When it comes to routers, Synology might not be the first brand that springs to mind, but the company has produced some interesting routers, especially when you take into account its custom OS, the Synology Router Manager, or SRM for short. The company has teased a new addition to its small family of routers, which should launch at some point in the first quarter of next year, that brings with it a few interesting features.

The RT6600ax as it's called, will be one of the first routers to support the UNII-4 WiFi band, also known as the 5.9 GHz band. This is an extension of the 802.11ax/WiFi 6 band and it's not related to WiFi 6E which uses the 6 GHz band. UNII-4 only adds a total of four 20 MHz WiFi channels, but the key here is that it allows for a third 160 MHz wide channel, something that could be handy in congested locations. For now, UNII-4 is only going to be usable in the US, although more countries are likely to be considering opening up the extra frequencies for WiFi usage. That said, it's unlikely that Europe and Japan will allow it, since neither region supports the UNII-3 frequency band.

Synology has announced the launch of its new HAS5300 series 3.5" SAS hard drives to meet growing demand for high-capacity, high-performance, and resilient storage systems in enterprise environments. Available in 16 TB, 12 TB, and 8 TB models, the HAS5300 drives are the latest addition to Synology's range of enterprise hard drives, following the release of the HAT5300 series SATA drives in January. They are perfect companions to Synology's high-performance and highly scalable SA and UC series storage solutions.

With support for 550 TB/year workloads and rated for a 2.5 million hours mean time to failure (MTTF), HAS5300 SAS drives are built to deliver consistent and class-leading performance in the most intense environments. Persistent write cache technology further helps ensure data integrity for your mission-critical applications.

Synology today released DSM 7.0, the latest version of the data management operating system that powers over eight million NAS/SAN solutions. The release comes after more than three years of redesigning and optimization work. DSM 7.0 includes numerous features focused on making the platform more flexible and capable, including integrating cloud-powered capabilities. Synology is simplifying routine IT tasks and giving system administrators more control, visibility, and powerful management features into their Synology servers.

DSM 7.0 is available today for Synology J, Value, and Plus series devices. Updates for all product series will be rolled out in the upcoming months.

Synology Inc. today announced two additions to its enterprise-class M.2 NVMe solid-state drive line for SSD caching, and its latest generation 10/25GbE network cards to drive forward storage and networking performance on its storage solutions. New 800 GB models for the SNV3400 M.2 2280 and SNV3500 M.2 22110 NVMe SSD lines are designed to let users with larger data sets cache more data, allowing for higher and more consistent performance improvements over HDD-based arrays. The dual-port 10GbE SFP+ E10G21-F2 compliments the existing lineup of high-speed NICs, while the dual-port 25GbE SFP28 E25G21-F2 provides customers with even faster 25GbE connectivity options.

"Our latest NAS models are built for expansion so that they can meet our customers' future storage, caching, and connectivity needs," says Peggy Weng, Synology Product Manager. "With this latest wave of releases, we build on that foundation to offer a solid ecosystem of first-party storage and networking options."

Synology Inc. today unveiled the next generation of RackStation units that support its highly successful backup, virtualization storage, surveillance, and remote work solutions. In a company first, it also announced the release of its HAT5300 series of high-performance enterprise hard drives specially engineered for Synology deployments.

The 2U 12-bay RS3621RPxs and RS3621xs+, and the 3U 16-bay RS4021xs+ are designed for SMBs that require high-performance general-purpose storage. Synology's newest devices provide a reliable platform for data-intensive applications such as large-scale backup, ISCSi SAN storage, on-premises collaboration solutions, and video surveillance deployments.

Synology Inc. launched today the RackStation RS1221+ and RS1221RP+ (redundant power) 2U 8-bay rackmounted storage servers built to deliver high performance in a space-efficient form factor.

"The RS1221+ and RP+ units are designed for the small-business sector, and indeed, "small" they are," said Michael Wang, Synology Product Manager. "These units not only pack in a huge leap forward in performance, but do it at a modest depth for 2U units in their class. What's more, for businesses who require higher availability, the RP+ version is equipped with dual power supplies for redundancy and added reliability."

Synology Inc. today introduced the next generation 6-bay DiskStation NAS, the DS1621+, designed for high-performance data storage and management. A compact powerhouse, the DS1621+ enables content creators and businesses to store and protect large quantities of data effortlessly. The DS1621+ is by far the most powerful Plus series yet. Its quad-core AMD Ryzen processor features the next-generation "Zen" architecture, delivering over 2x more processing power.

"Our customers, more than ever, are relying on Synology storage solutions to store and directly utilize critical data, whether for business or personal use," said Hewitt Lee, Director of Synology Product Management Group. "DS1621+ is designed to be a versatile solution that empowers content creators and collectors by not only providing fast, reliable, and high-capacity storage, but also simplifying IT with effortless backups for PCs and virtual machines."

Synology Inc. launched the 3.84 terabyte SAT5200 2.5" solid state drive. Designed for Synology users requiring high capacity and reliable storage arrays, all the while sustaining high performance low-latency operations for mission critical work. With the increasingly demanding environment in storage, the SSD is created with enterprise grade endurance and reliability to help businesses and users tackle intensive workloads with robust data protection.

"Part of designing a reliable storage system requires that companion drives that can consistently sustain heavy read and write operations without any performance degradation. Our SAT5200 SSDs are built specifically to tackle low-latency and consistent performance requirements demanded by our SMB and enterprise customers," said Julien Chen, Product Manager for Synology solid state drives.

Synology Inc. launched DiskStation DS1621xs+, redefining performance expectations in a compact tower form-factor. Pairing a quad-core Xeon processor together with ECC memory and onboard 10 GbE, the DS1621xs+ raises the bar for high-performance data storage and management. The DS1621xs+ shares a powerful Xeon processor found in some of our datacenter bound devices, but now in an 11.5L chassis.

Over 3.1 GB/s seq. read and 1.8 GB/s seq. write performance means you can tackle larger data sets and handle more users, even quicker than before. We also paired it with ECC memory for maximum dependability. Together with Btrfs and our comprehensive data backup options, your data is in safe hands. Six internal 3.5" bays enable up to 96 TB of raw storage capacity. When that's not enough, bump that up to 256 TB, on-demand, by adding on two additional DX517 expansion units for a total of 16 drives.

Synology has recently announced the 5-bay DiskStation DS1520+ NAS, as a replacement for the DiskStation DS1019+. The DS1520+ NAS features a quad-core Intel Celeron J4125 clocked at 2.0 GHz base and 2.7 GHz boost, paired with 8 GB DDR4 memory. This processor upgrade should offer a roughly 20% performance increase in responsiveness and indexing. The DiskStation DS1520+ supports 80 TB raw internal storage along with dual Dual M.2 2280 NVMe SSD cache slots. The DiskStation DS1520+ can be expanded to 15 bays with the DX517 and features quad gigabit Ethernet ports with Link Aggregation / Failover support. The DS1520+ is targeted towards home and small office environments and will likely retail for a similar price of the DS1019+.

Today, Synology Inc. announced the launch of a new data center in Seattle for its cloud backup service, Synology C2. The data center is the second location to offer C2 services, with the first location in Frankfurt, Germany. The expansion extends the reach of Synology C2 service to markets in America and Asia, offering new subscribers the choice of where to host their data.

"Augmenting on-premises data security with cloud-based backup is a growing trend among personal and business users alike. The new data center in Seattle allows us to provide a more efficient and localized experience to customers in the Americas and Asia," said Hewitt Lee, Director of Synology Product Management Group.

Synology Inc. today launched a new generation of two and four bay Plus Series NAS, designed as a centralized data management solution for both home and business environments. "Plus series is one of our most popular and versatile product lines," said Hewitt Lee, Director of Synology Product Management Group."The series offers an ideal mix of processing power and advanced capabilities such as containers and virtualization support, in compact and quiet desktop form factors. It is also the starting point for our advanced data protection solutions, enabling small businesses to cost-effectively deploy solutions that can protect their entire IT infrastructure."

Up to 133% faster in website responsiveness and over 15% improvement in compute-tasks, the new Plus series enables you to get things done faster and more efficiently. Two M.2 NVMe slots2 enable accelerated I/O performance, especially in multi-user environments. Synology storage solutions are not only designed to fulfill data management requirements, but centralize backups for Microsoft Windows PCs and Servers, VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, and Microsoft 365 and G Suite accounts using our Active Backup suite.

Western Digital launched the WD Red line of hard drives and solid state drives specifically for NAS applications. The rigors of NAS involves not just near 24x7 uptime, but also the ability to work in RAID volumes, as most NAS servers ease the process for end users to set up RAID volumes for data redundancy. Data Storage-focused tech publication Blocks & Files alleges that some WD Red HDDs are shipping with shingled magnetic recording (SMR), a physical-layer data recording technique that makes the drive unfit for RAID, and in turn unfit for most serious NAS setups.

SMR is a recording technique that aims to achieve higher data density per platter, by partially overlapping tracks, by taking advantage of write tracks being wider than read tracks. Think of it as trying to cram a little more than one line of text per ruling, in a ruled notepad. The biggest trade-off with cramming in more data using SMR is a heavy loss in random write performance. The controversy of Western Digital shipping SMR WD Red drives came to light when Alan Brown, a network administrator with the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, noticed that a brand new WD Red HDD kept getting kicked out of RAID arrays during resilvering (rebalancing of data with the addition of a new disk to an existing RAID array).

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have adopted work from home policies. Synology's wireless routers feature powerful VPN server capabilities that enable businesses to quickly facilitate a remote workforce. Starting from April 6, Synology VPN Plus licenses will become free to purchase until September 30, 2020.

"We have seen many businesses rushing to adopt VPN solutions in order to set up an infrastructure to enable a remote workforce. Over the past two months, we have seen a five-fold increase in VPN Plus license purchases," said Hewitt Lee, Director of Synology Product Management Group. "As the situation continues to develop in unprecedented ways, we understand that many are uncertain of how to maintain business continuity. Synology is offering VPN Plus licenses for free in an effort to help businesses resume operations remotely."

Synology today launched DiskStation DS1019+, a 5-bay desktop NAS with excellent performance and scalability, right for small offices and IT enthusiasts.

"For professional home or SOHO users, it's always struggling to find a NAS server providing outstanding performance, scalability, and applicability at the same time. DS1019+ eliminates all your concerns with a compact chassis design," said Kevin Meng, product manager of Synology Inc. "Featuring a quad-core processor, 8GB memory and dual M.2 NVMe SSD slots, DS1019+ allows you to create SSD cache without occupying any drive trays. Its dual-channel 4K video transcoding capability and scalable storage design also make it an ideal option for multimedia applications, perfectly suitable for ultra HD video streaming among all of your devices."

Synology Inc. today launched DiskStation DS1819+, an 8-bay desktop NAS providing outstanding performance with great expandability, ready to grow as your business thrives. "This is a compact NAS with an expandable design that can be an ideal investment for small to medium-sized businesses, especially when capable of hosting versatile applications." Said Kevin Meng, product manager of Synology Inc. "As an updated 8-bay desktop NAS in the Plus family, DS1819+ provides a performance increase of over 57% in sequential reading compared to its predecessor, making it more than capable of being just a file server or backup target to satisfy various business requirements with its all-inclusive built-in applications."

Synology Inc., a leading maker of network-attached storage, video surveillance and networking products, unveiled the company's latest hardware and software innovations at their annual event Synology 2019 in New York. Synology debuted its first mesh Wi-Fi router, MR2200ac, along with the updated Synology Router Manager (SRM) 1.2. Another focus of the event was Synology's new enterprise-level data protection solution, Active Backup for Business.

Synology's first mesh router, MR2200ac, comes with a Qualcomm IPQ4019 quad-core CPU, tri-band Wi-Fi, and the latest version of its operating system SRM 1.2, which includes more granular configurations, such as user profile creation, detailed traffic management, advanced web filters, and whitelisting features aimed at providing tools for users to further understand, monitor and protect their network. The MR2200ac can work alone as a single router or be added to a RT2600ac or additional MR2200ac units to extend Wi-Fi coverage.

Seagate Technology, a world leader in data storage solutions, today launched the industry's widest range of advanced 14 TB hard drives, enhancing the company's enterprise and specialty drive portfolio. Consisting of IronWolf and IronWolf Pro for network attached storage (NAS) applications, the BarraCuda Pro desktop drive, surveillance-optimized SkyHawk, and Exos X14 for hyperscale data centers, this purpose-built portfolio empowers customers to consume, manage and utilize digital data more effectively and efficiently while establishing new benchmarks in speed and capacity.

With this offering, Seagate continues to lead the industry in driving data storage technology toward a lower cost per terabyte through hard drive optimization, versatility of application, and unmatched capacity. Whether for personal use, creative and design computing, online gaming, or large-scale surveillance systems and hyperscale environments, Seagate drives are opening up new data management opportunities across a wide range of markets.

Synology Inc. announced the official release of Virtual Machine Manager Pro to cater to professional users with services suitable to their needs. VMM Pro enables Synology NAS to run multiple virtual machines like Windows, Linux, Virtual DSM. It assists users to integrate and manage multiple Synology NAS via its virtualized cluster, flexibly distributes hardware resources, migrates virtual machines between hosts without any interruption, and conducts regular snapshots and replications to back up virtual machines, for the ultimate goal of building a efficient and safe virtualization environment.

Synology is dedicated to making powerful yet intuitive solutions for users. "Virtual Machine Manager has garnered wide acclaims with its latest version, and more than 130,000 Synology NAS have downloaded and installed it over the course of one year. This clearly shows how this product has been endorsed worldwide, which is very motivating to our development team. With the extremely flexible cluster in Virtual Machine Manager Pro, we are able to help IT personnel to easily build a professional and efficient virtualization environment on NAS servers. As this application improves your work efficiency, it protects critical virtual machines, as well." said Chen Feng Wang, Product Manager of virtualization at Synology.

Synology today released two major backup applications in Active Backup suite of packages, the official version of Active Backup for Office 365 that supports SaaS cloud backup, and the beta version of Active Backup for Business that provides data availability for workloads in physical and virtual environments.

"More and more companies and organizations are operating across physical, virtual, and cloud platforms. This phenomenon presents a tremendous challenge to IT departments for ensuring the safety of the growing data in this cross-platform environment." said Jia-Yu Liu,
Director of Application Group at Synology Inc. "To tackle this problem, Synology provides a new, all-in-one solution that closely integrates software and hardware for businesses of varying scale."

Synology Inc. today announced the official release of DiskStation Manager (DSM) 6.2, delivering a more reliable, efficient and secure NAS experience. The new Advanced LUN, iSCSI Manager, and Storage Manager provide professional users with a stable and powerful data protection solution. Take management efficiency and stability to an unprecedented level.

"Eight months ago we released our DSM 6.2 beta program, with over 71,000 downloads, and received valuable feedback from users. In DSM 6.2, we focus on the stability and performance of new features." said Derren Lu, CEO of Synology Inc. "In the meantime, we took tens of thousands of hours testing on hundreds of machines to make DSM more stable and provide better IT management flexibility in every respect. Synology NAS does not just serve as network storage devices, but they provide a powerful and wide range of application services for business."

Synology today launched the DiskStation DS1618+, a 6-bay NAS featuring the Intel Atom C3538. For tech enthusiasts and small to medium-sized businesses, the DS1618+ is a solution for file serving, application hosting, data backup, and real-time collaboration.

DS1618+ is powered by a quad-core Intel Atom processor C3538 and 4GB DDR4 non-ECC SODIMM, expandable up to 32 GB in ECC SODIMMs. The storage capacity can be upgraded to 192TB when connected to two DX517 expansion units, providing fast-growing companies a data storage solution that scales with their business.

Synology Inc. today launched RackStation RS2418+/RS2418RP+, a 2U, 12-bay rackmount NAS providing easy-to-scale storage capacity with affordable total cost of ownership (TCO) for small- and medium-sized businesses. RS2418+/RS2418RP+ supports up to 144TB raw capacity in a single 2U chassis. The storage capacity can be further expanded up to 288TB when connected to one RX1217/RX1217RP, providing on-the-fly volume expansion.

"RS2418+/RS2418RP+ is designed to solve common IT challenges for small- and medium- sized businesses: budgets are tight, data volume is increasing rapidly, and IT staff is limited." said Jason Fan, Product Manager at Synology Inc. "RS2418+/RS2418RP+ is designed to solve these challenges. It offers scalable storage capacity with affordable TCO, at the same time providing versatile software applications which make it ideal to serve as a file server, a centralized backup target, or a hub-and-spoke backup target for distributed businesses."

Synology Inc. today launched RackStation RS3618xs, a 12-bay rackmount NAS providing excellent performance, effortless capacity scaling and optimized virtualisation solutions for expanding businesses. RS3618xs is a 2U RackStation NAS powered by an Intel Xeon D-1521 quad-core CPU and 8GB DDR4 ECC UDIMM RAM, expandable up to 64GB. The four plug-and-play Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports can be expanded with higher performance 10GbE NICs through the PCIe 3.0 slot, providing over 3,900 MBps throughput and 143,500 iSCSI IOPS.

Besides the native 12-drive support, the storage capacity can be further expanded up to 432TB when connecting to two RX1217(RP), providing on-the-fly volume expansion. Its capability to support massive storage space on demand makes it ideal to serve as a virtualisation solution, a centralized file server, a backup target or iSCSI storage.

Synology Inc. today launched RackStation RS2818RP+, a 3U 16-bay NAS providing large storage capacity with affordable total cost of ownership (TCO) for small and medium-sized businesses. RS2818RP+ is Synology's first 3U RackStation NAS in the Plus Series product line, supporting up to 16 drive bays with up to 192TB raw capacity. The storage capacity can be further expanded up to 336TB when connecting to one RX1217(RP), providing on-the-fly volume expansion.

"One of the common challenges for modern small and medium-sized businesses is finding a storage solution that can store large amounts of data while having the flexibility to scale when business grows," said Jason Fan, Product Manager at Synology Inc. "RS2818RP+ offers large storage capacity with affordable TCO. It is ideal to serve as a centralized backup target, a file server or a hub-and-spoke backup target for distributed businesses."