Synology DiskStation DS1517+ - Review 2022

Designed for small-to-medium businesses, the Synology DiskStation DS1517+ ($799.99) is a five-bay network-fastened storage (NAS) device with a few enterprise-level features, including built-in AES encryption, back up for a 10GbE network interface card (NIC) or a dual Chiliad.ii SSD interface carte du jour, and numerous RAID configurations. It offers a user-friendly management panel and plenty of media server, backup, mail service server, and cloud synchronization apps, and it is whisper repose. But be prepared to pay a premium for all of this NAS goodness.

Blueprint and Features

On the exterior, the DS1517+ looks nearly identical to the Synology DiskStation DS1515+ we reviewed last year. The black enclosure measures 6.v by 9.8 past nine.5 inches (HWD) and has v lockable, tool-gratis drive trophy. Along the summit edge are iv LAN activity LEDs, an Warning LED, a system condition LED, and a ability switch. Each drive tray has an activity LED equally well. Missing is an LCD panel, similar the one on the Buffalo TeraStation 5200DN, that gives y'all the device'due south IP accost, Ethernet speed, the date and time, and the firmware version. A alone USB 3.0 port is located on the correct side of the forepart panel near the bottom, and in that location are iii more than located on the back panel. As well effectually back are four Gigabit LAN ports, two eSATA ports, 2 fans, and a PCIe x8 expansion slot that can be used to add an G.2 SSD interface carte or a 10GbE NIC.

Powered past an Intel Cantlet C2538 two.4GHz quad-core CPU, the DS1517+ comes with 8GB of DDR3 RAM, which yous can expand to 16GB (a 2GB version is available for $699.99). It supports link aggregation, and tin can handle upwards to 50TB of storage (in the form of 5 10TB drives). The drives are hot-swappable and can be configured for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, Basic, and 2 Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) configurations that offer i- and 2-disk redundancy and are designed to maximize the storage chapters of each bulldoze. The DS1517+ supports numerous file systems, including NTFS, Fat, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, HFS+, and exFAT.

The DS1517+ can be accessed and managed from anywhere using the DiskStation Managing director (DSM), a NAS operating organization with a Windows wait and feel. You can besides employ Synology'southward QuickConnect utility, which allows yous to access the NAS from outside of your local network without having to employ port forwarding or tweak firewall settings. In addition to a dedicated Arrangement Health window, which has a simplified resource monitor with CPU and RAM usage, the DSM desktop comes with several preinstalled programs, including the Package Center, which offers more than lxx Synology and 3rd-party apps, including Plex and iTunes server apps, Synology's own Web Station app for website hosting, and Surveillance Station app for managing IP security cameras, mail server and bittorrent apps, backup and replication apps, and cloud synchronization apps.

The DSM desktop also has a Command Panel, where y'all can create shared folders, users, and groups, and assign rights. Hither, you can too prepare up firewall protection, configure network settings, and enable push and email notifications if at that place are any arrangement errors. The File Station is where you go to manage files and folders, view and share different file types, configure remote connections to files, and browse file-sharing activities for all users.

In the upper-left corner of the DSM home screen is a button that takes y'all to the Master Menu, where you can access a detailed Resources Monitor and use the Storage Manager utility to create volumes, configure RAID settings, create disk groups, and view detailed disk-health statistics, such as bad sector count, estimated lifespan, operating temperature, and firmware version. The Security Advisor scans the NAS for malware and makes sure that all users have potent passwords and that all the apps are upward to engagement. There's too a handy Help feature that you can use to get help with the DSM operating system and all installed apps. The DS1517+ is covered by a three-year warranty. It ships with ii LAN cables, a power cablevision, and ii disk tray keys.

Installation and Performance

Since the DS1517+ does non come with pre-installed hard drives, I installed five Seagate 6TB HGST SATA drives. I downloaded the Web Assistant utility to my host PC, and connected the NAS to it and to my network. I launched the utility and followed the instructions to download the latest version of DSM, which proceeded to segmentation and format the drives. This took a little more 10 minutes to consummate. I and then created an ambassador account and set upwardly QuickConnect. Next, I used the Storage Managing director to create a book and set up the drives using Synology's SHR1 RAID configuration with 1-disk back-up.

In our read/write speed tests, in which we use a 4.9GB test binder containing a mix of photos, video, music, and office files, the DS1517+ turned in solid file-transfer speeds. Its write speed of 80MBps was faster than the iv-drive Western Digital My Deject DL4100 (69MBps) and the iv-drive QNAP TVS-463 (79MBps), but a bit slower than its predecessor, the Synology DS1515+ (85MBps). Even so, its read speed of 84MBps topped the Synology DS1515+ (82MBps) and the Western Digital DL4100 (81MBps), just non the QNAP-TVS-463 (85MBps).

Conclusion

The Synology DiskStation DS1517+ may be overkill for almost home users, but it'south an excellent choice for minor businesses that want to store and serve data locally. With v bulldoze trophy and a wide array of RAID options, you tin double down on redundancy for extra protection or apply it every bit a behemothic repository with up to 50TB of storage. A wealth of Synology-branded and 3rd-party apps are bachelor to let you use the NAS as a primary fill-in for your PCs and press it into duty as a media server, a mail server, a website host, and much more. At $799.99, the DS1517+ is not for the budget-minded, especially since you have to populate it with your own drives, but its solid functioning and high-end, business-centric features are worth the money.