Synology DS920+ 4-bay NAS

[crmaris]

The Synology DS920+ is a solid NAS server with lots of features and options for users who can pay its high asking price. Upgrades over the older DS918+ are not significant, though. Besides a stronger SoC and faster RAM, the rest of the hardware is about the same. HDMI and 2.5 Gbit Ethernet ports would have made a nice addition.

Show full review

 

[JustAnEngineer]

It's likely that you can get away with using larger DIMM sizes. I've got 2x8 GiB in my DS418play.

 

[David Fallaha]

the lack of proper networking is a complete fail, whilst i have used Synology for years i am reaching the end of my patience with this 'Intel-like' approach to key features

also @crmaris to the best of my knowledge the 4K transcoding is fine as long as in hardware and not HDR

 

[TxGrin]

I added USB 3.0 Type-C to 5GbE Adapter (QNA-UC5G1T) by QNAP to my DS718+
works great 400+ Mbps transfers now

Synology Community

Hi! Come and join us at Synology Community. A place to answer all your Synology questions. Ask a question or start a discussion now.

community.synology.com

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Bummer, I was really hoping that the zyxel 10GBase-T switch used in testing was going to have multigig capability so as to test the throughput of the 2.5GBase-T NIC in the NAS, especially considering they're being pushed to replace Gigabit networking in the consumer space (although IMO, they should AT LEAST be pushing 5GBase-T if not 10GBase-T)... I'm both a storage and networking junkie so an you blame me?

I've had a 10GBase-T home network for a few years now and it's great to have, especially when 3 or more nodes are requesting full blu-ray rips from the server while regularly schedules backups are uploading to the server, anyway....

Was curious if TPU could add another test to the NAS/networking reviews, specifically Link Aggregation of two or even four links (on the NAS side) would be awesome, especially for multi-client testing. I know it's complete overkill, and I largely did it because I could and to get the most out of the top tier of my server/NAS storage which is NVMe based, but I took and Intel X710-T4 4x port 10GBase-T NIC and installed it in my server with all four links aggregated to create a "robust" backbone, (eventually I want to move completely away from local storage with the exception of the OS/important application drive) and it was a pain to get going, but it's pretty sweet seeing the results of network speed benchmarks in NVMe to NVMe transfer tests

 

[bug]

How on Earth do you get to charge close to $600 for what is essentially an enclosure, a simple motherboard and a RAID controller?

Plastic trays are a joke (literally the only thing that broke in my old chassis over time) unless they sell spares for peanuts.
And 10W while hibernating, what's up with that? It's like having a couple of LED bulbs on all the time.

 

[crmaris]

Bummer, I was really hoping that the zyxel 10GBase-T switch used in testing was going to have multigig capability so as to test the throughput of the 2.5GBase-T NIC in the NAS, especially considering they're being pushed to replace Gigabit networking in the consumer space (although IMO, they should AT LEAST be pushing 5GBase-T if not 10GBase-T)... I'm both a storage and networking junkie so an you blame me?

I've had a 10GBase-T home network for a few years now and it's great to have, especially when 3 or more nodes are requesting full blu-ray rips from the server while regularly schedules backups are uploading to the server, anyway....

Was curious if TPU could add another test to the NAS/networking reviews, specifically Link Aggregation of two or even four links (on the NAS side) would be awesome, especially for multi-client testing. I know it's complete overkill, and I largely did it because I could and to get the most out of the top tier of my server/NAS storage which is NVMe based, but I took and Intel X710-T4 4x port 10GBase-T NIC and installed it in my server with all four links aggregated to create a "robust" backbone, (eventually I want to move completely away from local storage with the exception of the OS/important application drive) and it was a pain to get going, but it's pretty sweet seeing the results of network speed benchmarks in NVMe to NVMe transfer tests

In the multiclient tests I combine all Ethernet ports of the NAS under test to utilize full bandwidth. This one has 1 Gbit ports though, no 2.5 Gbit and this is a major con in my book.

I added USB 3.0 Type-C to 5GbE Adapter (QNA-UC5G1T) by QNAP to my DS718+
works great 400+ Mbps transfers now

Synology Community

Hi! Come and join us at Synology Community. A place to answer all your Synology questions. Ask a question or start a discussion now.

community.synology.com

This is something worth checking, but unfortunately, I don't have this adapter, and QNAP is not so cooperative lately, something that can be easily seen in the review section. It has been ages till the last time I made a QNAP review.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Surveillance video capability? Geofencing security. Thats the new schtick, so what on that front?

 

[TheUn4seen]

How on Earth do you get to charge close to $600 for what is essentially an enclosure, a simple motherboard and a RAID controller?

Plastic trays are a joke (literally the only thing that broke in my old chassis over time) unless they sell spares for peanuts.
And 10W while hibernating, what's up with that? It's like having a couple of LED bulbs on all the time.

Fancy, colorful software is what you pay for. Also, convenience of "it just works" for people who want to buy a thing, plug it in, and, well, have it just work, and have support when it doesn't.
Also, I recently built a new simple NAS for myself. The cost of a decent SBC, drive backplane, case, PSU and such is fairly close to the 500$ mark, and if you add time you have to spend on software (since Freenas is overkill in most cases, not to mention a horrible memory hog even if you don't use ZFS) it can easily go beyond that. Some people like to tinker, some just want to buy a thing and be done with it. Just like with cars. To each his own.

 

[bug]

Fancy, colorful software is what you pay for. Also, convenience of "it just works" for people who want to buy a thing, plug it in, and, well, have it just work, and have support when it doesn't.
Also, I recently built a new simple NAS for myself. The cost of a decent SBC, drive backplane, case, PSU and such is fairly close to the 500$ mark, and if you add time you have to spend on software (since Freenas is overkill in most cases, not to mention a horrible memory hog even if you don't use ZFS) it can easily go beyond that. Some people like to tinker, some just want to buy a thing and be done with it. Just like with cars. To each his own.

Still looks like a lot to charge for software (maybe it's because economy of scale doesn't work as well as it does for PCs?). I understand your system got you close to the mark, but, by sacrificing size a little, you can build this around a mini-ITX (or something) plus a RAID card.

Quite honestly, for my needs I'm more inclined to stick a drive into the router and back it up from time to time. I can probably do that with $200 or so.

 

[TheUn4seen]

Still looks like a lot to charge for software (maybe it's because economy of scale doesn't work as well as it does for PCs?). I understand your system got you close to the mark, but, by sacrificing size a little, you can build this around a mini-ITX (or something) plus a RAID card.

Quite honestly, for my needs I'm more inclined to stick a drive into the router and back it up from time to time. I can probably do that with $200 or so.

Software and support in a market which is not really a niche, but certainly low to medium-low production, so higher margins. As you noted yourself, most people can just plug an external drive from time to time and be fine with that, so for a SOHO environment with several but not too many users those Synology NASes are great. Plug it in, set up (and be able to call support if you need help), no need to hire someone who knows their way around computers so the cost is actually lower.

 

[JustAnEngineer]

10 Gb ethernet currently starts with Synology's 6-bay models like the just-announced DS1621xs+ https://www.synology.com/en-global/products?bays=4,5,6,8&chassis=1U,2U,3U,Desktop&lan=10gbe_built_in,10gbe_optional

 

[Owen1982]

Anybody know what network chips this is using? Are they cheap Realtek ones like the ds1621+? I did not see this mentioned on the interior breakdown...

 

[Caring1]

Anybody know what network chips this is using? Are they cheap Realtek ones like the ds1621+? I did not see this mentioned on the interior breakdown...

Realtek 8111 HS

http://file2.dzsc.com/product/20/07/15/437844_121532401.pdf

 

[Owen1982]

Thank you muchly

 

[gamato]

@crmaris Hi. Could you please add tests over NFS and AFS to your SMB tests? Those are highly useful, especially on non-Windows platforms. Cheers.