Monday, October 31st 2022
Synology Shares Roadmap for 2023 and Beyond
Synology today revealed upcoming solutions that help businesses achieve more, become more resilient, and better resolve IT challenges through the power and flexibility of hybrid cloud architectures and an expanding ecosystem of tightly integrated solutions. Significant innovations across all products, spanning data management, data protection, and IT infrastructure security, set an even higher bar for reliability, security, and scalability.
An even more secure foundation: DSM 7.2, expected in early 2023, will introduce full-volume encryption, offering greater peace of mind while boosting storage performance by 48% over shared folder-based encryption. DSM 7.2 will also introduce "write once, read many" (WORM) folders. These tamper-proof folders prevent modification or deletion of data during a set period of time. And just like new immutable backups in Hyper Backup, which bar any changes after creation, they help protect data against ransomware and cyberthreats.
Share and collaborate with ease
Updates to Synology's private cloud solution, Synology Drive, help keep files safer during sharing between teams with watermarks and download policies. Remote wipe capabilities help minimize security risks by removing synced folders from stolen Windows and macOS clients. Automatic login with AD credentials following mass deployment, as well as the provisioning of backup and syncing tasks, make mass deployment simpler.
Sharing data over SMB will be safer and more efficient in DSM 7.2. Cross-protocol file locking between SMB file shares and Synology Drive ensures that in-use files are not edited or overwritten. And SMB multichannel transfer support makes use of all network connections available between servers and clients to greatly boost SMB file transfer performance.
Next-generation storage servers
Also launching in 2023 are new scale-out systems designed for file and object storage. Scale-out clusters will be considerably faster than Synology's current largest solutions, with near linear scaling of performance and capabilities as more units are added.
The first generation of scale-out systems will support clusters of up to 60 servers for more than 12 PB of effective storage, over 60 GB/s sequential write performance, and more than 80,000 concurrent connections. The clusters will offer upwards of 99.99% availability and support Synology's Hyper Backup and Active Backup data protection suites.
Data protection
A new management platform for Active Backup and C2 Backup aims to enable seamless management, deployment, and monitoring of backup tasks across an organization's IT infrastructure, regardless of location or scale. The new platform brings together Synology on-premises and cloud-based solutions, providing IT admins and MSPs with the most efficient tools to protect and ensure timely recovery of any device or service.
Video surveillance
Launching in early 2023, Synology 500 Series IP cameras will offer superior performance, security, and integration, with all camera settings managed directly from Surveillance Station. Edge AI capabilities, such as guarding intrusion detection zones, free up recording server resources to allow larger AI-powered deployments, while dedicated processing speeds up people and vehicle searches anywhere in the video frame.
Coming in two form factors, Synology 500 Series cameras feature 5 MP sensors for wide-angle 16:9, 3K (2880x1620) recording at 30 FPS. The cameras support PoE and are weatherproof (IP67), enabling flexible placement indoors or outdoors. Synology 500-series cameras are US NDAA/TAA compliant and are designed for security, introducing similar security innovations and hardening methods found on Synology enterprise products.
Hybrid-cloud services
Automated breach and misuse detection
Active Insight is evolving to automatically prevent user activities in breach of data protection rules. The new data loss prevention feature monitors user activities such as logins, file access, sharing task creation, while comparing checksums of files that are uploaded or shared. When thresholds or rules are triggered, the system can either send alerts or take actions, such as disconnecting clients suspected of being infected by ransomware.
Securing devices and credentials
The Synology C2 Identity platform continues to grow, with a heavy emphasis on blending good security practices with convenience. In 2023, C2 Identity will receive several improvements to enable passwordless logins to both online and local services and devices. Integration with Windows Hello and Apple's Face ID/Touch ID facilitates easy authentication on endpoints managed by C2 Identity.
And combined with an upcoming C2 Identity user portal, employees using managed endpoints can be automatically signed in to web services supporting SAML, with the option to enable 2FA for more sensitive services such as a company's ERP or CRM systems.
Networking
Building on the SRM 1.3 platform, the new WRX560 brings the same high-end network management features from the RT6600ax into a more affordable price point. With powerful internal dual-band radios and a 2.5GbE LAN/WAN port, WRX560 can easily be added as a mesh node to any RT6600ax router or utilized as a standalone solution for homes and offices. WRX560 is launching globally on 2 November at US$209.
An even more secure foundation: DSM 7.2, expected in early 2023, will introduce full-volume encryption, offering greater peace of mind while boosting storage performance by 48% over shared folder-based encryption. DSM 7.2 will also introduce "write once, read many" (WORM) folders. These tamper-proof folders prevent modification or deletion of data during a set period of time. And just like new immutable backups in Hyper Backup, which bar any changes after creation, they help protect data against ransomware and cyberthreats.
Updates to Synology's private cloud solution, Synology Drive, help keep files safer during sharing between teams with watermarks and download policies. Remote wipe capabilities help minimize security risks by removing synced folders from stolen Windows and macOS clients. Automatic login with AD credentials following mass deployment, as well as the provisioning of backup and syncing tasks, make mass deployment simpler.
Sharing data over SMB will be safer and more efficient in DSM 7.2. Cross-protocol file locking between SMB file shares and Synology Drive ensures that in-use files are not edited or overwritten. And SMB multichannel transfer support makes use of all network connections available between servers and clients to greatly boost SMB file transfer performance.
Next-generation storage servers
Also launching in 2023 are new scale-out systems designed for file and object storage. Scale-out clusters will be considerably faster than Synology's current largest solutions, with near linear scaling of performance and capabilities as more units are added.
The first generation of scale-out systems will support clusters of up to 60 servers for more than 12 PB of effective storage, over 60 GB/s sequential write performance, and more than 80,000 concurrent connections. The clusters will offer upwards of 99.99% availability and support Synology's Hyper Backup and Active Backup data protection suites.
Data protection
A new management platform for Active Backup and C2 Backup aims to enable seamless management, deployment, and monitoring of backup tasks across an organization's IT infrastructure, regardless of location or scale. The new platform brings together Synology on-premises and cloud-based solutions, providing IT admins and MSPs with the most efficient tools to protect and ensure timely recovery of any device or service.
Video surveillance
Launching in early 2023, Synology 500 Series IP cameras will offer superior performance, security, and integration, with all camera settings managed directly from Surveillance Station. Edge AI capabilities, such as guarding intrusion detection zones, free up recording server resources to allow larger AI-powered deployments, while dedicated processing speeds up people and vehicle searches anywhere in the video frame.
Coming in two form factors, Synology 500 Series cameras feature 5 MP sensors for wide-angle 16:9, 3K (2880x1620) recording at 30 FPS. The cameras support PoE and are weatherproof (IP67), enabling flexible placement indoors or outdoors. Synology 500-series cameras are US NDAA/TAA compliant and are designed for security, introducing similar security innovations and hardening methods found on Synology enterprise products.
Hybrid-cloud services
Automated breach and misuse detection
Active Insight is evolving to automatically prevent user activities in breach of data protection rules. The new data loss prevention feature monitors user activities such as logins, file access, sharing task creation, while comparing checksums of files that are uploaded or shared. When thresholds or rules are triggered, the system can either send alerts or take actions, such as disconnecting clients suspected of being infected by ransomware.
Securing devices and credentials
The Synology C2 Identity platform continues to grow, with a heavy emphasis on blending good security practices with convenience. In 2023, C2 Identity will receive several improvements to enable passwordless logins to both online and local services and devices. Integration with Windows Hello and Apple's Face ID/Touch ID facilitates easy authentication on endpoints managed by C2 Identity.
And combined with an upcoming C2 Identity user portal, employees using managed endpoints can be automatically signed in to web services supporting SAML, with the option to enable 2FA for more sensitive services such as a company's ERP or CRM systems.
Networking
Building on the SRM 1.3 platform, the new WRX560 brings the same high-end network management features from the RT6600ax into a more affordable price point. With powerful internal dual-band radios and a 2.5GbE LAN/WAN port, WRX560 can easily be added as a mesh node to any RT6600ax router or utilized as a standalone solution for homes and offices. WRX560 is launching globally on 2 November at US$209.
7 Comments on Synology Shares Roadmap for 2023 and Beyond
I am suprised they are investing time into Scale Out Clusters - most people will just go to the cloud or go with with Truenas Scale ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
About the Scale-out cluster. Our company actually really likes Synology and its suite. You can get a pretty good snapshot backup solution, mail server & client, a workable active directory solution, and even a somewhat decent office suite and drive solution as well. Of course, you can do it all with TrueNas, but again it's the simplicity of management. And not to mention even though Synology might sound expensive for the hardware, they provide extremely great enterprise 24/7 support, which if you go TrueNas route would be very expensive for Enterprise Edition. When in a business every little things adds up :)
Synology are tarred and feathered as far as I'm concerned ever since they decided to firmware-lock their rackmount NAS products. I'm boycotting them as of 2021; Rather than buying good drives like the Ironwolf Pro or EXOS drives at commodity pricing, Synology now only allow you to use their own disks, which are cheapo Toshiba N300 NAS models with a Synology label slapped on them and an insane 125% markup.
Synology's own 16TB model is £630 compared to the same drive with a Toshiba label at £280. There's nothing wrong with the Toshiba drives, but they're second-fiddle to Seagate and WD's enterprise (HGST-takeover) models. That's reflected in their pricing which is typically 20% lower than competing Seagate/WD drives. Being vendor-locked to a second-rate drive and then forced to pay 2.25x the market price for those second-rate drives is insulting. This was also an obvious cash-grab change since the prior version of the firmware before this change came into effect supported all the same features on any third-party drive. It was a money-grab and a middle-finger to all customers. If you buy into this bullshit you might as well just get storage from the big boys like HPE, Netapp or EMC. Synology are small-fry, feature-light, consumer-grade products by comparison and absolutely not worth the vendor-lock premium they're asking. QNAP seem to be equally capable without this nonsense souring the experience. Oh, and you can easily get affordable 2.5GbE models for home use, just like Asustor.
Thankfully, Synology aren't the only rackmount NAS provider and I had no problem at all ending my business relationship with them and buying from the competition.