Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsSo much more than just a storage solution
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2016
The DS916+ arrives well-packaged in a fairly unassuming cardboard box, and includes the DS916+, a power cable, and two 6’ black CAT5e cables, so the only thing you need to get up and running is a couple of hard drives. Within a few minutes I had the unit unboxed, and was installing my hard drives. The drive trays on the DS916+ are built to accommodate both 2.5” and 3.5” hard drives. If using 2.5” hard drives, there are mounting holes on the bottom of the tray, and there are 16 mounting screws included in the package. Great move by Synology to include the mounting screws for the 2.5” drives, it’s always a pain to try to find screws that are the correct size if they are not included. If using 3.5” drives, the trays are completely tool less, making for a simple and easy installation. Once I had my two hard drives installed (I am using 2 10TB Seagate IronWolf NAS drives, which I verified was on the hardware compatibility list for the DS916+ on Synology’s website), I powered on the NAS.
First time setup was a breeze, I downloaded the DS Finder app from the App Store on my iPhone and discovered the IP address of the DiskStation. I typed this IP address into the search bar in my web browser, and it brought me to a first-time login page. Here I had to enter a new username and choose a password, and then I was in. The first time I logged in, I was notified that there was an update to DiskStation, so I allowed it to install and waited about 10 minutes for the install to complete. Once that was done, I had to familiarize myself with the DiskStation interface. This didn't take long, as it feels exactly like GUI-based Operating System contained within the browser window. It's very familiar and intuitive to use. The ease of use and familiarity of the DSM interface is one of Synology’s strong suits, this interface is the same across the board for their NAS products, and it really makes them a pleasure to work with.
Once the disks are installed, you need to configure a volume. Here you will decide how to allocate your disks. I chose to allocate my disks into the same volume and chose Synology Hybrid (SHR) RAID type, so that if I were to add more disks at a later time, it would be easier to expand the size of the volume without needing to break the array and re-build it. Once the volume was created, it took around 14 hours for the drive parity checks to complete, but while the checks were running, I was still able to get started with using the NAS.
Another thing that Synology has going for them is Package Center. Think of this as the App Store for the NAS. Here you will find first-party addons such as Synology's own Download Station, Audio Station, Photo Station, Video Station and more. Third-party addons such as Plex Media Server, Docker, WordPress, Drupal, Tomcat, Python, Ruby, and more. Most of the addons are free, but there are a few premium addons that are not. The ability to run these apps on the DS916+ allows you to use the DS916+ as much more than a simple file server, this can truly be the hub of your home or SMB network. It can be used to host a website, mail server, media server, serve as a DVR for your surveillance cameras, and much more. The Cloud Station feature can be used to replace services like Dropbox. No need to pay a yearly fee, and you don't need to worry about the cloud service getting hacked and someone else gaining access to your personal information.
There are so many things you can do with this thing, it’s become my new favorite thing to tinker with on my home network. I have personal file shares set up for myself and my wife, which are accessible locally and outside of my network via the DS Cloud app, which has completely replaced Dropbox for us. I have all of our movies that I’ve digitized over the years stored on the NAS, and we can stream them to any TV in the house using DS Video or Plex Media Server. Having small children in the house, it’s almost impossible to keep track of DVD’s and Blu-ray’s, so having them available to play on any TV or connected device on demand is just about the best thing ever. I also have a share set up as a target for my MacBook to back up using Time Machine, the DS916+ supports this out of the box, no need to buy a Time Capsule from Apple.
One thing the NAS did have a little trouble with was transcoding video files. I loaded a 25gb Blu-ray rip onto the drive and into both DS Video and Plex to test the performance. When there was enough bandwidth available to direct stream the file to the player, playback was great. The video was stable and looked fantastic. If the bandwidth wasn’t there (such as streaming from off-site), or I asked the software to drop the quality down to a lower level, I noticed that the CPU usage pegged out at maximum levels and playback often paused in order for transcoding to catch up to the stream. Transcoding with DS Video did perform better than Plex did, but it still struggled from time to time. So, if you want the ability to transcode your media files while streaming them, it might not be the best fit. Typically, I transcode my Blu-ray rips into MP4 containers, and shrink them down considerably before putting them into my video library. The NAS had a much better time playing these files back, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing and transcode them myself before storing the on the NAS to watch later.
In terms of transfer rates, the DS916+ does not disappoint at all. I was consistently maxing out the 1Gbps connection on file transfers using a single Gigabit connection, so I pulled out an 8-port managed smart switch that I owned, and configured Link Aggregation (LAG) on both the switch and NAS, and upgraded my connection to 2Gbps. Read/write performance will depend on your network’s capacity, and the specs of the hard drives you use in the NAS. The Seagate IronWolf 10TB NAS hard drives are absolutely no slouch when it comes to read and write performance, turning in some of the fastest speeds I’ve seen in conventional mechanical hard drives, and using the LAG setup in the DS916+, I was able to achieve seriously impressive transfer rates of over 220MB/s in both read and write when transferring large files to and from the NAS. In order to achieve these results, I needed to use two separate workstations connected at 1Gbps simultaneously and recorded the results.
Pros
—Easy to use, set up and configure
—DSM OS feels familiar, like using a normal computer OS, so it’s not intimidating or overly complicated to set up and use
— Package Center has a ton of ready-to-use packages to install, and makes it easy to expand the functionality of your NAS from a simple file server into a network hub
— I really can’t say enough about how awesome Package Center is
— Whisper quiet while in use. Overall noise will be largely dependent on the drives you choose to use in your setup
— Fantastic transfer speeds when transferring files
— Can be expanded to a 9-bay solution by purchasing and connecting a DX513 expansion unit
Cons
— Transcoding media files, especially when using Plex, can be taxing on the CPU and can lead to lagging during playback
I have spent many hours over the past few weeks getting acquainted with the DS916+ and I am continually discovering new things that it can do. I am still looking into backup solutions so that I can backup the data on the NAS, because you can never have too many backups of important things like wedding photos and baby pictures and videos of your kids.
For your home or small business, the DS916+ coupled with 2-4 hard drives will be the perfect solution to your storage needs.
