The Synology DiskStation DS216+ is the newest member of Synology's plus series. It also happens to be the cheapest of the series as well. The plus series of NAS typically features advanced multimedia and encryption features and their mid-series as the plus series sits between the J and XS+ series. The DS216+ is a dual bay NAS that features a Dual-Core Intel Celeron CPU running at 1.6 GHz and burst to 2.16 GHz. The DS216+ also features a hardware encryption engine as well as a hardware transcoding engine for increased multimedia performance. Packaging The DS216+ comes packaged in a very plain cardboard box with a sticker detailing the model, specifications and some features. Inside, the DS216+ is tightly packed using a series of form fitting cardboard compartments. The NAS is further protected from damage as it is wrapped in a thin foam sheet. The installation kit contains a quick start guide, screws to attach SSDs to the drive caddies, power supply, power cable, an 6' Ethernet cable. Specifications Hardware Specifications CPU CPU Model Intel Celeron N3050 CPU Architecture 64-bit CPU Frequency Dual Core 1.6 burst up to 2.16 GHz Floating Point Hardware Encryption Engine (AES-NI) Hardware Transcoding Engine H.264 (AVC), MPEG-2 and VC-1; maximum resolution: 4K (4096 x 2160); maximum frame rate per second (FPS): 30 Memory System Memory 1 GB DDR3 Storage Drive Bay(s) 2 Compatible Drive Type (See all supported drives) 3.5" SATA III / SATA II HDD 2.5" SATA III / SATA II HDD 2.5" SATA III / SATA II SSD Maximum Internal Raw Capacity 16 TB (8 TB HDD x 2) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) Maximum Single Volume Size 108 TB Hot Swappable Drive External Ports USB 2.0 Port 2 USB 3.0 Port 1 eSATA Port 1 USBCopy File System Internal Drives Btrfs EXT4 External Drives Btrfs EXT4 EXT3 FAT NTFS HFS+ Appearance Size (Height x Width x Depth) 165 mm x 108 mm x 233.2 mm Weight 1.25 kg Others RJ-45 1GbE LAN Port 1 Wake on LAN/WAN System Fan 92 mm x 92 mm x 1 pcs Fan Speed Mode Cool Mode Quiet Mode Wireless Support (dongle) Brightness adjustable front LED indicators Power Recovery Noise Level* 18.2 dB(A) Scheduled Power On/Off Power Supply Unit / Adapter 60W AC Input Power Voltage 100V to 240V AC Power Frequency 50/60 Hz, Single Phase Power Consumption* 17.57 W (Access) 7.52 W (HDD Hibernation) British Thermal Unit 59.99 BTU/hr (Access) 25.68 BTU/hr (HDD Hibernation) Environment Temperature Operating Temperature 5°C to 40°C (40°F to 104°F) Storage Temperature -20°C to 60°C (-5°F to 140°F) Relative Humidity 5% to 95% RH Certification FCC Class B CE Class B BSMI Class B Warranty 2 Years Notes Power consumption is measured when fully loaded with Western Digital 1TB WD10EFRX hard drive(s). Noise Level Testing Environment: Fully loaded with Seagate 2TB ST2000VN000 hard drive(s) in idle; Two G.R.A.S. Type 40AE microphones, each set up at 1 meter away from the Synology NAS front and rear; Background noise: 16.49-17.51 dB(A); Temperature: 24.25-25.75˚C; Humidity: 58.2-61.8% DSM Specifications ( See more ) Storage Management Maximum Internal Volume Number 256 Maximum iSCSI Target Number 32 Maximum iSCSI LUN 256 Supported RAID Type Synology Hybrid RAID Basic JBOD RAID 0 RAID 1 RAID Migration Basic to RAID 1 Volume Expansion with Larger HDDs Synology Hybrid RAID RAID 1 Volume Expansion by Adding a HDD Synology Hybrid RAID File Sharing Capacity Maximum User Accounts 2048 Maximum Groups 256 Maximum Shared Folder 256 Maximum Shared Folder Sync Tasks 4 Maximum Concurrent CIFS/AFP/FTP Connections 256 Windows Access Control List (ACL) Integration NFS Kerberos Authentication Log Center Syslog Events per Second 400 Add-on Packages (learn more about the complete add-on package list) Antivirus by McAfee (Trial) Central Management System Cloud Station Server Maximum Concurrent File Transfers 256 Docker DSM Document Viewer Download Station Maximum Concurrent Download Tasks 80 HiDrive Backup MailPlus MailPlus Server Media Server DLNA Certification Snapshot Replication Maximum Snapshots per Shared Folder 256 Maximum Snapshots of all Shared Folder 4096 Spreadsheet Surveillance Station Maximum IP cam (Licenses required) 25 (including 2 Free License) (See All Supported IP Cameras) Total FPS (H.264)* 750 FPS @ 720p (1280x720) 300 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080) 160 FPS @ 3M (2048x1536) 100 FPS @ 5M (2591x1944) Total FPS (MJPEG)* 300 FPS @ 720p (1280x720) 120 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080) 90 FPS @ 3M (2048x1536) 60 FPS @ 5M (2591x1944) Video Station Video Transcoding 4K Group 1 (See more) Maximum Transcoding Channel Number 1 channel, 30 FPS @ 4K (4096 x 2160), H.264 (AVC) or 3 channel, 30 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080), H.264 (AVC)/MPEG-2/VC-1 VPN Server Maximum Connections 20 Notes Surveillance Station throughput is tested with Axis network camera, using continuous recording with live view from Surveillance Station and motion detection by camera. Live view and recording are sharing the same stream from the camera. Environment & Packaging Environment RoHS Compliant Packaging Content Main Unit X 1 Welcome Note X 1 Accessory Pack X 1 AC Power Adapter X 1 AC Power Cord X 1 RJ-45 LAN Cable X 1 Optional Accessories Camera License PackVS360HD A Closer Look at the Synology DiskStation DS216+ The DiskStation DS216+ is small and light weight. It measures in at 165 mm x 108 mm x 233.2 mm (6.5 x 4.25 x 9.2 inches) and weighs in at 1.25 kg (2.8 lbs.). The DS216+ has an elegant look to it, the main body of the NAS is matte black and the drive cover is glossy black. On the right side of the NAS are the indicator lights, controls, and front I/O. LED lights give the status of the system, LAN, and both hard drives. A single USB 3.0 port sits just above the copy and power buttons. The most prominent feature on the rear of the DS216+ is the 92mm fan. Below the fan is the I/O for the NAS. Dual USB 2.0 ports, a single RJ45 1 GbE network port, and eSATA port are on the rear of the NAS. To install the hard drives, the 1st thing you'll need to do is pull off the glossy cover. Simply grab it and pull forward. Each drive tray unlocks at the top of the NAS. Push up on the lock and slide the drive trays out. The installation of 3.5" hard drives is tool less. On the side of each drive tray there are keepers that pull off the tray. Remove the keepers and install the drive. Line up the screw holes on the drive with the holes in the tray and re-install the keepers. Next, install the trays in until the lock engages the tray. Then re-install the previously removed cover. The DS216+ has 1 GB DDR3 module installed. The module is a DDR3L SO-DIMM and could be upgraded however, much like the DS716+ upgrading the RAM could void the warranty. The Celeron CPU is passively cooled and is under the large heatsink on the motherboard. The dual SATA ports are handled by the Marvell 88SE9170 IC. It uses a PCIe x1 lane and supports 2 SATA ports. Network connectivity for the DS216+ is provided by a single Intel i211-AT Ethernet controller. Initialization & Start Up There are a few ways to access the DS216+. The first would be by the IP address that the NAS gets assigned. If you don't happen to know the address, simply typing http://find.synology.com which will direct you to the Synology Web Assistant. If the device still cannot be found, you can download and install the Synology Assistant. The initial configuration of the DS216+ is done through the Synology Web Assistant. On the first page, you'll be able to check out the device info or continue with the set up. After clicking the set up button, you'll need to install the Synology DiskStation Manager or DSM. You can choose to manually install DSM from a file stored on your local PC or you can choose to use the auto-install feature which downloads the latest DSM for the device directly from Synology. Before moving forward with the installation, you will be asked to confirm that this process will wipe any data from the disks. After choosing to continue, you will be presented with a screen that shows the progress of the installation. Next, you will need to name the device and create an administrator account for the device. The next page is where you can set up the operating system update schedule. Synology's QuickConnect allows you to access your NAS without having to forward ports in your Router or firewall. Simply create an account or log in with your existing account. The next step of the process will suggest applications to install based on Synology's recommendations. After the applications install, you are ready to head to the DSM management page. Synology DSM 6.0 At CES 2016, we got a preview of the new DSM. On March 25th 2016, DSM 6.0 was released for public consumption. Currently there has been one update for 6.0 which should bring the version number of the NAS to DSM 6.0-7321 Update 1. To access DSM, you'll need to log in with the username and password that was set up earlier. The interface of DSM is much like that of a traditional PC running Windows. There's a desktop and menu. Shortcuts can be created on the desktop to quickly access frequently used applications. The programs menu is located in the top left corner of the interface. Click on it will bring up a menu that contains the built-in applications such as file manager and installed applications such as Video station. Most of the configuration of the DS216+ is done in the control panel. Each section is displayed on the left side of the window and the options are displayed on the right. The next configuration item is in Storage Manager. In Storage manager, you will be able to configure RAID levels, check hard drive health, view volume usage, etc. DSM 6.0 Applications File Station is much like Windows Explorer. You can use file station to manage files and folders as well as assign permissions to files and folders. Within the web browser, files and folders can be dragged and dropped from one location to another. The application features an advanced search feature that can search file contents as well as metadata but, the contents will need to be indexed first. Photo Station is an application that serves as a organizer for your photographs. You can upload and download photos using mobile devices by installing the DS Photo app which is available for both iOS and Android. Next up is Video Station. Much like Photo Station, it is a central location for you to store and manage your movies and videos. Video Station can transcode videos for you to watch on your mobile devices. Again, there is the DS Video app for that. There is an option to turn off transcoding as well as to use hardware acceleration while transcoding. Offline transcoding is now available. The application can download the metadata for your movies as well. With Video Station you can stream to DLNA-devices such as Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, etc. If the recommended applications are not enough for you, you can download more from Synology using the Package Center application. There are plenty of applications to choose from. Testing Methodology System Configuration Case Cooler Master Cosmos II SE CPU Intel i7 4770K Motherboard MSI Z97m Gaming Ram 2 GB G.Skill F3-12800CL9q DDR3-1600 GPU MSI GTX 970 OC Hard Drives Samsung 840 EVO 256gb SSD Western Digital black 500 gb 7200 RPM HDD Power Supply NXZT Hale v2 1000 Watt power supply 2 Seagate 4 TB 7200 RPM desktop drives were installed and used in the NAS tests. A dual port Intel network card was installed in the test system. For comparison, I used the QNAP TS-253A, QNAP TS-251+. Network Layout For all tests the NAS was configured to use the a single network interface. One CAT 6 cable was connected to the Cisco 2960 from the NAS and one CAT 6 cable was connected to the workstation from the switch. Testing was done on the PC with only 1 network card active; the Killer network card and the corresponding software were disabled for the testing. The switch was cleared of any configuration and left in a unconfigured state. Jumbo frames was not enabled and no changes to the network interfaces was made. Software All testing is done based off of a single client accessing the NAS. We are currently working on a multi-client testing solution. Stay tuned. To test NAS Performance I used The Intel NAS Performance toolkit and Atto Storage benchmark. The Intel NAS Performance toolkit simulates various tasks for storage devices such as video streaming, copying files and folders to and from the NAS as well as creating content directly on the NAS. To limit caching, a 2GB G.Skill memory module was used in all tests. All options in the Performance toolkit were left that the defaults. The NAS performance test is free to download. You can pick up a copy for yourself here. All tests were run a total of three times then averaged to get the final result. RAID 0 & RAID 1 were tested. Tests were run after all the RAID arrays were fully synchronized. For real world testing, I copied a 4.3 gigabyte ISO file from the SSD in the test PC to the shared folder on the NAS. 4.3 gigabytes of MP3 files were copied over as well. RAID Information Images courtesy of Wikipedia JBOD or Just a Bunch Of Disks is exactly what the name describes. The hard drives have no actual raid functionality and are spanned at random data is written at random. RAID 0 is a stripe set and data is written across the disks evenly. The advantage of RAID 0 is speed and increased capacity. With RAID 0 there is no redundancy and data loss is very possible. RAID 1 is a mirrored set and data is mirrored from one drive to another. The advantage of RAID 1 is data redundancy as each piece of data is written to both disks. The disadvantage of RAID 1 is write speed is decreased as compared to RAID 0 due to the write operation is performed on both disks. RAID 1 capacity is that of the smallest disk. RAID 10 combines the 1st two raid levels and is a mirror of a stripe set. This allows for better speed of a RAID 0 array but the data integrity of a RAID 1 array. RAID 5 is a stripe set with parity. RAID 5 requires at least 3 disks. Data is striped across each disk, and each disk has a parity block. RAID 5 allows the loss of one drive without losing data. The advantage to RAID 5 is read speeds increase as the number of drives increase but the disadvantage is write speeds are slower as the number of drives is increased. There is overhead with RAID 5 as the parity bit needs to be calculated and with software RAID 5 there is more of a performance hit. RAID 6 expands on RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block to the array that is distributed across all the disks. Since there are two parity blocks in the array more overhead is used with a RAID 6 array. For a full breakdown of RAID levels, take a look at the Wikipedia article here. RAID configurations are a highly debated topic. RAID has been around for a very long time. Hard drives have changed, but the technology behind RAID really hasn’t. So what may have been considered ideal a few years ago may not be ideal today. If you are solely relying on multiple hard drives as a safety measure to prevent data loss, you are in for a disaster. Ideally you will use a mutli-drive array for an increase in speed and lower access times and have a backup of your data elsewhere. I have seen arrays with hot spares that had multiple drives fail and the data was gone. Do yourself a favor and read up on the different types of RAID arrays and plan accordingly. Personally, I use a RAID 10 array with an automated backup to the cloud. I feel with that setup, I’ve done what I can to keep my data safe. Synology DiskStation DS216+ Test Results The Synology DiskStation DS216+ lives up to the reputation of Synology's plus family of NAS. The hardware along with the new DSM 6.0, puts this NAS at the top of the list for dual bay NAS performance and functionality. The performance of the Synology DiskStation 216+ falls right in line with other similarly configured NAS. While there is not a blow out performance crown (due to 1 GbE network limitation), the DS216+ was able to lead a few categories, and those that it didn't lead, the difference was honestly negligible. Transcoding performance was great. I used a 4K video file and transcoded down to my iPhone and used the DS Video application to view the video. With hardware acceleration on, CPU utilization didn't rise above 40% during the 5 minute video. Video playback was smooth with no glitching or pausing. With hardware acceleration off, CPU usage jumped to 100% almost immediately and stayed there for the duration of the video. I would get about 10-20 seconds of video before it would pause and wait for the NAS to catch up. Set up with this NAS was a snap and Synology does a good job of putting all the configuration options in front of you during the initial run of the Synology web assistant. Additional configuration options are easily found in the control panel or by searching from the search bar on the desktop. Application installs are made easy thanks to the Package center. Overall the Synology DiskStation DS216+ is a powerhouse with a lot of potential. Synology spent a lot of time massaging DSM 6.0 and it shows. The OS is now 64-bit and supports BTRFS, which allows you to create a snapshot of an entire shared folder, performs automatic corruption detection and repair. At the time of this article, the DS216+ can be found online for $360.00. DSM 6.0 does a lot to enhance the usability of the NAS. The combination of performance, features and usability earns the Synology DiskStation DS216+ the Must Have award. If you're looking for a small NAS with great performance, the DS216+ is the whole package.