Synology DS1522+ 20TB 5 Bay Desktop NAS Solution, installed with 5 x 4TB Western Digital Red Plus Drives

I bought this because my old 8-bay Synology box is from 2015.The software is a little newer and I have reported many bugs and som were fixed and others will be fixed in a future system update.Being only 5 bays, you are a little restricted and since having this one, I get over 40 brute-force attempts per day and sometimes over 200.It seems, hackers target Internet facing Synology devices.Recently, I bought a Yubikey 5Ci to use with this and it works a treat.I use the email system and have noticed that Synology have produced an Antivirus from Bitdefender to plug-in to the email server but want £100/year for it.I am already a GravityZone Bitdefender business user and its cheaper to renew that yearly than what Synology came up with. However, my Bitdefender software constantly is sniffing the computer and Synology box so that's one in the eye for Synology.With all Synology NAS, you need to check what drives are compatible with it. I have always used Western Digital Enterprise (datacenter) discs, which are now known as WD Gold. In my 2015xs, I used these and two WD SSD's for the cache.In this Synology box, you have a choice to buy with or without a 10Gbe and the price reflecting that, so play safe and use Cat 8 cables (up-to 40Gb), but if you have Cat 7, all will be ok.As for the software. I am a Windows fan and this is not that. It also comes with an AMD chip and 4gb RAM. Best to pay £58 and buy the extra 4Gb ram.In my 2015xs and possibly on this one too, I had both cooling fan bearings go, buy you cannot buy some cheap replacent computer fans, as the rpm is different. So, if they go, you will be stung over £100 each fan instead of £4 if they were an ordinary case fan.Licencing is usually included for 5 users or 5 mailboxes so this needs to be taken into consideration.Being a coder, there is an API SDK which you can apply for but to be honest, it has almost nothing. If it had one for IP Blocking, I would be interested.All-in-all, you could buy a better spec, but this allows enough storage for what I require.

Synology have the software side of the NAS word absolutely sussed!Their hardware is equally amazing, but in my experience it’s their software packages that really offer the most value. From the ease of backing up to more in-depth solutions like Surveillance Station for using the NAS as a CCTV NVR.The only slight disadvantage with the DS1522+ is the lack of integrated graphics with the CPU. It’s great for streaming native video - but it relies heavenly on network bandwidth and makes it slightly difficult when streaming on a remote device when network connections are weaker.

I bought this as an upgrade to my ageing (and slow) DS216j and because I was familiar with and liked DSM over other backends from QNAP etc.The Good:Fast processor and 8GB of ram allows running of quite a few docker containers. I've not bothered to run any VM's on it as I only use them very occasionally and they're already elsewhere but I have no doubts it would happily.Expandable memory and cache.5 bays so plenty of room to expandGood transfer speed over LAN* and 4 portsSimple software but very customisable if you're ok to delve a little deeper.The less good:*Network ports are "only" Gigabit, 2.5 would have been nicer and the 10 Gigabit addon is expensive. Possibly not a big deal for the average home user.The processor is fast but it doesn't have an iGPU so isnt quite as friendly with transcoding as its predecessor the 1520+ That said ive had no issues with transcoding 4k video.Geniune Synology upgrades (10Gbit card, Memory etc) are eye wateringly expensive so you're better searching for compatable parts. Unfortunatley you will be out of luck with the 10Gbit card as its pretty propriatry.Learning curve to get the most out of it is possibly a bit steep for the basic home user and TBH it's probably a little overkill for just backups and storing your photos etc. But for the slightly more experienced user it's second only to building your own UnRaid/Home server.Bottom line is I'm very happy with it.