So much more than just a box of drives
The DS1515 is a five-bay NAS, which boasts a number of impressive features that make it a tempting solution for use in a small office as well as the home. The four Gigabit Ethernet ports support Link Aggregation for speedy access as well as failover, in case a connection fails. It also boasts a hardware encryption engine, and supports the use of an SSD cache drive, useful in an office.
Setting up the DS1515 is as easy it can be: Slot your drives in place, power it on, connect it to your network, point your browser at the device, and pick the RAID setup that's best for you. You can create numerous shared folders, install an impressive array of software packages, and access the NAS over the Internet, thanks to Synology’s QuickConnect system—which is an incredibly easy way to access your data when out and about.
The hot-swappable drive bays are toolfree and feature a simple but effective system for holding your 3.5-inch hard drives in place—drop your drives in the cradles, clip the side runners in place, then slot in the caddies. You’ll need to reach for your screwdriver if mounting 2.5-inch drives, but that's fairly standard. The caddies have a simple lock and key to help protect the drives from inquisitive fingers, although that won’t deter anyone who's serious about getting at your hard drives.
We populated the unit with five Hitachi 2TB SATA Enterprise drives—not the cuttingedge helium-filled offerings we used with the QNAP TVS-EC1080+, but capable enough for this. We built a RAID 6 array, as it offers better redundancy compared to RAID 5, and is the preferred setup for this many drives. You can, of course, build RAID 0 or even eschew RAID altogether, if that’s your preference. Performance was strong but not rewriting the record books.
While the hardware forms a strong foundation, it's the software that really impresses—the DiskStation Manager is incredible; calling it just a NAS feels like a disservice. Sure, it’ll take care of your files like any good NAS should, but it can also act as web server, a mail manager, the heart of a comms setup, media server, and more. There are pre-compiled, easy-to-install packages for WordPress and Plex, among others, while more sober requirements are easily filled by the video, photo, and audio stations, which make organizing your media wonderfully straightforward.
It’s decent value for a five-bay NAS drive with a huge list of features, but $600 is still a sizeable outlay for a device that isn’t going to slash rendering times, or improve frame rates. The lack of front-accessible USB ports is a pain too—especially if you’re planning on tucking the unit out of the way. The real problem, though, is the lowly processor and lack of upgradable memory—these are fine for handling simple file transfers, but start to struggle when running web servers and other more exacting packages. You can opt for the DS1515+ (which boasts an Intel Atom 64-bit CPU and more memory) if that’s an issue, but it adds $200 to the price. Alan Dexter
SPECIFICATIONS
CPU Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-314
Cores 4
Speed 1.4GHz
Installed Memory 2GB DDR3
Memory Upgradable No
OS DSM 5.2-5644 Update 2
USB Ports 2x USB 3.0
HDMI Ports None
Ethernet Ports 4x Gigabit
Others 2x eSATA
Warranty Three years