A compact NAS that packs a decent punch
Synology has, in the past, offered a wide and varied selection of NAS units for both business and home users alike. The quality is generally very high and, of course, the added benefit of the built-in Synology DiskStation Manager software has lured in many a customer.
We were therefore quite interested to get our hands on the latest product form the Synology shelves, the DS715. This is a two-bay NAS unit costing in the region of around £320, but with a pretty impressive list of features and specifications.
What you get for your money is a unit with a quadcore 1.4GHz Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-314 CPU, complete with hardware encryption, 2GB of DDR3 memory, two USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, and the latest copy of DSM 5.2 all ready to go.
The two hot swap drive bays can take 3.5" or 2.5" SATA3/2 hard disks or solid-state drives to a maximum of 16TB (a pair of 8TB drives), formatted with EXT4 and in an assortment of RAID levels. And you also find a pair gigabit Ethernet ports and a quiet 92mm fan to help keep the fitted drives cool.
There are a number of great features that come with the DS715. The first is the ability to expand the storage capacity by using the eSATA port and the Synology DX513 Expansion Unit. A separate device that can house five drives to a maximum raw capacity of 40TB plus the 16TB from the DS715 brings the total raw storage capacity to 56TB – a rather large amount of storage space, you’ll surely agree.
This doesn’t mean that the DS715 is a business only device, though. Within the DSM you’ll find the usual media server, photo station, audio station and backup add-on packages, but you’ll also have access to a custom cloud station, mail station, web server and a surveillance station. There’s even a VPN station for up to 15 simultaneous connections. Needless to say, you’ll likely find a DSM app, or rather addon package, to suit your needs while adding further use to the NAS unit.
The design of the DS715 is much in the same vein as the other Synology products: a compact unit, measuring 157 x 103 x 232mm housed in a matte-black metal case with toughened plastic front and rear faces. The drive bays are easily accessed via the push and release clips at the front, allowing you to slide the drive bay out and fit or replace the hard drives. It’s fairly standard stuff, but in a design that works well and has proved itself to be lowkey enough to stand in the living room or office without drawing too much attention to itself.
Fitting a couple of drives and getting them set up in a RAID array is extraordinarily simple. Once you attach to the DS715, the DSM walks you through the process in a quick but intelligent fashion, offering you more advanced options should you already know what you want. Within a matter of 15 minutes or so, our pair of 2TB test drives were RAID 0 and ready for content, as was the DSM desktop.
The Synology DS715 is a reasonably well priced twobay NAS unit, which can be expanded for those who require a more enterprise setup or simply left to serve the home with HD content. Either way, it’ll do the job exceedingly well. In short, a capable NAS to consider for your next upgrade. David Hayward
A great two-bay NAS unit, with lots to offer.