Synology DiskStation DS1520+

Product Information

A Shared Folder is an area of storage on the NAS that can be accessed over the network. You need to create a shared folder to allow your devices to interact with your NAS data. Overall you have a pretty standard range of kits here and, although not exactly mind-blowing, still gives you plenty to get you going on day one. Now let’s talk about that oh so familiar Synology design. Synology DS1520+ NAS Review – Design Synology's NAS enclosures have stood out thanks to the robust software, DiskStation Manager (DSM). By offering a lightweight web-based OS with an exhaustive set of features, Synology was able to carve out a lead over its rivals.

As you might expect, software support on the DS1520+ NAS is pretty high, but there is an extra little thing to consider when looking at how your file performance and handling will be on this NAS. The Synology DS1520+ NAS is one of only around 8 Synology of NAS in the range that feature twin NVMe SSD slots for vastly improving internal data speeds – but the DS1520+ also arrives with 4 LAN ports, so the external speeds that the device can reach (with the right RAID and internal media) can surpass 400MB/s Read/Write and likely all the way up to 450MB/s. Additionally, as it is arriving with quite an impressive internal hardware base, it means that you are going to be able to get practically every single Synology 1st party application (along with a whole bunch of solid 3rd party ones) running very well on the DS1520+ and every single application should’ve supported, such as: In the front of the NAS, you get five hot-swappable bays to palace your drives. Drives in these bays can each have a 3.5-inch SATA (like the IronWolf I am going to install), a 2.5-inch SATA drive, or 2.5-inch SSD. The drive bays can be prevented from being pulled out accidentally; you can secure them with the key included.There are a few things about the DS1520+ that we don’t care for, and they’re mostly to do with bandwidth and throughput restrictions as we’ve mentioned already. The rest of the accessories in the DS1520+ retail kit are fairly standard. The first-time setup guide is a little thin on the ground, pointing you towards online resources which admittedly are more regularly updated, warranty information on the 3 years of cover (hardware support) that Synology provides and allows just enough to keep you moving forward during installation.

The 5-Bay Diskstation releases from Synology have always been one of the most interesting tiers of the brand’s desktop solutions. The reason for this is that all too often this scale of system serves as a bridging point between Prosumer & SOHO systems and the small/medium business hardware in their portfolio. This is demonstrated first in the scale of the available RAID 5/6 storage, but then more so in the scalability and upgradability of the 5-Bay system, allowing two expansions, greater network connectivity and better internal hardware than the more domestic targetted solutions – often with the internal hardware differing considerably between each periodic 2-3yr refresh by the brand. Let’s first look at the internal hardware of these two NAS’ to see how much they differ. The DS1520+ NAS first arrived on the scene with some great hardware advantages over the (then 2 months sooner released) DS920+, arriving with a 4 Core Intel Celeron Processor that featured integrated graphics, 8GB of DDR4 2666Mhz memory and NVMe SSD upgrade slots. In the two years since its release though, Synology clearly decided to make some big changes in the DS1522+ to make it considerably more scalable and general business/file-ops focused. The newer DS1522+ features a dual-core AMD Ryzen embedded R1600 that, although arriving with half the cores of the Celeron in the DS1520+, has a higher CPU frequency and total achievable frequency in turbo/burst when needed. That said, users will be surprised to learn that this CPU also does not feature embedded graphics, so therefore the DS1522+ will be less CPU efficient at handling multimedia or VM deployment than the DS1520+. It is also worth noting that the E10M20-T1 card that upgraded the DS1517+ to 10GbE also gave it two NVMe slots, matching the DS1520+. Use any of the available LAN ports in the NAS's rear with a LAN cable to connect the NAS to your network. You could be using a router or switch. Ensure the NAS is in the same network domain as the device (laptop, PC, phone, etc.) you'll be using to configure it. However, the extent to which you can use all these applications at any single time (both as multiple clients using the same software or multiple applications running in parallel on the same NAS system) is going to be better on the Synology DS1522+ in the grand scheme of things, thanks to that potential 32GB of memory available to scale up down the line. Here is how these two Synology NAS drives compare in volume and features in those 1st party services:You can get away with a single drive and later just add more. In fact, I'll start with two 4TB HDDs; then, I will add a third one. I'll be using only these 3 HDDs, and shortly, when I get some extra budget, I'll populate the whole (five) bays. Synology Drive – Host your own private cloud behind the safety of your NAS with 100% data ownership and no subscription fees.

The trays themselves are plastic in design and allow installation of hard drive media without a screwdriver. The system also allows the installation of SSD with screws included, but with the exception of reasons of noise, this is a system that is tailor-made for a large hard drive RAID array with optional SSD caching when required. Though both systems feature 8GB of DDR4 memory, the 1522+ has much higher pedigree and wins here thanks to its use of much more impressive ECC (error code correction) memory to identify and repair any bit level write errors and can also be scaled to a considerably higher 32GB of memory (with the DS1520+ maxing out at 8GB). NAS Model Synology Surveillance Station for a business class surveillance solution of up to 40 cameras at 720p (2 licenses inc)Although many users would prefer they could use these NVMe SSD for raw storage internally, Synology has been pretty adamant on this subject and want to encourage users to leverage the faster and larger IOPS rated PCIe SSD media towards improving access to larger, slower but more affordable RAID array of hard drives. There is an argument that this CPU and it’s chipset could limit the overall performance of solid-state drives in this system, thereby invalidating NVMe in the DS1520+ for raw storage, but it would be nice to have that option available. So, this will stand very well in between the other plus series devices in the Synology portfolio and when DSM 7.0 lands at the end of the year (fingers crossed) this will be an excellent hardware architecture to make the most of it. Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central (Image credit: Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central) This system is straightforward, which is great for non-tech users. The first time logging into the GUI, the system will provide you three essential tips for its usage. As this system supports SATA drive media, that means it supports up to the very latest 16TB NAS hard drives, as well as the soon to arrive 18TB and 20TB hard drives thanks to heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology towards the end of 2020. That means that the DS1520+ and it’s 5 storage bays provide a staggering amount of storage potential, even in RAID 5 and RAID 6 configs. Alongside the traditional RAID configurations you would expect in a 5 drive NAS system, the DS1520+ also support Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) which allows a more gradual and scaled storage plan, as well as allowing you to utilise drives of different capacities in a single RAID configuration without losing storage overall. SHR is often one of the key reasons that people buy a Synology NAS system after the DSM software.

Now in terms of the external connectivity and how it can be upgraded, this is another big area of difference between the DS920+ and DS1522+ NAS. Both systems arrive with 1GbE RJ45 LAN ports, which can be combined via link aggregation/Port Trunking to allow up a larger degree of network connectivity. But the DS920+ arrives with 2x 1GbE and the DS1522+ arrives with 4x 1GbE. This is only really a big deal if you are looking at smart switch supported environments or have larger shared bandwidth concerns though. However, the big difference in bandwidth potential between these two NAS centres around the DS1522+ features the option to upgrade it’s network connectivity to 10GbE by installing an E10G22-T1-mini 10G network upgrade in the available proprietary slot. Now, this is not a connection that is available in the default DS1522+ and is an optional upgrade, but still, it is good to know that the option of adding 1,000MB/s bandwidth is available down the road. The DS920+ does not include an option to increase the network connectivity in this way (though unofficial and not officially supported USB-to2.5GbE and 5GbE connectivity via 3rd party adapters are possible (but I wouldn’t trust their long term stability really) and for many, this will be a deal-breaker between these systems in the same way the CPU differences between these two NAS’ does. Both systems see a very similarly sized chassis and the 10GbE upgradable slot on the DS1522+ using a smaller M.2 sized connector rather than the PCIe 3×8 slot of other Synology NAS, so it does not impact the size of the chassis either. Model The Synology DS920+ NAS Drive Review – https://nascompares.com/2020/05/21/synology-ds920-nas-drive-hardware-review Setting up Plex on the NAS takes just five minutes, and thanks to the Celeron J4125 chipset, you should have no issues with streaming 4K content to devices throughout your home. You will need a Plex Pass for hardware-accelerated transcoding, and the DS1520+ does a stellar job with 1080p and 4K transcodes. With that said there is still a solution using Webdav to-way Nas-pc with Raidrive but you have to pay for software for Pro features.Unlike the disparity in price point between the Synology DS920+ and DS1520+, the internal performance that is possible on both of the systems, like-for-like, is actually quite close. In fact, unless you populate both devices to the fullest extent of their individual hardware architecture, both the DS920+ and DS1520+ will perform near identically both in terms of first and third-party software. This is largely thanks to their near-identical internal hardware, the Intel Celeron J4125 CPU, DDR4 memory and inclusion of NVMe SSD for caching. If you populate these two NAS systems with the same degree of hard drive and SSD media, both of them will perform and execute the DSM software platform very well. It is only when you fully populate each device with more drive (as found in the 5-bay DS1520+ system) that you present the opportunity for increased internal performance, thanks to more hard drives featured in the array. However, this performance difference is still somewhat minimal with regard to RAID performance-boosting support, as a single HDD/SSD drive will barely present at most 50-100MB/s improvement between them. Additionally, this can largely be negated by the fact both systems support NVMe SSD caching (and the IOPs + multi-user accessing benefits it can provide). The external performance when comparing the brand new Synology DS1520+ vs that of the fractionally older Synology DS920+ is probably one of the largest areas of disparity between both NAS systems. Although the additional 4GB of memory will play its part, the fact that the DS1520+ arrives with 4x 1GbE LAN ports by default, compared with the 2x 1GbE featured on the DS920+ largely makes this an open shut case. You can also access the shared folder and its data from the File Station app. 7.4. Access the Shared Folder Within the Local Network A volume is the essential storage space on your Synology NAS and is constructed on a storage pool. It is also the storage space where you install a file system to rule your data.