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Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

08 Jul

The post Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

Synology NAS storage

Messy People Have More Creative And Productive Minds, Science Says

While science may well say this, I’ve got to admit after deciding that I had ‘no room to swing a cat’ with my stuff everywhere, that I’ve taken some time during this COVID-19 lock-in to plan and execute my office clean-up! Along with that office clean up, I’ve reorganized my external storage, my raw image archiving, and my general day-to-day workflow, and I wanted to share that process with you.

Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

I’ve been using a large external ‘DAS’ for a good while – a raid array (external disk) with a Thunderbolt 3 connection. Without spending a shed-load of cash on a very expensive cable, I wasn’t able to get it a suitable distance away from my workspace.

So, all of those pretty glowing blue lights and the accompanying whir of drives had to be right beside me. Not necessarily a terrible thing – it’s a very well behaved Raid array – however, it wasn’t very quiet. And, it was kinda ugly in my new small, streamlined office.

Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

I had the idea to ‘kill the clutter’ and switch to a complete NAS (Network Attached Storage) setup with a single direct attached drive at the back of my iMac. Then I tucked the second NAS away in my “server room” (a cupboard in the corner of my office with some powerpoints and a Cat6 patch panel).

This would move the big whirring, glowing drive out of my office space and tuck my main image archiving server away, out of sight.

I also added a second monitor to my setup, a stunning 27″ EIZO. I highly recommend checking them out! It’s very easy on the eye.

Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

So I loaded six of my regular-flavor hard disks into the Synology DS1618, the 6tb WD Red disks – the same drives I have in all of my Synology NAS gear.

Setting the NAS up using Synology’s SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid) and splitting my data across the drives for some hardware failure redundancy, is a very simple process I’ve written about here. My workflow with the second NAS has changed considerably and, after a month or so of testing, is working exactly as I’d like it to.

Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

Now when I import from an SD card, I import directly into my external USB-C disk (Invariably, a G-Technology 4-8TB) and at the same time import to my backup location which is an identical library on the freshly installed Synology DS1618, where previously I’d import to the blue whirring beast (It was a Promise R8, an amazing unit, but just not what I wanted in my new space) and the USB-C drive. Over Cat6 the import of RAW files to my NAS doesn’t register as taking too long and hasn’t bothered me once. 

Now, when I import from an SD card, I import directly into my external USB-C disk (invariably, a G-Technology 4-8TB) and to my backup location – an identical library on the freshly installed Synology DS1618. Previously I’d import to the USB-C drive and the blue whirring beast (a Promise R8. An amazing unit, but just not what I wanted in my new space). Over Cat6, the import of RAW files to my NAS doesn’t register as taking too long and hasn’t bothered me once.

Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

Indirect benefits of the NAS running DSM as a second image storage location are, I can put any RAW files (or all of them), after conversion by the NAS, into a piece of Synology software called “PhotoStation.” This automagically creates good-looking web albums and can group and organize your photos in many ways. In this modern age of never printing anything and having dinner-table arguments discussions about ‘never seeing any of the photos we take’ is a very good thing!

The other main reason for the setup change is that I consult and, from time to time, have people into my home office to chat. Having my servers out and about, with cables hanging around to trip people over, was not a good look! Now, with everything tucked away, there’s no fear of that happening! I also spend a lot of time in my office, and I like to enjoy the space, so I am very happy with the transformation!

Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive

Since we talked last about storage, backups and NAS, my home/office internet has joined the (almost) 20th century in the form of 100Mb NBN. This means that my digital delivery to clients directly from my NAS is MUCH faster. I’m able to share albums and full-res finished images directly from my Disk Station, all from the privacy of my cupboard! 

In closing, the process of de-cluttering your workspace is really very simple these days and can be quite cathartic! A small to medium-sized Synology NAS tucked away in your cupboard, and you’re good to go. 

Together, Synology and WD provided the equipment for this test setup, but the opinions expressed are my own. 

Have you got a storage set-up you’d like to share? Please let us know in the comments section.

The post Synology NAS – Transforming Your Workspace to be More Productive appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.


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Synology launches DS419Slim miniature NAS

30 Jun

Synology has introduced a new network-attached storage device that is designed to take up less space than usual NAS units and which is suitable for photographers away from home. The DS419Slim is a four-bay case that accepts 2.5in drives and which has a maximum capacity of 20TB.

The enclosure measures only 120x105x142mm and weighs 660g empty, so is very portable. It is also very power efficient, drawing only 20 watts when in use and 7 watts in standby. This helps it run cool, and a single fan built-in to the base is claimed to be enough to regulate its temperature.

Compatible with 2.5in HDD and SSD media the DS419Slim has dual Gibabit LAN ports for link aggregation when you need to shift large amounts of data quickly – at up to 220MB/s read speed and 94MB/s for writing. USB-3 ports are located one and the front and one at the back for connecting additional devices, and the NAS can run on Mac, PC and Linux operating systems. The CPU used is the Marvell Armada 385 dual core 1.33GHz and 512MB of DDR3L RAM is installed.

The usual implementation of Synology’s DiskStation Manager runs the device and offers over a hundred specialist apps to help with specific tasks, such as scheduled back-up, photo/video sharing, webhosting and remote access via smartphones and tablets for all files. The DS419Slim is designed for less heavy-use environments as a personal cloud, as a back-up device in a home office, simply as a small storage unit on the desktop or to be taken on location with traveling photographers and videographers.

As there are four bays the hot-swappable drives can be configured in Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10, as well as Synology’s own Hybrid RAID.
The Synology DS419Slim is available now, comes with a 2-year warranty and retails for $ 329.99 / £320. For more information see the Synology website.

Press release:

Synology® DS419Slim Brings Big Data Management in a Small Package

Mini in Size, Versatile in Features

Synology® Inc. launched DiskStation DS419slim, a highly versatile, 4-bay NAS which is a great data solution for the dorm room, home office, or a traveling professional.

“Nowadays, many people are still struggling with managing files scattered across public clouds, USB drives, or personal computers. As a clever and reliable personal cloud, DS419slim helps keep your precious photos, videos, and documents in order, bringing everything under control with its powerful file management capabilities,” said Katarina Shao, Product Manager at Synology Inc. “Not only can you easily access, share, and synchronize all your files across multiple platforms, but you can also own a multimedia library where you can stream digital content on your mobile devices on the go.”

Key Features Include:

  • Large Capacity, Small Footprint: A discrete NAS, less than 15cm cubed, that weighs 700 grams, with a maximum storage size of 20TB
  • Excellent Performance and Backup: Dual 1GbE LAN ports allow for failover and Link Aggregation. Secure your data by configuring your NAS with a RAID setup to realize redundancy
  • Black Box, Green Energy: DS419slim consumes only 20 watts during data access and 7 watts during HDD hibernation, giving you an energy-efficient device to serve as a 24/7 personal storage server

Your Personal Multimedia Library

DS419slim helps you easily manage your multimedia content and share it across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. You can organize your personal digital video library, listen to Internet radio, and lossless audio via DLNA and AirPlay® devices. Synology Moments promises users a modern browsing experience by offering mobile photo backup, photo sharing, image recognition and similar photo detection.

Data Storage on Your Terms with DiskStation Manager

DiskStation Manager (DSM) is an intuitive web-based operating system for every Synology NAS, designed to help you manage your digital assets across home and office. Easily access your files from computers and mobile devices, or sync your files between multiple users, servers and public clouds. You can also stream your personal media collection to various devices to provide you with a non-stop entertainment experience.

Availability

This release is available worldwide immediately

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Hands on: Synology DS1019+ is a five-drive NAS storage solution for photographers

01 Mar

Synology DS1019+ NAS hands on

Network attached storage manufacturer Synology recently announced a new DiskStation model that aims to provide a lower price-point 5-bay NAS for photographers and small businesses. The DS1019+ will sit below the DS1517+ and offers a more restricted set of options for reduced cost, but without killing the speed and functionality associated with the brand.

The device offers a maximum capacity of 60TB when each of the five bays are loaded with a 12TB drive, which is the same level of storage that can be achieved with the top end model. But the DS1019+ has only two LAN ports, limiting expansion – the more expensive DS1517+ NAS has four. The DS1019+ also doesn’t offer an upgradable LAN connection and has less flexibility when it comes to the functions of its RAM. It does, however, provide a fast processor and the same set of software packages that are common to most Synology products. It can also transcode and stream two channels of H.264/H.265 4K video at the same time to your TV, tablet or phone.

We got hold of a unit to take a closer look at the NAS itself, how easy it is to set-up and the applications that can be installed on it.

Twin fans cool the five drives, LAN provides expansion

Twin fans keep the five drives cool, and ensure the quad-core 1.5GHz J3455 processor doesn’t over-heat. The DS1019+ comes with 4GB of RAM built in, but that can be expanded to 8GB via the dual M.2 slots hidden in the base, with the extra RAM being used for cacheing.

The rear also reveals two 1GBE LAN ports – these can be used to connect a single Expansion Unit DX517 for additional storage. Maximum storage capacity when the DS1019+ is linked to a DX517 is 120TB. With 1GbE LAN you can expect read/write speeds of up to 225MB/s even with AES-NI encryption.

Accepts 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD drives

The Synology DS1019+ can accept five 3.5-inch or 2.5inch SATA HDD/SSD drives, which sit in these trays to be mounted into the NAS. The tray is well made, and although lightweight it feels solid enough to hold and protect the drive. The base is open for ventilation, and the front face is hinged to provide a handle for removing it from the enclosure.

Drives are secured in trays

I used 6TB Seagate Ironwolf drives and filled four of the bays. The drives slot in to the trays nicely, and a pair of plastic rails with protruding pins secure them into place. Securing all four of the disks was a two-minute job and about as straightforward as it is possible to be. A set of screws comes with the kit for fixing 2.5-in drives to the trays.

To swap drives, simply slide in and out

The loaded trays slot back into the enclosure along runners that make it very difficult to do it wrong or to misalign on entry. Once in place and pushed in as far the tray will go, the protruding handle can be pushed in flush with the rest of the unit.

Plastic keys lock drive bays closed

A pair of plastic keys comes with the NAS that allow the bays to be locked. It would be pretty difficult to open one by accident and to pull out the drive, but it’s better to be safe rather than sorry. Provided you’re using a RAID configuration, drives can be switched out should they fail or if you want to increase the size of your storage capacity later.

Status lights indicate which drives are in use, failure

With the DS1019+ plugged in, the drives come to life, and lights on the enclosure illuminate to let you know they are in action. It is then ready to use. The lights let you know when each drive is in use, and also when one has failed. The lights stay green when the drives are at the normal temperature, and go orange when they are too hot.

Router setup is simple

With the DS1019+ powered up, and connected to a router, it is only a matter of seconds before it becomes available to set up on the computer. Synology’s Assistant detects the NAS and when you select it, the management software can be started up.

Disk Station Manager guides setup

Disk Station Manager makes it pretty easy to get the NAS ready to use. The applications take us through the setup step-by-step and explain what the options are at each stage. Most of the language is straightforward, but when it isn’t, the company’s online Knowledge Base does a good job of supporting you through with a mixture of text and video guidance.

Drives can easily be configured

When you come to create a storage pool you need to choose what RAID type you want the NAS to use. The DS1019+ allows RAID 0, Basic, JBOD, 1, 5, 6 and 10. RAID 10 can only be used if there are four or more drives in the pool. The drop down interface allows you to select the type while the information panel clearly explains the properties of that type of RAID, with the pros and cons of each. Even if you don’t think you know what you are doing this interface takes most of the mystery out of the set-up.

Using RAID can feel a bit painful, as it seems we only get to use a part of the storage capacity we have bought. The idea of using a RAID system is that the drives effectively back each other up by the degrees that we choose. RAID 0 doesn’t provide any backup so the full capacity of the drives is available as storage, but if a drive fails we lose the data that was stored on it.

RAID 10, on the other hand, effectively saves each element of data twice across the drives, so that if one fails whatever was on it will be duplicated somewhere on the other drives. This makes your data safe, but the downside is that it halves the amount of space we have to use. With my four 6TB drives in this test I can only save just under 11TB of data to the NAS when it is set up for RAID 10 – less than half of the potential 24TB I paid for. If I used RAID 0 however, I would be able to save close to 23TB on the same drives – but it would be insecure.

There’s a good explanation of the different RAID types in the Synology Knowledge Base.

Create a network folder to access content of drives

You can access the contents of the NAS by creating a network folder in Explorer or Finder, or through a web browser using the DiskStation interface via the network address of the NAS. A QuickConnect link can be dropped onto the desktop too that takes you straight there without having to type into the browser search bar.

Useful suite of applications included

While the storage capacity is the obvious concern with any NAS, how you can use that space is also very important. Synology offers a suite of applications that allow the space to be tailored in order for it to be more than just a data bank that can be accessed via your home network. Critically for photographers DS Photo, DS Video and media streaming facilities make organising, accessing and sharing images and movies very easy and convenient wherever you are – provided you have an internet connection.

One of the key elements of the Synology system is the choice of apps, or packages, available to help get the most from the device. Typing ‘Media’ into the search bar shows all the packages that will be relevant to photographers.

Photo Station 6 to create photo albums

Photo Station will be the main package for stills workers as it offers a way to create albums of images saved on the NAS that can be viewed both from your desktop computer and via the DS Photo smart phone app. Both desktop and phone based applications let you organize your images as well as to share them directly to social media or to send links to other people. You can create a private album for a client and send a link for them to view and/or download the contents.

The same features are provided for videographers via Video Station, so you can stream content to a TV or your phone when you want to show a project. Of course you can host your website on the NAS too, via Web Station and email servers can be created – as well as the usual timed data back-up services you’d expect.

The Synology DS1019+ will cost $ 599/£543 plus tax, and comes with a 3-year limited warranty. For more information see the Synology website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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New 6-bay NAS from Synology offers 72TB of storage

22 May

Synology has added a new 6-bay NAS to its DiskStation+ series, and it’s aimed squarely at photographers and medium sized businesses. The DS1618+ can handle up to six 12TB drives, giving it a total capacity of 72TB and up to 60TB of storage when using a RAID 5 configuration.

The new NAS uses the Intel Atom C3538 Quad-core 2.1 GHz processor and comes with 4GB of DDR4 system memory—which can be expanded to 32GB via two 16GB ECC SO-DIMMs. As with other NAS models in the DS+ range, the DS1618+ is compatible with the DX517 expansion unit that allows users to add capacity and extra bays just by plugging it in. The new model can connect with two of these 5-bay units to take the total number of drive slots to 16 and the total capacity to 192TB.

Like the DS1517+, the DS1618+ offers users the chance to increase the size of the cache via a M2D17 PCle adapter card that takes Dual M.2 SSD, or to increase read/write speeds by installing a network interface card with up to two 10GbE ports. The DS1618+ also uses Synology’s Btrfs file system that can provide detection and self-healing of corrupt files and errors, as well as multiple snapshot options with customizable backup schedules.

The Synology DS1618+ is available now for $ 800. For more information, visit the Synology website.

Press Release

Synology® Introduces DiskStation DS1618+

High-performance, scalable all-in-one storage solution designed for power users and SMB’s

Synology® Inc. today launched DiskStation DS1618+, a 6-bay NAS featuring the Intel Atom® C3538. For tech enthusiasts and small to medium sized businesses, DS1618+ is the perfect all-in-one solution for file serving, application hosting, data backup, and real-time collaboration — all aided by its exceptional performance.

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.

“Modern-day companies compete based on the speed at which they generate, process, and use data to drive innovations,” said Derren Lu, CEO at Synology. “By integrating Intel technology, we are putting a compact powerhouse in every SMB. It will allow them to take advantage of that untapped throughput to give their companies that extra edge.”

With Synology’s M2D17 PCIe adapter card, DS1618+ can house dual M.2 SATA SSD, taking advantage of the SSD cache to boost maximum throughput and reduce the I/O latency. By alternatively installing a network interface card via the PCIe slot, DS1618+ supports up to two 10GbE ports to reach a maximum throughput of 1,551 MBps reading and 586 MBps writing.

“Small to medium sized businesses need powerful, secure and scalable storage solutions to efficiently manage their growing levels of digital content,” said Dan Artusi, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Connected Home Division. “Through our collaboration with Synology, their new DiskStation NAS products based on the Intel Atom® processor C series have the performance and configurable high-speed I/O to help businesses quickly store and manage their most critical data.”

DS1618+ runs on DiskStation Manager, the advanced and intuitive operating system for Synology NAS devices, with quality applications offered to enhance data security and work efficiency. Synology has received numerous media accolades, topping the mid-range NAS category in TechTarget’s storage solution survey and winning PC Mag Readers’ Choice seven years in a row.

For more information on DS1618+, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS1618+

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Synology launches its first 6-bay NAS tower, updates more affordable options

22 Sep

Storage solution company Synology has introduced its first six-bay NAS device: the DS3018xs. The new model holds six drives of its own, but if that’s still not enough storage for your epic photo library, it can combine with the company’s DX1215 expansion units to control up to thirty.

The company has used the Pentium D1208 dual-core 2.2GHz processor that can boost to 2.6GHz, and provides a PCle slot for users to install an optional dual M.2 SATA SSD adapter to shift processing onto solid state drives for speed and efficiency. The DS3018xs comes with 8GB of RAM installed, but has two memory slots for expansion up to 32GB, and an optional 10GbE network card can provide 2230MB/s sequential read speeds.

At the same time, Synology has launched four other DS and DS+ models that replace existing NAS enclosures. The new DS918+ and DS718+ are upgrades of the DS..16+ models, and bring more memory capacity and options for adding extra slots via DX517 expansion unit. These models and the DS218+ and DS418 get new processors as well, while all are said to be capable of transcoding 4K video on the go.

Synology has started a series of workshops around the world that demonstrate some of these models and show off the company’s technology. They are free to attend to anyone registered via the Synology 2018 events page. For more information about the new NAS enclosures visit the Synology website.

Pricing

DS3018xs – £1298.18 (including VAT), €1190 (excluding taxes)
DS918+ – £518.18 (including VAT), €475 (excluding taxes)
DS718+ – £414.55 (including VAT), €380 (excluding taxes)
DS218+ – £310.90 (including VAT), €285 (excluding taxes)
DS418 – £387.91 (including VAT), €351 (excluding taxes)

Press Release

From Home to Business: Synology® Unveils New XS/Plus/Value-Series Product Lineup

Storage solutions designed to meet a multitude of needs

Synology® Inc. announced the official launch of new product lineup featuring:

DS3018xs: Synology’s first 6-bay tower NAS with optional 10GbE and NVMe SATA SSD supports

Plus-series DS918+, DS718+, and DS218+: Designed to meet your intensive daily workloads

Value-series DS418: Featuring optimized 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, and while supporting the next-generation Btrfs file system in DSM 6.2 official, expected to release in early Q1 next year. Btrfs provides reliable data protection through its cutting-edge self-healing and point-in-time snapshot features.

DS3018xs, Synology’s first 6-bay tower NAS, is compact yet powerful as it features the Intel’s advanced Pentium D1508 dual-core 2.2GHz processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz) with AES-NI encryption engine; offering scalability of RAM up to 32 GB and storage capacity up to 30 drives with two Synology DX1215. In addition to four Gigabit LAN ports, DS3018xs takes advantage of boosting maximum throughput with an optional 10GbE network interface card, delivering stunning performance at over 2,230 MB/s sequential reading and 265,000 sequential read IOPS.

DS918+ and DS718+ are powered by Intel‘s Celeron® J3455 quad-core processor. DS218+ is powered by Intel’s Celeron® J3355 dual core processor. Both models are equipped with AES-NI hardware encryption engine and support up to two channels of H.265/H.264 4K video transcoding.DS918+’s RAM is scalable up to 8GB, while DS718+ and DS218+ are scalable up to 6 GB, allowing you to operate more intensive tasks at once. DS918+ and DS718+ are equipped with two LAN ports, and their storage capacity can be scaled up to 9 and 7 drives, respectively, with Synology’s DX517 expansion unit.

“Responding to the demands from our customers, DS3018xs is built as a comprehensive business-ready desktop NAS. Running mission-critical applications or planning virtualization deployment with DS3018xs has never been easier.” said Katarina Shao, Product Manager at Synology Inc. “The new DS918+, DS718+, and DS218+ are optimized to be your digital video libraries, and will bring you an excellent viewing experience with high definition live video transcoding, regardless of device limitations.”

DS418 is equipped with a 1.4GHz quad-core processor with hardware encryption engine, 2 GB RAM, and two LAN ports. Powered by the hardware transcoding engine, DS418 supports H.265 4K transcoding allowing it to serve as your media library. Combined with Btrfs and Snapshot supports, DS418 is delivers more efficient data storage and more reliable data protection.

For more information on DS3018xs, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS3018xs

For more information on DS918+, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS918+

For more information on DS718+, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS718+

For more information on DS218+, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS218+

For more information on DS418, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS418

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Synology launches ‘budget-friendly’ 4-bay NAS that can handle up to 40TB of storage

15 Aug

Data storage solutions manufacturer Synology has added a new, lower-cost NAS to its DiskStation j line that has a maximum capacity of 40TB, and is aimed at the home user and photography enthusiast.

The DS418j has 4 disk bays, each of which can accommodate HDDs or SSDs of up to 10TB. Data is controlled via a new 64-bit dual-core processor and the device has been fitted with 1GB of DDR4 RAM—doubling the memory of the previous model.

Synology claims the DS418j can read at 112MB/s and write at 87MB/s encrypted and in RAID 5, providing fast data storage and retrieval, and allowing high resolution media streaming and synchronisation in domestic or small office environments. The case has a single RJ-45 1GbE LAN port and a pair of USB 3.0 sockets, and can support wireless access via a dongle.

The DS418j comes with a two-year warranty and is available now for £284/€312/$ 330. For more information see the Synology website.

Press Release

Synology® Introduces DiskStation DS418j

Powerful entry-level 4-bay NAS for home data backup and multimedia streaming

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. Equipped with a 1GB DDR4 memory, which is twice the size of its predecessor, and over 40TB single volume raw capacity support, DS418j brings flexible storage management in addition to smooth performance.

“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.”

Designed with user experience and energy efficiency in mind, DS418j is equipped with adjustable front LED indicators, allowing users to precisely control and schedule the brightness in four levels. In addition, the model consumes only 21.22 watts in full operation and as little as 8.97 watts in HDD hibernation.

DS418j runs on DiskStation Manager (DSM), one of the most advanced and intuitive operating systems for network-attached storage devices which offers a wide range of applications from backup to multimedia for home and personal use. With DSM, Synology® has received numerous media accolades, including PC Mag Readers’ Choice for seven years in a row.

For more information, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS418j

Availability
Synology DiskStation DS418j is available worldwide immediately.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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How to Use a Synology DS216 NAS to Get your Photos Online Quickly and Easily

27 Jul

If you’ve read my articles here on dPS about storage and backup, you’ll know that they’ve mostly been about slightly larger systems with lots of space for people who have lots of data in the form of photographs. It’s been a while, so I thought it might be time to write about the smaller system I’ve been using for a couple of months, not only from a backup and storage point of view but from a delivery and sharing your work angle, too. Enter, the Synology DS216.

How to Use a Synology DS214 NAS to Get your Photos Online Easily

Get the Synology DS216 on Amazon

Hard drives

The crew at Seagate have some specific NAS (network attached storage) drives, like the Seagate IronWolf (such a sexy name for a hard disk!) which I have put in this Synology DS216 for this test. The drives are running well, have not over-heated despite lots of large file transfers, and appear to be handling things quite nicely. I’ve gone with two 4tb disks and after using the Synology Hybrid Raid, I have about 3.6TB of usable space.

The two Seagate Ironwolf NAS specific disks I’m using in my setup, 4tb each giving you about 3.6tb of useable space.

I also have a “1 disk fault tolerance” which means that one disk can die, and I still have one copy of my data remaining! I can then swap out the dead one and copy it back across both (called rebuilding) and I’m good to go.

Here you can see the individual disks are 3.6TB each

How to Use a Synology DS214 NAS to Get your Photos Online Easily

And below you can see the capacity is 3.57TB

How to Use a Synology DS214 NAS to Get your Photos Online Easily

SHR is kinda like a normal raid, but a little different… And for those of you that have no idea what RAID stands for, it’s “Redundant Array of Independent Disks” or “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks” depending on your age. Basically, it means that you have more than one disk that the info (in our case photos) is being copied onto. (NOTE: Raid on its own isn’t really a backup, while it will give your NAS / Storage unit some redundancy, it’s not considered a backup)

How to Use a Synology DS214 NAS to Get your Photos Online Easily

Rather than get all geeky and talk figures and facts about backing up and how to set everything up, I wanted to give you a scenario you might encounter as a photographer, professional or not. I’ll show you how you can really benefit from a little setup like this one, so keep reading.

Real-World NAS use for your workflow

Imagine you’re on a shoot. You’ve set up your kit and are doing some portraits, headshots, or food photographs and you can shoot tethered. Alternatively, you’ve gone on a holiday and you take a load of great photographs that you copy onto your external drive via your laptop while you’re sitting on your balcony sipping a tasty orange juice (the little Lacie in my example). Then after your shoot or your holiday, you get home and you want to do one of a few things…

  1. You want to share your holiday photos with friends and family.
  2. You want to send an album of images for your client to select from.
  3. You want to put either set of photos into your NAS as a means of backup.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from sticking your drive into your computer and importing your images as you would normally. Then you would import them (we’ll presume RAW) into Lightroom, export some jpgs and then uploading those to your website.

But what I’ve found with the Synology DS216 setup, is that all you need to do is plug your external disk in the front of the Synology and wait a little while (the little NAS has to generate thumbnails etc., and it’s not the fastest processor in the world but it does just fine). Your images, even raw ones, will then show up on your default web site. Naturally, there is some setup required. But for the import process I’ve mentioned above, you only need to setup your rules once. Then when you plug in a certain USB device the NAS will see you’ve plugged it in, and run the rule that you’ve setup for that particular drive.

One example is that I’ve come back from a weekend away with my little Lacie external drive. I had copied all of my jpgs from my GoPro timelapse and the RAW files from my Sony a7ii into a folder on the Lacie while I was sitting around one night over the weekend (having a tasty espresso, since you asked). I arrived home and plugged my drive into the NAS, headed off and get the kids into bed, unpacked my case and then came back to my computer later. All the images were copied across, thumbnails generated and the photos are now available online for anyone that I’ve given the album link to.

But what about my privacy?

You can control exactly who gets to see your photographs through passwords. So you can have an album online for a set amount of time, take albums offline at any point, and allow comments. All of these things are in a really easy to understand menu, and you don’t need a degree in computer science to get it set up exactly as you’d like.

You can pop across and look at the demo album I’ve uploaded for you,  or you get an idea via the screenshot below. It shows a shared album (yes, that’s an out of focus photo of my friend Glynn, great example Simon!) and to Glynn’s left you can see an album called Petey (who is an admin in our Facebook group, thanks for your help Petey!) that shows how the password protection works (type in password13 to see it)

How to Use a Synology DS214 NAS to Get your Photos Online Easily

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you’re after a simple to use network storage system that allows you to quickly and easily share your photographs online (be it for a client or for your family and friends) the Synology DS216 is a great solution that is among the easiest and most flexible I’ve tried. As a side note, you can also share your images to your TV in a slideshow. Great for family holiday photo nights!(depends on your tv, it works on my few year old Sony).

If this was a pure gear review, I’d give the combined gear five out of five stars. I considered giving the NAS four stars because while it’s simple to use, I do have a background in IT and I thought “maybe it’s only simple for me”. But it really is simple, robust and mostly forgiving if you screw things up. I hope this helps some of you and please feel free to ask me any of your storage questions about this gear in the comments below.

The post How to Use a Synology DS216 NAS to Get your Photos Online Quickly and Easily by Sime appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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Synology launches lower cost NAS with DS1817 and DS1517

17 Jun

Storage solutions company Synology has released ‘value’ versions of two of its recent NAS systems that use lower spec processors, less RAM and which have less comprehensive software packages. The Disk Station DS1817 and DS1517 are slightly scaled back alternatives to the DS1817+ and DS1517+ devices.

Technical differences include the use of 32-bit 1.7GHz Annapurna CPUs instead of the Intel Atom 64-bit 2.4GHz processors of the ‘+’ models, as well as 2GB (DS1517) and 4GB (DS1817) of RAM instead of up to 8GB. The DS1517 has no expandable memory options, while the DS1817 has built in 10GbE instead of the option to run with 10GbE or M.2 SSD cache like the DS1817+. As standard the DS1817 offers sequential throughput of up to 1,577 MB/s reading and 739 MB/s writing, while the DS1517 can manage reading throughput of up to 436.32 MB/s and writing throughput over 449.69 MB/s.

The DS1517 offers 5 drive bays and the DS1817 has eight, but both can couple with two DX517 expansion units which can hold a further five drives each. The maximum capacity of the DS1517 is 50TB, or 150TB when the two DX517 units capacity is included, while the DS1817 can manage 80TB, or 180TB with the DX517s .

The company says that the biggest differences between the value units and the ‘+’ units is the software packages that come with them. The value DS1817 and DS1517 come with fewer business applications and a more limited compatibility with certain file types.

  • DS1817 – $ 849.99/£689/€793 ex tax
  • DS1817+ (2GB) – $ 849.99/£688.33.80/€809 ex tax
  • DS1817+ (8GB) – $ 949.9/£745/€875 ex tax
  • DS1517 – $ 599.99/£567/€653 ex tax
  • DS1517+ (2GB) – $ 699.99/£567/€666 ex tax
  • DS1517+ (8GB) -$ 799.99/£623/€732 ex tax

Follow these links for more detailed comparisons between the DS1517 and DS1517+ and the DS1817 and DS1817+ on the Synology website. These products come with a 3-year warranty, though in many countries a further two years is available.

Press release

Synology® Introduces DiskStation DS1517 and DS1817

Powerful all-in-one NAS solution optimized for your growing needs

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.

DS1517 is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and four Gigabit LAN ports featuring failover and Link Aggregation. It delivers sequential throughput performance over 449 MB/s writing and 436 MB/s reading when using RAID 5.

“Growing small and medium-sized businesses expect a cost-effective storage solution that is versatile and expandable for their future demands, while minimizing the initial investment required,” said Katarina Shao, Product Manager at Synology Inc. “The DS1517 and DS1817 are engineered to fulfill such needs, and provides the high performance and flexible scalability to manage, protect, and share data at work.”

Both DS1517 and DS1817 can be scaled up to a raw capacity of 150TB and 180TB respectively with two DX517 expansion units. DS1517 and DS1817 support Synology High Availability (SHA), providing redundancy in case of unexpected network failure or disasters, and ensuring seamless transition between clustered servers. Moreover, DS1817 provides storage solutions for virtualization environments with VMware®, Citrix®, and Microsoft Hyper-V® certificates.

DS1517 and DS1817 run with DiskStation Manager (DSM) 6.1, the powerful and intuitive operating system for Synology NAS devices. Featuring a wide range of applications to bring better productivity at intensive work, DS1517 and DS1817 can serve as a centralized data backup destination. Synology has received numerous media accolades, such as topping the mid-range NAS category in TechTarget’s storage solution survey.

DS1517 and DS1817 are backed by a limited 3-year hardware warranty. An additional extended warranty option is available in select regions for up to five years of coverage.

For more information on DS1517, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS1517
For more information on DS1817, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/DS1817
For more information on extended warranty, please visit https://www.synology.com/products/extended_warranty

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Synology DS1512+ NAS review

21 Feb

Hello there! I’d just finished writing this Synology 1512+ review and subsequently deleted it all… Why, you ask? Well – I have a bit of a history in I.T. and as such, found myself getting TOTALLY geeky with my review..

Those of you that have read any of my reviews to date, here on dPS, will know that I try to keep it ‘real world‘ …So, I’m going to write it again and dispense with all the ones and zeros in an effort to help you decide if moving to a Synology NAS is the way forward, or not.

Synology DiskStation 5-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS1512+

Unboxing_Synology_1512_NAS

The Synology DS 1512+ is a 5 drive NAS that can give you up to around 15TB of space depending on how you set it up – that’s a heck of a lot. You can also add external disk shelves (DX510 @ about $ 600) that will take you upto 60TB of space… To put that into perspective, my image library is between 3 and 4TB and it spans the last 10 years.. You may have a lot more, you may have less – but one day you WILL have more.

Here are a few of the specs as per the Synology website. This little black box is no lightweight!

Synology DiskStation DS1512+ offers a high-performance, scalable, and full-featured network attached storage solution that meets the needs of small and medium-sized businesses that require an efficient way to centralize data protection, simplify data management, and rapidly scale storage capacity with minimal time spent on setup and management. The Synology DS1512+ is backed with Synology’s 3-year limited warranty.

  • 194.83 MB/sec Writing, 200.31 MB/sec Reading1
  • Scaling up to 15 Drives with Synology DX510/DX513
  • Featuring SuperSpeed USB 3.0
  • Expandable RAM Module (Up to 3GB)
  • 2 LAN with Failover and Link Aggregation Support
  • CPU Passive cooling Technology & System Fan Redundancy
  • VMware®, Citrix®, Microsoft® Hyper-V® Compliance
  • Running on Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM)

The 1512+ can come configured with hard drives already in the unit and set up, mine came without drives and I went ahead and put four 2TB drives and a single 1TB drive in the unit and set it up using Synology’s Hybrid Raid.

SO, very basically, let’s look at what all these crazy acronyms mean, shall we? (Yes, I realise half of you (us) are a little geeky and already know this stuff) RAID for example, is not something my three year old constantly does to the biscuit tin, well, it is, but in this case RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or independent, you choose) Disks” which is basically exactly what it says on the tin… A bunch of disks, joined together to act in a handful of different ways as one, i’ll explain those in a bit.

Synology_1512_Photographers_Nas_Review

NAS or Network attached storage is the next one we’ll cover… So, rather than sticking a USB or Firewire cable in the side of your computer, you can tuck this little fellow away near your home / office router (wireless modem / modem) and, obviously depending on if you have the right hardware, can connect it to your network and access it via either wireless or wired network.. Me, I use a Draytek Vigor 120 ADSL2+ modem attached to an Apple Airport Extreme.. My Synology is plugged into my Airport Extreme and I connect to it wirelessly from my computer.

Now, you asked about the different things RAID could do… Well, there are a few different ‘levels’ of standard RAID, the Synology can perform each of these, though I’m not going to bore the trousers off of you by explaining what each of them do here, you can spend a quiet evening reading up on them …as I said, I set up my NAS using “Synology Hybrid Raid” as it does what I want, and I’m semi-certain if you’re like me, it will do what you want.

  • JBOD
  • RAID-0
  • RAID-1
  • RAID-5
  • RAID-5+Spare
  • RAID-6
  • RAID-10

These different raid levels provide everything from no disk redundancy to a lot (2x) of disk redundancy with differences in read and write speed at each RAID level… For me, how to choose what RAID level was made very simple with the Synology, as they have the Synology Hybrid Raid. SHR is based on standard RAID, but allows the device to use all of the space on each disk… You can read the exact technical details on Synology’s website if you’re into that – as I said, I wasn’t going to bust out the pocket protector in this review… I do have a good analogy though!!

You have 5 water buckets, three medium sized ones and two large ones (and no, this isn’t a Bruce Willis film) …if you fill each bucket up to the same level as the smaller buckets when they’re full, you will see you have space left in the two bigger buckets… traditionally, that space is lost if you RAID that set of disks together. With SHR, you can group that remaining space together to give you another volume (or another drive letter if that’s easier to understand, depending on how you share it…) so, the first part of your Synology will give you 5TB and the remaining space might give you an extra 2TB. Winning! Finished reading Wikipedia? Have a quick look at this RAID calculator, It’s pretty neat!

Using a NAS / RAID on its own isn’t a backup as such… Be Warned!

Whilst you have ‘fault tolerance’ when using a Synology Hybrid Raid setup, the same as with most RAID arrays, you still need a backup of your data. For example, my main portion of space is across four hard drives within my NAS as per the image below, if one of those drives should have an untimely death, my Synolgy would chuckle, beep and carry on serving data – this is how (some) RAID levels work. Here’s an overview of how my Synology is setup.

4 x 2TB Hard Drives, joined together using SHR to give me a single drive with 5.36TB of useable space – you can see that in the image below.

Synology_raid_array_setup_review

I also have a single 1TB drive in the Synology as it takes 5 disks and I didn’t have five 2TB disks, so I’ve added a single 1TB that I’ve called ‘Media’ and I use that to serve music, movies, tv shows and pictures to anyone on my network / to my Android DTV box. I also have “iTunes server” installed, this is software that installs in seconds and runs on the Synology and can serve any iTunes content out across my network to iTunes clients… (You can also add USB speakers to your Synology and play music directly from the unit… rad…)

Synology_DSM_Review

But the best thing is that I had a few of these eSata hard drives sitting around, not all the same brand or model, yet the Synology will happily treat them all nicely – have a look below at the list of drives.

synology_simon_pollock_review

So how do I use it?

After continually growing my photo library for the last 12 years or so, I have a lot of digital image files – the majority in the last four years as file size increased etc. So disks get bigger and rather than have a set of single external drives looking after my archive, I’ve employed this Synology. You can see above that I have 4 separate disks that are looking after my archive, they’re a similar size to the G-Tech I use as my working drive…

You use a G-Tech too? But didn’t you just implement a Synology?

Yes! Remember that part where I said that a NAS on its own isn’t a backup? Well, when you look at my workflow below, you’ll understand where the Synology comes into its own.

Here’s my workflow;

Take a photo -> Lexar USB 3 CF reader -> Macbook Pro with Lightroom 4 -> G-Tech 4TB which is my Firewire attached disk, the drive I work from etc. Now, where I’ve added this network attached storage drive is at this point – when I import a card full of images, I ask Lightroom to make a second copy to the Lightroom folder on my NAS, you can see in the image below..

simon_pollock_lightroom_synology_workflow

You can see at the top that I’m importing to GT1, a 4TB G-Tech Firewire drive, then below that you can see i’m rendering 1:1 previews and then below that I’m making a second copy to my Synology. All done, all backed up… At the end of my import and subsequent edit, I can export that catalogue into the same raw backup folder on the NAS and everything from that shoot is in one convenient place.

Sure, but why a NAS?

Well, yes, why a NAS? The Synology is around $ 800 and then you need to buy disks for it, whilst not the most expensive unit on the market – actually, it’s very competitively priced – it’s not spare change. For me there are a number of reasons to choose a Synology NAS, and after having the Synology installed and kindly and quietly doing exactly what I’ve asked it for a month or so, I question myself as to why I didn’t do it a LONG time ago! Here are my reasons for NAS…

  • Computer independent (a Mac and a PC can read it.. which if you share drives with your missus, is a good thing!).
  • It can be used for much more than a simple external drive in a one box format. WordPress server for example! take a look
  • When my 5 hard drives fill, I swap them out without having to buy external drives (cost saving in the long term).
  • The Synology sits quietly in a corner, stays cool and goes to sleep when I’m not using it. (depends how you set yours up)
  • It serves all the music / photos / media easily and quickly.

The ability to access my data from anywhere (with an internet connection) including my phone etc, knowing that my disks are monitored and i’ll be alerted if something looks fishy, to be able to grow my disks with ever increasing storage needs… major plus ticks in my book.

The Synology was so simple to setup, yes, I have an IT background but here’s what I did to set the unit up and connect to it… Plugged it in to the power, plugged in one of the provided network cables and put that in a free network port on the back of my Airport Extreme… and, err, turned it on… That was about it! I’ve since upgraded the operating system (DSM) which is a very simple and quick task. I’ve installed the virus software on the box which is an app and manages itself. There is also a great support forum, lots and lots of enthusiastic users etc.

The Synology is a very good unit with lots of software available to do anything from manage ip security cameras to run your small business network and back up your files to an offsite location. A great tool in my toolbox of digital life.

Who is the Synology 1512+ for? Anyone with storage requirements, but I’ll be personally suggesting it to anyone looking to break free of the constant external drive purchasing circle.

I find no negatives, only positives with the Synology DS 1512+ …bravo, Synology – 11 stars

–Sime

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Synology DS1512+ NAS review


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