Synology DiskStation 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage (NAS) DS214

Love Synology! (No, I am not a Synology employee…LOL!) I am a 30+ yr IT professional and had done the "server in the basement" dance for years...until I discovered Synology. This is my second Synology unit (needed a little more horsepower) over the last 10 years and I highly recommend them to ANYONE I speak to about home or SMB server needs. I was always in the need of lots of storage (photos, music, movies, etc...), secure remote access, and email / web services for home. The BEST part of the Synology product is that with the super simple user interface and long list of services and applications, it is MUCH easier and simpler to run that your standard server (Microsoft, Linux, etc..) products. Nowhere near the OS overhead as MS servers, and easy enough for a 10-year-old to run. I am supporting multiple devices on my home network and the Synology DS allows me to provide highly reliable storage / email / web services with very little overhead and admin support. My windows servers and workstation sharing devices required a lot more hand holding. Yes, for the most part they ran fine but when updates loaded or if one happened to reboot (you know there is always the odd MS reboot that occurs), I would get a call from home "...XYZ is not working anymore..how do I reset it". One time my wife had to call me while I was in New Orleans on business because should could not access some files she needed for school. No more calls since I migrated to Synology. For the home, small/mid-sized business the DS is a money saving highly reliable device that provides everything they might need to support network devices. No more sharing files or printers from one person's computer, only to have that system bog down or not be available if the person is OOO. It connects to your home of office network easily and you don’t need to call your IT consultant each time you need to do some administration (add users, backups, etc…) because the admin interface is web based and easy to drive. Trust me, I have done “side work” for many SMBs and would rack up many hours on “operational tasks” to keep the servers updated, backed up, and healthy. Many of those tasks can be setup to automatically run (backups, OS upgrades, app/package upgrades, etc..) without user intervention. The system will send you and email when things start and when they complete. This is also better than adding USB storage to your system. The internal boards on most of the consumer grade USB storage devices are not very good and fail, leaving you to believe that the drive went bad. On more than one occasion I removed the drive from a failed USB drive (Yes, even the ones that begin with “W” and “S”… figure out the rest for yourself) and connected it to my computer or an external drive caddy and found the drive to be in perfect working order. Also, these types of drives require it be connected to another computer which is fine but it’s not an antonymous device. If you are thinking about adding a server or storage to your home or SMB network, I would highly recommend looking at a Synology device as a price competitive, less operational overhead alternative.

I have a lot of NAS's. I have a Synology 1513+, QNAP 2 Bay, DROBO 5N and have had a number of HP Windows Home Servers and I have some of the single drive Seagate and Western Digital boxes as well. The DS214 is in a different class than the Seagate/WD boxes. No comparison. If you are new to NAS, you probably are not aware that the CPU/Memory of the NAS box has a lot to do with its performance. How fast does it copy files? How fast does it serve them up? How fast does your DLNA server index and serve up music, etc. Faster better CPU's mean snappier performance. This box is fast - almost as fast as my Synology 1511+. In transferring some test photo files (average size 28M) files, I got 80-90 MB/second across a wired 1TB network. That's very good. Some consumer class devices (other 1 and 2 bay devices) get about 20-30 MB/second so the DS214 is definitely in a different class. I have stored about 2TB of music and I am using it as a music server. Did I mention that it is fast? It was extremely simple to configure as a DNLA server and as an iTunes server. One of the big advantages of Synology is their DSM software which you use to configure that NAS. It has a very nice graphical interface that makes it friendly to use. And, there is an application download platform that allows you to download additional software. Management software differs by manufacturer. I like Synology's. The DS214 is expensive but I feel it is worthwhile. When you move lots of files into a NAS, you want to retain the snappy performance you might have from a local hard disk. So, faster is better. Most people that buy a NAS have a lot of data and store music, videos and photos. If you ever need to transfer over a lot of data (1TB or more) you know that it can take 4-12 hours across the network. I have owned several Synology NAS's and I think they are high performance, easy to use, but you pay a little premium. Over the long term, the premium is more than made up for by better performance and ease of use. I will buy another Synology again next time.

Articolo arrivato in tempi record e con un imballaggio perfetto quindi come sempre un plauso ad Amazon per la professionalità. Premetto che questo è il secondo NAS che possiedo e devo dire che ne sono rimasto sorpreso dalla qualità del prodotto dato il prezzo contenuto. Il sistema operativo che adotta è ottimo sia per neofiti che per esperti essendo molto intuitivo e pulito a livello di interfaccia ma comunque molto ricco di funzioni anche avanzate. I materiali costruttivi sono ottimi e il rumore prodotto sia in stand bye che in scrittura è davvero minimo. Articolo davvero consigliato!

Après m'être renseigné sur les différentes marques de NAS, Synology m'est apparu comme un choix naturel Ayant quelques notions en informatique (sans être un expert) j'ai pu le mettre en route et le configurer sans aucun souci La couche logicielle est très régulièrement mise à jour et de plus en plus simple à comprendre et utiliser, montrant que Synology ne veut pas s'adresser qu'aux geeks Le serveur en lui-même est très bien fini, l'insertion des disques 3.5'' est un jeu d'enfant, et la ventilation est inaudible à 1 m de distance ce qui fait qu'il peut être placé dans une chambre sans problème En résumé c'est un excellent produit pour démarrer avec un NAS, je pense pouvoir le garder au moins 5 ans avant d'envisager son remplacement, sans compter d'un simple renouvellement des disques me permettra en quelques secondes d'étendre sa capacité aux 8To max admissibles

Desde hace un mes ya no hay ordenador de sobremesa en mi casa, y los portátiles tienen discos SSD en los que cada GB cuesta lo suyo, así que para las cantidades ingentes de archivos que vamos acumulando había que encontrar una solución. Esta NAS me la recomendó un buen amigo, y cumple las expectativas: - Discreta (algo más pequeña que una caja de zapatos) y bastante silenciosa - Sencilla de instalar y configurar: es la gran ventaja de las NAS de consumo frente a dedicar un PC de gama baja a tareas de servidor, configurarlo todo, etc. - Además de como repositorio casi infinito de ficheros, tengo en la NAS la biblioteca de iTunes, la de fotos de Lightroom, y para tareas de intercambio de ficheros. En todos los casos la migración fue indolora y funciona casi tan bien como almacenamiento local. - Según me cuentan también es útil como servidor de iTunes, para los que tengan algún receptor por casa estilo AppleTV. En resumen, que probablemente la tenía que haber comprado antes.

Non avevo mai acquistato un NAS prima e mi sono fidato delle opinioni di chi nei vari forum è esperto di reti e server, optando infine per Synology dopo aver valutato anche Qnap. Il sistema operativo linux based DSM arrivato alla versione 5.0 è intuitivo da usare attraverso l'interfaccia web già preimpostata dall'inizio per i servizi base di default, ma nasconde impostazioni e funzionalità avanzate in grado di soddisfare utenze professionali, come piccoli uffici e non solo quelle domestiche, con grande versatilità e complessità. Dalla condivisione avanzata di file e cartelle, alla creazione di utenti e gruppi con possibilità di scegliere l'accesso solo a determinate directory, la gestione dei backup di rete o locali su USB, servizi FTP, hosting di siti web, server di posta elettronica, server DHCP, server di stampa, creazione DDNS, gestione del firewall integrato, pacchetti add-on (come download station per torrent/emule, server DLNA e multimedia, server VPN, antivirus, server telecamere di sorveglianza ecc...). Tralasciando l'aspetto software che può comunque essere approfondito sul sito ufficiale di synology, il DS214 è costruito con buoni materiali e assolutamente silenzioso, se non sono in atto servizi particolari va in sospensione fermando gli hard disk (il tempo di inattività lo decide l'utente) per poi riaccendersi velocemente quando viene interpellato. Anche il mio disco esterno USB della Western Digital entra in modalità sospensione ma non tutti gli HD esterni sono supportati in questa funzione, controllare sul sito Synology. Comoda e utile la funzione di collegamento all'UPS via usb che permette lo spegnimento in caso d'interruzione della corrente, sempre che l'UPS sia tra i modelli supportati indicati sul sito, nel mio caso un APC funziona correttamente. Infine nessun problema con i due WD RED installati che l'azienda consiglia poichè adatti a lavorare 24/24, e speriamo sia cosi. Concludendo consiglio di riflettere bene all'utente domestico se sia veramente necessario avere un nas con due HD in RAID oppure se sia sufficiente una versione a baia singola con annesso HD esterno per backup, in questo modo si risparmierebbe qualcosa a scapito certamente di prestazioni minori di un modello come il DS115j o leggermente minori di un DS114 che possono comunque svolgere quasi tutte le funzioni software di questo DS214. P.S. ho raggiunto picchi di scrittura sul disco attraverso rete LAN di 100 Mb/s se spostavo file di grandi dimensioni, altrimenti si attestava sui 50/60 Mb/s in RAID 1.

C'est mon premier NAS et je suis très bluffé par ses performances dans mon réseau local l'écriture/lecture se font à plus 100 mo/s!!!! elle dispose de pas mal d'application (VPN, serveur radius, serveur mail, lecteur multimédia etc....) le catalogue d'appli est augmenté grâce à la communauté synology, le tout avec un OS très stable et un système silencieux. J'ai beau chercher je ne lui trouve pas de défaut.