release of the world's first external hard drive to have both fire and flood protection. Responding to the demand from businesses, ioSafe soon followed up with the launch of its fire, flood and impact resistant NAS device, the R4. Today, ioSafe is a part of CRU. However, it continues to design and manufacture innovative, disaster-tolerant data storage solutions that are used by Fortune 500 companies, federal and state agencies, small to midsize businesses, and home users.

This spring, ioSafe introduced its latest Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, the ioSafe 1019+. Based on the Synology DS1019+, this 5-bay NAS can protect up to 70TB of data from fire or water damage in the event of a disaster. Using ioSafe's patented technologies, the 1019+ is able to keep your data secure in temperatures up to 1,550° F for up to 30 minutes. In addition, its waterproof capabilities protect data should the device be submerged in up to 10 feet of water for three days.

Under its multiple layers of protections, the ioSafe 1019+ is powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron processor and is equipped with 8GB of DDR3L RAM, a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports and two M.2 NVMe SSD slots for caching. The 1019+ also runs the latest version of Synology's award-winning DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system which offers a wide range of applications for cross-platform file sharing, data backups, cloud synchronization and multimedia streaming.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what ioSafe's disaster-proof 5-bay NAS has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a look at the 1019+'s features and then put it through its paces to see how it performs. Does ioSafe's new NAS have what it takes? Is it as disaster proof as they claim? Keep reading as we find out.

What's in the box?:

The 1019+ that ioSafe sent us for this review did not come in fancy retail packaging. Instead, it came in a plain brown box with ioSafe logos in each corner. In addition to the 1019+, the box contained an AC power cord and adapter, ethernet cable, quick start guide, three bags of screws, a 3mm hex tool and a magnet to mount the tool on the back of the unit.

Physical Features:

The look of the 1019+ is very similar to ioSafe's previous 5-bay NAS, the 1515+. Designed to survive office and home fires, the device's outer layers are made from steel and measure 184 x 168 x 230 mm. The 1019+ also tips the scales at 29 kg (62 lbs) without any hard drives installed.

Instead of an LCD panel, the 1019+ uses a series of LED indicators to show the current state of the system and the installed hard drives. The brightness of these LEDs can be adjusted, or turned off altogether through the control panel within DiskStation Manager (DSM).

With the front doors removed, you can see some of the technologies the 1019+ utilizes to protect your data. In the middle is a sealed, aluminum chamber that uses HydroSafe technology to protect your hard drives from water damage. According to ioSafe, the 1019+ can be submerged up to 10 feet for 72 hours. Surrounding this chamber is a layer of ioSafe's DataCast fireproof insulation. This white, water-based insulation uses chemically bound water molecules that turn to steam during a fire. This steam is then forced out through a series of FloSafe vents to prevent heat and other dangerous gasses from entering the unit. This endothermic cooling action keeps the inner chamber cool despite outer temperatures over 1500°F.

The rear of the 1019+ is pretty straight forward. To keep the hard drives cool, the NAS is equipped with a pair of 120mm fans. By default, the fans are temperature controlled. However, you can manually set the speed from within DiskStation Manager. Below the fans, you can see the 1019+'s power connector, eSATA port, dual gigabit ethernet ports and another USB 3.0 port. These USB and eSATA ports can be used to connect expansion units, external storage devices, printers and other devices to the NAS.

Upgrading the memory and SSDs on the 1019+ is a quick and easy process. Instead of having to open up the case or remove the hard drives, ioSafe built a panel into the bottom of the device. Simply remove one screw, lift the compartment cover away and you have access to the RAM and M.2 slots. Take note though that, unlike the hard drives, these components are not protected against fire or water.

While intended for small offices and professional home users, the ioSafe 1019+ has many of the same features found on Synology's higher end NAS devices. Its Linux-based DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system offers cross platform file sharing over various network protocols including SMB, AFP and NFS. The 1019+ also offers support for multiple RAID types, iSCSI and domain authentication.

The 1019+'s capabilities can be expanded even further by downloading and installing add-on packages. Within the Package Center, you'll find packages that will let you backup your data, collaborate with others, sync your data to the cloud and even manage IP cameras deployed within your home or office.

Before using the 1019+ you will need to install a couple of hard drives or SSDs. To begin, remove the five trays from the device and mount the drives to them using the included screws. When you are done, slide the trays back into the empty drive bays and screw them into place.

Once the drives are installed, you will need to attach both the inner waterproof and outer fireproof doors using the included tool.

With the doors attached, you can now connect the AC adapter and network cable and turn the 1019+ on. The device's power LED will flash for a few minutes and then will beep and light up a solid blue to indicate that it has started up successfully.

Next, you will need to configure the 1019+. If you have a DHCP server on your network and you know what IP the NAS is using, you can skip the next few steps and connect directly to the web assistant. Otherwise, you'll need to download and install the Synology Assistant utility.

The Assistant utility searches the network looking for Synology NAS devices as well as those running the company's Disk Station Manager (DSM) operating system like the ioSafe 1019+. When it finds one, it will display its host name, IP address, MAC address, model, firmware version and status. To configure the device, select it from the list and click "Connect." The Assistant utility will then launch your default browser and automatically connect you to the web assistant so that you can go through the setup process.

The unit that ioSafe sent us came with hard drives pre-installed so I did not have to setup Disk Station Manager (DSM) from scratch. The only thing I needed to do was login using the default administrator account and set up QuickConnect.

For whatever reason, the web assistant does not configure the 1019+'s storage. As a result, you will need to login to DiskStation Manager and create at least one volume before it can be used to share files.

Creating a volume on the 1019+ is pretty straight forward. The Volume Creation Wizard gives you two creation methods: Quick and Custom. The Quick option is recommended if you're short on time or you want to simplify your storage management. This option creates an SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) volume and will automatically optimize capacity and performance based on member hard disks. If you're looking for more precise control of your storage, you'll want to go with the Custom option which offers support for different RAID types and lets you create single or multiple volumes.

Synology is continuously improving its DiskStation Manager operating system. To take advantage of the latest fixes and features, you will need to update the 1019+'s firmware. This can be done by uploading a firmware image file or through DSM's automatic update feature.

Along with the usual assortment of file sharing services, the ioSafe 1019+ offers support for Synology's Cloud Station Server and Cloud Sync. With Cloud Station Server, users can automatically synchronize their files between their computers, mobile devices and other NAS devices. Synology provides clients for most major platforms including Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android.

Cloud Sync takes this concept one step further by giving you the ability to seamlessly synchronize and share files between your NAS and public cloud services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. Its Selective Sync feature also allows you to filter the files or select the folders you want to sync  to ensure you have only the files you need on the public cloud service or vice versa.

In addition to providing a private cloud, Synology's Cloud Station Server can be used to back up files from multiple client computers. Available for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu Linux, the Cloud Station Backup client is very easy to use and offers features like custom backup rules as well as incremental backup technology.

Businesses and consumers looking for greater control over their backups will also want to check out Synology's Active Backup for Business. This all-in-one business data protection solution gives IT admins the ability to remotely manage and monitor backups for PCs, servers and VMs through one centralized console.

The backup process is configured through the console using templates and custom tasks. In addition to selecting the backup destination, you can specify which volumes you want to backup, set a schedule, and select a retention policy.

Active Backup for Business also gives you a variety of recovery options. If you need to get back up and running quickly, VM's and physical computers can be instantly restored to VMWare or Synology's own Virtual Machine Manager. Otherwise, you can do a bare metal restore of PC's and physical servers as well as granular (file/folder level) restores through the Active Backup for Business Portal.

The test system used in this review is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 memory, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise.

To test the performance of the ioSafe 1019+,  I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, Iometer and the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit. The tests were run with the included Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS hard drives configured as a single RAID 6 volume. The ioSafe 1019+ was connected to the computer using CAT6 ethernet cables and a gigabit Cisco switch. Unless otherwise noted, caching with the two included Samsung 512GB 970 Pro SSDs has been disabled.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0:

First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 4KB and 512KB in size.

ioSafe doesn't really say what kind of speeds the 1019+ is capable of. Using CrystalDiskMark we can see that the NAS is able to read at 118 MB/s and write at 117 MB/s when connected to 1GbE network.

The 1019+ also performed fairly well when doing encrypted file transfers. Here too, it was able to read at 118 MB/s and write at 117 MB/s. However, its transfer rated dropped by about 40 MB/s when doing random writes at high queue depths.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the 1019+'s sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 32MB and 256MB.

The 1019+'s performance was about the same when tested with ATTO. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the NAS was able to read and write at 118 MB/s.

Iometer:

Next, I ran a series of tests using Iometer. This tool can be configured to benchmark a number of things. In this case, I used it to measure the 1019+'s read and write speeds and the number of operations per second using blocks ranging from 512B to 2MB in size. The tests were run using random bytes and a queue depth of 3.

The 1019+ performed relatively well when doing sequential reads and writes with Iometer. In both cases, the NAS was able to reach speeds as high as 112 MB/s.

The 1019+ did relatively well when doing random reads and writes. With the SSD cache disabled, it was able to read at 50 MB/s and write at about 28 MB/s. With the cache enabled, these numbers jumped considerably. In some cases, the random write speed increased by more than 70 MB/s. 

Here too, you can see the benefit of having an SSD cache. In our tests, the number of  IOPS jumped from about 218 up to 2057 when randomly writing 4K blocks. This performance advantage slowly drops as the block size gets bigger, but even with 64K blocks, the number of IOPS was still seven times higher with the cache enabled.

Intel NAS Performance Toolkit:

The Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (Intel NASPT) is a file system exerciser and analysis tool designed to enable performance comparisons between network attached storage (NAS) devices. Intel NASPT focuses on user level performance using real world workload traces gathered from typical digital home applications: HD video playback and record, data backup and restore utilities, office productivity applications, video rendering/content creation, and more.

The 1019+ reached some respectable speeds when streaming HD video and copying large files to and from the server. As with other NAS devices though, its transfer rates dropped considerably when creating content and copying directories full of small files to and from the NAS.

In the tech world, ioSafe is already well known for its fire- and water-proof technologies so I was a bit surprised when they asked if I would be testing these capabilities in my review. They explained that this was a key feature of the 1019+ and were proud to show it off. Needless to say, I couldn't let them down. Not to mention, how often do you get to take a nicely equipped NAS device and light it on fire?

To test the 1019+'s fire-proof capabilities, I enlisted the the help of my two sons, Caden and Ryan, as well as my neighbor Tom, whose fire pit we'll be using. The plan was to build a nice fire around the NAS, let it cook for about 25 minutes and then put it out with a garden hose. This way we'd be simulating what would happen if your home or office caught on fire and was put out by the fire department.

The 1019+ was placed on a small wood platform that I built and surrounded by some cardboard, split logs and yard waste. We also added a little bit of lighter fluid to help move things along.

I used an infrared thermometer to keep an eye on the temperatures. For the most part, the temperature ranged somewhere between 500° and 700° F. However, there were a few times where I saw a temperature in excess of 900° F.

When the flames died down some, we did notice some white smoke coming out of the vents on the front and back of the unit. I'm guessing that this was ioSafe's DataCast technology at work.

After about 25 minutes, we put the fire out with a garden hose. The 1019+ was thoroughly doused, with water being sprayed in all of the exposed vents and holes.

As you can see, the 1019+ looks like it has been to hell and back. In addition to its peeling paint, the front LEDs, power button, and rear cooling fans are pretty much gone. Amazingly enough, the eSATA and ethernet ports are still there.

Behind the fireproof, outer door, things don't look nearly as bad. The inner, aluminum chamber was a bit dirty but nothing like the outside of the device.

I'm happy to say that the hard drives came through the ordeal unscathed. None of them had any physical damage and I was able to view all of the volumes when they were connected to a computer. Unfortunately, I didn't have another Synology-based NAS available so I was not able to fully restore the RAID volume but I don't expect there would be any issues here.

I should also point out that if you buy an ioSafe 1019+ with factory-installed hard drives, it will come with two years of the company's Data Recovery Service (DRS). This covers the device for any data loss due to things like fire, flood, disk failure or even human error. The service provides comprehensive protection against the costs associated with data recovery, including access to ioSafe's experts, global mail-in coverage and replacement hardware pre-loaded with the recovered data. If, for some reason that ioSafe cannot recover your data in house, they will send it to a third party data recovery company like DriveSavers. ioSafe also gives customers the ability to extend the DRS coverage, as well as the warranty, to five years for a fee.

One thing I've learned from working in IT is that it's not a question of if something will fail, but when. With storage, this usually means a failed hard drive with little to no down time. However, disasters like floods and fires do happen and, even with a cloud-based backup, it can take days, or even weeks, to restore your data and bring your business back online.

With the ioSafe 1019+, businesses and consumers can sleep a little better at night knowing that their data is safe from disasters. In addition to a thick, metal enclosure, this 5-bay NAS uses patented technologies like DataCast and HydroSafe to protect its hard drives from fires up to 1550º F as well as being submerged in water up to 10 feet deep. Needless to say, the 1019+ is rugged enough to protect your data during your average office (or house) fire along with the dousing it will get when the fire department comes to put it out. When it's all over, you can take the hard drives out, pop them into another ioSafe (or Synology) NAS and be back up and running in no time.

While the ioSafe 1019+'s biggest selling point is its ability to protect your data from fire and water, its NAS functionality is also quite good. Powered by Synology's DiskStation Manager operating system and equipped with a quad-core Intel Celeron processor, 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, this 5-bay NAS delivers great performance as well as a multitude of features for modern business environments. In addition to its easy to use web interface, the 1019+ offers centralized, cross platform storage and backups, cloud synchronization, multimedia streaming, SSD caching and remote access via Synology's QuickConnect service.

As you can imagine, all this doesn't come cheap. The diskless version of the ioSafe 1019+ has a suggest retail price of $2,399, which is almost four times the price of the Synology DS1019+. A unit equipped with five 4TB drives, like the one in this review, will set you back nearly $4,300. This is a sizeable investment, especially for small businesses and consumers. However, when you consider what you'd lose in productivity, as well as the cost it would take to recover your data from a damaged hard drive, it's probably worth it.

Highs:

• Fire- and water-proof design
• Powered by 64-bit dual-core 1.4 GHz processor
• Five 3.5-inch drive bays
• Supports SHR, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD and basic disk configurations
• Cross-platform file sharing and synchronization
• Provides data backups for clients, servers and virtual machines
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Two M.2 NVMe slots for SSD caching
• USB 3.0 and eSATA expansion ports
• Easy to use web interface
• Remotely accessible from web browsers and mobile devices
• Backup and synchronize data to public clouds
• Multimedia streaming
• Data Recovery Service available

Lows:

• Pricey
• Large and heavy
• Only a two year warranty (can be extended to five with DRS coverage)