Synology DiskStation DS1520+

Product Information

Now in terms of the external connectivity and how it can be upgraded, this is another big area of difference between the DS920+ and DS1522+ NAS. Both systems arrive with 1GbE RJ45 LAN ports, which can be combined via link aggregation/Port Trunking to allow up a larger degree of network connectivity. But the DS920+ arrives with 2x 1GbE and the DS1522+ arrives with 4x 1GbE. This is only really a big deal if you are looking at smart switch supported environments or have larger shared bandwidth concerns though. However, the big difference in bandwidth potential between these two NAS centres around the DS1522+ features the option to upgrade it’s network connectivity to 10GbE by installing an E10G22-T1-mini 10G network upgrade in the available proprietary slot. Now, this is not a connection that is available in the default DS1522+ and is an optional upgrade, but still, it is good to know that the option of adding 1,000MB/s bandwidth is available down the road. The DS920+ does not include an option to increase the network connectivity in this way (though unofficial and not officially supported USB-to2.5GbE and 5GbE connectivity via 3rd party adapters are possible (but I wouldn’t trust their long term stability really) and for many, this will be a deal-breaker between these systems in the same way the CPU differences between these two NAS’ does. Both systems see a very similarly sized chassis and the 10GbE upgradable slot on the DS1522+ using a smaller M.2 sized connector rather than the PCIe 3×8 slot of other Synology NAS, so it does not impact the size of the chassis either. Model Synology Moments – Manage your photos and videos with deep-learning algorithms that automatically group photos with similar faces, subjects, and places. As much as I am starting to appear like a broken record, it should come as no surprise that the Synology DS1520+ is the better storage choice compared with the DS920+ NAS. Although it seems fantastically obvious, it is worth touching on. First, we have the simple case that the Synology DS920+ is a 4x drive system and the DS1520+ is 5x drive system. Taking into account the latest 16TB hard drives from companies like Seagate ironwolf and WD Red, this means that the DS920+ NAS has a current maximum storage total of 64 Terabyte whereas the DS1520+ NAS supports up to 80 terabytes. Virtual Machine Manager: Run various operating systems in isolated sandboxes. Seamlessly clone, store, and migrate virtual machines. Fair warning, You’re going to hear me use the words ‘ brand design‘ quite a lot in this review, because Synology is very conscious of its own aesthetic priorities (both inside and out) with regard to its hardware portfolio. Modelling themselves very much in the profile of Apple, they like to present their solutions as clean, simple and powerfully capable, providing less tech enthusiastic users with a fully-featured and reliable solution.

You can also access the shared folder and its data from the File Station app. 7.4. Access the Shared Folder Within the Local Network Synology Office – Create documents, spreadsheets, and slides in a multi-user environment. Real-time synchronization and saving make collaboration a breeze. Synology Audio Station – Manage your music collection, create personal playlists, stream them to your own devices, or share with family or friends.One can only conclude that while developing the DS1520+, the bean-counters at Synology decided that while some improvements were needed, but these needed to be countered by taking some very useful functionality away, disappointingly.

Suppose you're using the NAS for the first time; you need to create a volume to store all your files and precious data. First, I will create one storage pool using Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR), then a volume, and finally, a shared folder. Returning to our comparison of old and new, they both sport two USB 3.0, two eSATA, four 1GbE LAN ports and have five internal bays that can take 3.5 or 2.5-inch hard drives or SSDs. The installation will take 10min approx. The NAS will restart automatically right after the DSM installation. You will hear a short beep when it's done. The 4 and 5-Bay Diskstation releases from Synology have always been one of the most interesting tiers of the brand’s desktop solutions. The reason for this is that all too often this scale of system serves as a bridging point between Prosumer & SOHO systems and the small/medium business hardware in their portfolio. This is demonstrated first in the scale of the available RAID 5/6 storage, but then more so in the scalability and upgradability of these two volumes system, allowing one to two expansions, greater network connectivity (arriving with 2x or 4x LAN ports) and better internal hardware than the more domestic targetted solutions – often with the internal hardware differing considerably between each periodic 2-3yr refresh by the brand. Let’s first look at the internal hardware of these two NAS’ to see how much they differ. The DS920+ NAS first arrived on the scene with some great hardware advantages over the rest of the plus series 2020 systems (DS720+, DS420+, etc), arriving with a 4 Core Intel Celeron Processor that featured integrated graphics, 4GB of DDR4 2666Mhz memory and NVMe SSD upgrade slots. In the two years since its release though, Synology clearly decided to make some big changes in the base level architecture of the plus series and specifically in the DS1522+ to make it considerably more scalable and general business/file-ops focused. The newer DS1522+ features a dual-core AMD Ryzen embedded R1600 that, although arriving with half the cores of the Celeron in the DS920+, has a higher CPU frequency and total achievable frequency in turbo/burst when needed. That said, users will be surprised to learn that this CPU also does not feature embedded graphics, so therefore the DS1522+ will be less CPU efficient at handling multimedia or VM deployment than the DS920+. Synology High Availability – Synology High Availability (SHA) combines two Synology NAS servers into one active-passive high-availability cluster, alleviating service disruptions while mirroring data.

Business NAS solution with expansion in mind

A full software review of the DSM 6.2 platform on the DS1520+ NAS is currently in process and I hope to have this to you here on the blog very soon or on the YouTube channel in due course. Stay tuned.

After you finish the DSM installation and initial setup, you will be brought to its system GUI, aka, the DiskStation Manager Desktop. After these final steps, you should have finished all necessary configurations for our Synology NAS. Now, you are ready to move your precious data to the NAS, and later, depending on your needs, you can try out all the apps and services that DSM offers. 9. Conclusion Setting up Plex on the NAS takes just five minutes, and thanks to the Celeron J4125 chipset, you should have no issues with streaming 4K content to devices throughout your home. You will need a Plex Pass for hardware-accelerated transcoding, and the DS1520+ does a stellar job with 1080p and 4K transcodes. If you're looking to use the DS1520+ as a media streamer, there are a lot of features you'll like. Plex is available as a native client, and Synology has dedicated utilities for audio and video streaming. There's also a Photo Station that does a great job collating all your photos, and the Moments feature automatically creates highlights and sorts your photos into albums, much like Google Photos. For the DS1520+, pull the drive trays out, then the (two) fastening panels from the tray's sides. Install the drives into the drive tray and insert the fastening panels to secure the drive in place. I am using 3.5-inch HDDs, so that will do for me. But if you are using 2.5-inch HDDs, you need to use the 2.5-inch HDD screws to secure the drives.

With a reasonably powerful CPU, 8GB of RAM and NVMe cache the DS1520+ should be capable of supporting an even greater number of simultaneous users than it can, and this is entirely down to it not having a 10GbE network adapter, like its predecessor could have. If you are migrating and upgrading, I'd be sure to read the section on HDD Migration and look closely at the table, considering your Source and Destination NAS models. Synology High Availability (for Syncing Synology NAS and having instant failover support to ensure constant connectivity) Of course, you will have to either require a managed network switch or have a system that can leverage the advantages of link aggregation/port trunking in the first place, but still, nevertheless, the DS1520+ provides you with a better overall available bandwidth early doors and even if all other elements of these devices were equal, you cannot beat more network interfaces on a NAS. Once again, you pay a premium, but you are getting something for your money. As well as the performance benefits internally mentioned previously would also result in better external performance in the DS1520+ (that’s to a larger RAID array and more memory) over those LAG’d gigabit ports. Though, it is still a shame that we are still talking about 1Gbe on NAS systems from Synology in their 2020+ series. With that said there is still a solution using Webdav to-way Nas-pc with Raidrive but you have to pay for software for Pro features.

The asking price and core count alone piqued our interest when we first heard about it… as not that long ago a low TDP, high core count NAS appliance that comes standard with 8GB of RAM would have gone for much, much more than that. More intriguing is the bay count. Five bay models are a personal favorite of ours as they actually offer a high enough drive count to make Raid 6 a viable solution. Mix in the fact that once you go above 4-bays they almost invariable double the fan count from one to two while still not increasing the asking price all that much and 5-bays are, in our opinion, a great introduction to the world of NAS appliances. However, the extent to which you can use all these applications at any single time (both as multiple clients using the same software or multiple applications running in parallel on the same NAS system) is going to be better on the Synology DS1522+ in the grand scheme of things, thanks to that potential 32GB of memory available to scale up down the line. Here is how these two Synology NAS drives compare in volume and features in those 1st party services:

🍪 Privacy & Transparency

However, you need to concentrate on more than the price tag # itself, giving serious consideration to value and what you are actually getting for your money. Both the DS1520+ and the DS920+ are great examples of Synology NAS systems, but it is not much of a secret that you get significantly more hardware, both inside and out, in the respective base models of each NAS when buying the DS1520+. Although both devices have the same CPU and feature those NVMe bays for improving performance, after that there is a wide degree of difference between them, with many key areas of hardware architecture featuring the DS1520+ having twice the resources than the DS920+. For example, the DS920+ has 4GB of memory and the DS1520+ has 8GB. the DS920+ has two 1Gbe LAN ports and the DS1520+ has 4 LAN ports. The DS920+ has an eSATA expandability via a single port to add 5 drives (using that DX517 expansion), whereas the DS1520+ has two ports and can, therefore, add an additional 10 drives. Ultimately you cannot just look at at the price tag, you need to look at what you get for your money I personally believe that the Synology DS1520+ NAS provides better value than that of the DS920+ both in the short and long term. Digging deeper will only further increase your interest. Not only is this a 5-bay model that uses the rather peppy, and yet power sipping, Intel Celeron “Gemini Lake” J4125 processor. Not only does it come standard with 8GB of Samsung DDR4-2666 (and not 2400 as usually used) RAM, it also comes with nice to have features. Features such as dual NVME M.2 slots and dual eSATA ports for easy future expansion abilities. Much like getting a four core CPU, these are features that not that long ago were reserved for pricier models. Yet here we are. A ‘Plus’ line model that offers all that and still comes with an MSRP of under 7-bills. The hardware on offer with the DS1520+ makes it an outstanding choice as a Plex media server. It can transcode several 4K files at once, and eSATA extensibility means you won't have to worry about running out of storage.