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."

Synology Inc. today announced the official release of three major packages, Drive, Office, and Moments. These packages run on the company's line of network-attached storage products and allow users to store, backup, and synchronize their photos, documents, and other files while keeping their data private and secure.

Moments is a completely new application that lets users back up photos from their computer or smartphone to their Synology NAS. Once photos are stored on the Synology NAS, Moments includes deep learning and automatic organization tools that identify people, places, and objects in photos and sorts them into albums accordingly. Since photo indexing is processed on the Synology NAS, users can be assured that all their photos and image data are stored safely and privately.

Today, Synology Inc. launched RackStation RS818+/RS818RP+, a new 1U 4-bay rackmount NAS designed with speedy transmission performance and storage scalability for small and medium-sized businesses. RS818+/RS818RP+ features a 2.4GHz quad-core processor with AES-NI encryption engine, 2GB DDR3 memory (expandable to 16GB in dual channel), and a PCIe 2.0 slot to support an optional 10GbE network card. This powerful hardware provides over 1,099 MB/s reading speed, making RS818+/RS818RP+ an ideal centralized storage option for multi-client data transmissions.

The storage capacity of RS818+/RS818RP+ can be further expanded with the new Synology expansion unit RX418, providing up to 8 drives for flexible data management and backup. RS818+/RS818RP+ comes with four 1GbE LAN ports to support Link Aggregation and failover. Synology High Availability support provides a reliable active/passive server cluster, keeping data and services online. RS818RP+ is also equipped with redundant power supplies to deliver increased service continuity.

Synology Inc. today launched FlashStation FS1018, its first-ever all-flash desktop NAS, in addition to officially releasing Virtual Machine Manager and DiskStation DS218. FS1018 is a blazing fast and compact 12-bay, low-latency, all-SSD desktop NAS. It is powered by an Intel Pentium D1508 dual-core CPU and 8GB DDR4 EEC memory, expandable up to 32GB. The four plug-and-play Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports can be expanded with higher performance options. FS1018 supports network add-on cards with a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, providing over 40K 4K Random Write IOPS.

"Designing a form factor that satisfies the need for both performance and drive capacity was crucial. FS1018 offers 12 SSD bays on a scale optimal for any desktop," said Jason Fan, Product Manager at Synology Inc. Another exciting feature of the new FS1018 is its ability to run Virtual Machine Manager. Synology's new virtualization software provides the ability to install and run multiple virtual machines including Windows, Linux, and Virtual DSM on Synology NAS.

Synology Inc. announced the official release of Virtual Machine Manager. It provides the ability to install and run multiple virtual machines, including Windows, Linux, and Virtual DSM on Synology NAS. Hardware resources can be allocated more flexibly with Virtual Machine Manager. Virtual machines can even be moved without interruption to running hosts.

According to a 2016 study made by market authority Gartner, up to 80% of x86 server workloads have been virtualized. Virtual Machine Manager attracted more than 60,000 users during its 6-month beta program. The results also show that server virtualization is definitely a trend of IT industry. Virtual Machine Manager not only provides virtualized system resources, but it also combines the powerful advantages of the Btrfs next-generation file system. This provides users with the ability to complete virtual machine snapshots and replication in just seconds.

Today Synology is unveiling three new additions to our DiskStation lineup: DS118, DS218play, and DS218j. DS118 is the successor of DS116. It features a new 64-bit quad-core CPU and 1GB DDR4 memory and delivers sequential throughput performance at over 113 MB/s reading and 112 MB/s writing. The excellent performance makes DS118 a good backup solution for small office users.

DS118 also supports 4K 10-bit H.265 hardware video transcoding, allowing 4K videos to be instantly converted and played on your TV, smartphone, or other media players that originally do not support Ultra HD formats. DS218play is the successor of DS216play. DS218play is also powered by a new 64-bit quad-core 1.4 GHz processor and 1GB DDR4 memory. It features massive storage capacity for housing your entire multimedia library and more, making it easy for multimedia enthusiasts to maintain complete control over their data. DS218play also reaches similar performance numbers of 112 MB/s reading and 112 MB/s writing; while also supporting real-time single channel 10-bit H.265 4K Ultra HD or single channel full HD video transcoding.

Seagate Technology plc. announced today its IronWolf, IronWolf Pro and BarraCuda Pro hard drives are now available at capacities up to 12TB. Offering the highest capacity, reliability and performance in the industry among network-attached storage (NAS) and desktop HDDs, Seagate's 12TB IronWolf and BarraCuda Pro drives further extend the capabilities of the leading Seagate Guardian Series to meet the growing data needs of large enterprise business, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and creative professionals.

Across the globe, we are experiencing a massive increase in the volume of data created, with a recent study by IDC and Seagate finding that data creation will swell to a total of 163 zettabytes (ZB) by 2025, 10x more than today. Seagate's latest portfolio of 12TB drives are designed for today's media storage needs - including augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 4K resolution and 360-degree videos - and offer scalability for the future with increased space and speed.

Synology Inc. announced the official launch of the DiskStation DS418play, a 4-bay NAS ideal for serving as a home multimedia center. The DS418play is equipped with a dual-core 2GHz processor capable of bursting up to 2.5GHz. It comes with 2GB DDR3L memory by default, which is twice the size of its predecessor, and expands up to 6GB to enhance multi-tasking operations. Powered by a new hardware transcoding engine, DS418play supports up to two channels of H.265/H.264 4K video transcoding.

"Mobile devices supporting 4K video recording are becoming increasingly popular. However, since 4K video clips are capacity-consuming and not all TVs at home support 4K video playback, users tend to record videos with lower resolution as an alternative," said Michael Wang, product manager at Synology Inc. "With DS418play supporting up to 40TB of raw capacity, users can store their favorite videos in ultra-high definition, organize and share videos with families and friends effortlessly, and transcode videos on-the-fly to allow video playback on devices that do not support 4K."

ynology Inc. announced the official launch of new product lineup featuring: XS-series DS3018xs: Synology's first 6-bay tower NAS with optional 10GbE and M.2 SATA SSD supports; Plus-series DS918+, DS718+, and DS218+: Greater performance and data resiliency for intensive workloads; and Value-series DS418: Introduction of 4K online transcoding capability.

To allow for ultra-high performance using SSD cache without occupying internal drive bays, DS3018xs features a PCIe slot, which can be installed with a dual M.2 SATA SSD adapter card (M2D17). DS918+ comes with dedicated dual M.2 NVMe slots at the bottom where you can directly install M.2 NVMe SSDs. DS418 features 10-bit H.265 4K video transcoding.

Synology Inc. today launched the new DiskStation DS418j, a budget-friendly 4-bay NAS server designed to help home and individual users to manage, protect and share data effectively. DS418j is powered by a brand-new 64-bit dual-core CPU and delivers an outstanding encrypted file transfer performance at over 112 MB/s reading and 87 MB/s writing under a RAID 5 configuration in a Windows environment. Coming with a 1 GB DDR4 memory, which is twice the size of its predecessor, and over 40 TB single volume raw capacity support, DS418j brings flexible storage management with excellent operation experience.

"In the digital era, photos, videos, and digital assets are being generated faster than ever. For home and individual users, it is essential to have a private storage solution that can satisfy the needs for both large storage capacity and secure data sharing," said Michael Wang, Product Manager at Synology Inc. "Combining hardware innovations and rich applications, the 4-bay DS418j allows users to enjoy cloud synchronization and multimedia streaming at a competitive price."

Synology Inc. launched the new DiskStation DS1517 and DS1817, powerful and scalable 5-bay and 8-bay desktop NAS. DS1817 is the first Value series equipped with built-in 10GbE LAN ports and an expandable RAM module, delivering future-proof, high-speed storage for professionals and growing small/medium-sized businesses.

DS1817 is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz processor with RAM module expandable up to 8GB. Thanks to the built-in 10GbE interfaces, DS1817 can achieve outstanding sequential throughput performance exceeding 1,577 MB/s reading and 739 MB/s writing when using RAID 5. The built-in 10GBASE-T ports and 1GBASE-T LAN ports pave the way for businesses to upgrade to a 10GbE environment, and provide the support of Link Aggregation and failover.

Synology today launched FlashStation FS2017, a high-performance and scalable NAS designed for enterprise usage. Capable of handling over 90,000 IOPS in 4K random writing, FS2017 is perfect for big data analysis, video post-production, virtualization, and handling any demanding database application that requires high IOPS and low latency at the same time.

FS2017 is powered by an 8-core Intel Xeon D processor together with 16 Gigabytes of DDR4 ECC RDIMM that is expandable up to 128GB. The cutting-edge hardware delivers high performance and throughput even with multitasking and multiple virtual machines hosted. Four Gigabit ports allow simple plug-and-play into existing RJ45 based networks, ensuring continual network uptime. For higher bandwidth applications, the dual 10GBASE-T ports with the option of an additional 10GbE / 25GbE / 40GbE NIC can maximize throughput and meet data-intensive requirements.

Synology Inc. launched DiskStation DS1517+ and DS1817+ together with the Expansion Unit DX517 today. These powerful and scalable 5-bay and 8-bay tower servers offer a high-performance, reliable, and versatile network-attached storage solution for tech enthusiasts and small/medium-sized businesses. The exciting new feature in DS1517+ and DS1817+ is the inclusion of a PCIe slot, which allows users to install an optional 10GbE network interface card or Synology's new M2D17 M.2 SATA SSD adapter. In addition, DS1517+ and DS1817+ both come in 2GB and 8GB memory configurations, which can be upgraded to 16GB thanks to the easily accessible memory compartment.

Installing an additional network interface card allows enthusiasts and businesses to take advantage of up to two 10GbE ports to boost maximum throughput. When combined with the Intel Atom quad-core 2.4GHz processor and equipped with optional dual channel memory, DS1517+ and DS1817+ can deliver sequential throughput performance up to 1,179 MB/s reading and 542 MB/s writing speeds. With the introduction of Synology's new M2D17 PCIe adapter card, DS1517+ and DS1817+ can be equipped with dual M.2 SATA SSDs, allowing users to enhance performance and latency using SSD caching without occupying the front drive bays.