Review on 💾 Synology 8 Bay DiskStation DS1821+ (Diskless) | 8-Bay NAS Device with 4GB DDR4 RAM by Imed Artun

This review is related to Synology DS1621+. I have just completed the full installation and configuration of my new 1621+. It took about three weeks to install all the software packages and configure all the settings, and while I'm still reflecting on some of the decisions made, I'm ready to write a review. I bought the DS1621+ in addition to the QNAP TS-453-Be that I bought almost a year ago to replace the QNAP TS-453 Pro whose motherboard died. This is my second Synology - my first was a 2-bay model which was my first NAS. I use my server for the following purposes: 1) Plex server. only music And for that purpose, Synology is excellent. 2) Photo organization. I use Synology and Lightroom photo organization software. I like using duplicate software because if one fails I can switch to the other. Synology Moments AI photo organization software is good. Maybe a little less efficient than QNAP's QuMagie, but close and Synology will never fall behind in software. 3) Back up Windows and Mac computers with Acronis and Time Machine. 4) Windows 10 virtual machine when I need to accomplish something and I'm not at my computer. And to run the X1 disk indexer so all my documents are instantly available wherever I am. I never thought I would return to Synology after purchasing QNAP, but here I am with 1621+ and I prefer Synology 1621+ over my QNAP TS-453-Be for several reasons. But first, let me say that QNAP is likely to win on the hardware front. It's close, but QNAP seems to be giving you more hardware for the price. For example, you can get a 2.5GB Ethernet, Intel chip, quad-bay NAS with VMM support from QNAP for less than the price of this 1621+ that's stuck at 1GB (unless you buy a PCIE card). Of course, QNAP will be a four-bay model compared to Synology's six-bay model, but QNAP will have an HDMI port, more USB ports, an audio jack, and so on. Hardware is QNAP's strength. Reasons to buy Synology. First, Synology has a better three-year warranty compared to QNAP's recently revised two-year warranty. And my first QNAP died a horrible death last spring, just past the five-year mark (which prompted me to buy the TS-453-BE), while my original 2-bay Synology is still running today, 11 years after I did she had bought. Ultimately, I prefer reliability over features and consider Synology to be more reliable. The second reason why I chose this Synology is the ongoing security issues with QNAP servers that have cropped up over the past few years. It's hard to blame QNAP for the attack, and as a result, they've likely ramped up their security - maybe even over Synology - but I've kept my QNAP disabled for most of the last year due to constant attacks on their servers. encountered. But the main reason to buy Synology is the software. Synology's software is simply superior to all others, including QNAP. He seems bulletproof. Most important to me was Synology's hard drive system, which treats all your hard drives - and they can vary in size - as one large storage pool that can be distributed anywhere for RAID. If you want to increase the storage capacity of your NAS with QNAP, you need to back up the NAS, replace all your hard drives, restore and continue with the new increased capacity. You can't just replace one drive with a larger drive. On all drives, you can only address the space that is available on the smallest drive. So if you have one 4TB drive and three 12TB drives in a QNAP NAS, the maximum RAID storage is 12TB instead of 40TB since only 4TB of each drive can be used for RAID. Synology allows you to use drives of any size by combining them all into one large pool, each of which can be used for RAID striping. So, in the above scenario, Synology has 40TB in RAID format for your use. This is a major benefit of Synology. I could say a lot more about Synology's excellent software, but in conclusion I would recommend you to buy more RAM if you want to run virtual machines on 1621+. I added a 16GB ECC RAM module to bring the total installed RAM to 20TB. I allocated 10GB of RAM to a Windows 10 virtual machine and it's pretty fast. I bought ECC RAM here at Revain which is half the price of Synology RAM and it works great with no reports of custom RAM. The RAM I bought is available here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YXCBVWX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1