D-Link DNS-343

D-Link’s DNS-343 is a four-bay network storage appliance that is easy to set up, with a good choice of Raid options to enhance both performance and reliability.

However, its lack of external expansion, backup and other features is likely to put business buyers off.

The DNS-343 certainly looks the part, housed in a smart black metal casing with a bright organic LED information display at the front.

Power comes from a somewhat large external AC adapter with a single USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet connector round the back.

Unfortunately you can’t use the USB socket to plug in external hard disks ­ as you can on storage appliances from vendors such as Lacie, Netgear and Synology ­ just a limited range of printers or an Uninterruptible Power Supply.

That is a real shame as it limits the options when it comes to expansion and backup. Indeed, it is now common to be able to both expand storage by plugging in external USB or eSata disks and take backups to those drives using built-in software. With the DNS-343 you will have to make separate arrangements to take backups over the Lan.

Disks aren’t included with the DNS-343, but that is not a problem as most 3.5in Sata drives will work and won’t add hugely to the overall cost. Moreover, they’re very easy to fit, with no need for any tools. Just slide the front panel off the box, push the disks into the bays and you’re done. Getting them out again is just as easy, thanks to small ejection levers at the rear. You will, however, need to power down should you want to add or swap disks around.

Once installed the disks can be formatted separately or configured as a single JBOD volume with Raid 0, 1 and 5 configurations also possible to enhance performance and/or reliability. Choosing one of these is pretty easy, but if you change your mind the disks will be reformatted and any existing data destroyed. For best results matching drives of the same capacity should be used.

We installed a full set of four Western Digital Sata disks configured as a Raid 0 stripe set. Once formatted, a single Windows share is created by default, but it’s easy enough to further split the available space with access controls that can be applied at both the user and group level. Quotas can also be enforced, but users and groups have to be configured and managed on the device itself with no facilities to authenticate users against a Windows domain or Active Directory.

On the plus side there is a built-in FTP server, SMB/CIFS sharing and an iTunes server for streaming your music.

You can also schedule the DNS-343 to download files, either from HTTP/FTP servers or designated network shares. A copy of Memeo Autobackup is also included to back up network PCs to the DNS-343.

We ran some simple read and write tests, with the D-Link appliance averaging around 30Mbytes/sec when reading data and about half that when writing. Reasonable enough, but nowhere near as fast as other business devices we’ve tested, and it could struggle as user numbers increase. Add that to the lack of expansion and backup support plus the built-in web and database servers found on other products, and the DNS-343 is unlikely to win over many small-business buyers.