We will now take a look at DSM's important applications and settings. You will have to deal with all of these at least once.

Control Panel Settings

The most important icon on the desktop is that of the Control Panel because it contains DSM's settings and functions. All choices are categorized into four main categories: File Sharing, Connectivity, System, and Application. All icons are also quite self-explanatory and nicely designed.


You are able to manage shared folders and the root folder through the Shared Folder menu. You can also store data you want to share with users or groups via access privileges in shared folders, or create new shared folders, edit their permissions, or delete existing ones; you can also encrypt them with AES 256-bit encryption to make all unauthorized access attempts impossible.


The Network Settings tab allows you to team two Ethernet ports together for a boost in reliability or speed. You can also manage and implement traffic-control rules should you wish to pre-determine which outgoing traffic is allowed when clients access services on your Synology NAS—you may even change port number(s) for DSM access or configure HTTPS settings with these options.


Info Center lists the NAS' hardware specifications and comes with an overview of its services, the network, and its storage devices. A green icon under Thermal Status in its first tab denotes a normal state, while orange is indicative of high internal temperatures that will cause the NAS to shut down at any moment to prevent components from overheating. Hover over these icons with your mouse cursor and the CPU's temperature will be displayed.

Storage Manager

Storage Manager is an essential application with which you will have to get familiar since it also allows you to configure installed disks and check on their health. Briefly, volumes are a NAS' storage units, so you have to create a volume before anything else. This can easily be done via Synology's Storage Manager, and you may also create more than one volume through the Volume Setup wizard. Synology offers two options here, one for an SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) volume and a custom option that supports different RAID levels.

Before setting up the RAID level, you have to pick the disks you want to use for your new volume. Be aware of the fact that all data on them will be erased. If you don't want to create a RAID array, you can also configure your disks in JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) or simply install a single HDD. Synology thankfully gives you the valuable option to skip checking the disks during RAID initialization, which dramatically reduces the time it takes to set drives up in RAID. However, make sure your disks have no bad sectors or your RAID will fail, which would endanger the data on those disks.

Resource Monitor

The Resource Monitor application allows you to monitor your system's resources, including CPU usage, memory usage, disk utilization, and network transfer speeds. You can monitor resources in real time or view bygone data.

Package Center

Easily install and update many applications to dramatically boost your NAS' usability via Synology's Package Center application. You only have to browse through Synology's available applications to pick those you want before installing them. You can also manually upload and install an application. Synology offers a rich variety of applications it grouped into the following categories: Backup, Multimedia, Business, Security, and Utilities.