I've never owned a Synology NAS at all before. I've been getting in to more homelab type stuff lately and it was getting to the point where a couple of Raspberry Pis weren't really cutting it anymore. I wanted to get something that's compact, relatively low electricity use, has lots of storage, and can run VMs and docker containers. This thing fit the bill perfectly.
I'm a linux engineer and programmer by trade. I can honestly say that the DSM web interface is the absolute best web interface I've ever seen anywhere. It's absolutely incredible. It feels like you're using a desktop operating system in your browser and everything just works, I haven't run in to any problems with it at all. Synology have done an excellent job of making the UI friendly enough for average users to be able to use it, but also flexible enough for power users to get what they want to done. The ability to SSH in to the NAS and issue commands directly is great too.
Things I've been able to do with mine so far:
- I installed the docker package from Package Center and setup several docker containers (heimdall, pihole, jellyfin, uptime-kuma, etc...) and mapped their data directories to be stored under sub-directories of the docker shared folder which gets automatically created when you install the docker package. I then created another shared folder called docker_backups. I then navigate to Control Panel - Task Scheduler and created a new task for each of the containers to back them up to that location every 3 days. An example of one of the commands that I used to do that: docker stop pihole && tar -cvzf /volume1/docker/backups/pihole.tgz /volume1/docker/pihole; docker start pihole
- I also installed the Virtual Machine Manager package from Package Center. I then took a backup from my existing Home Assistant server that was running on a Raspberry Pi 3. I downloaded the .ova for Home Assistant OS from the Home Assistant site and imported it in to the Virtual Machine Manager which worked flawlessly. Then once the Home Assistant VM was booted I restored by Home Assistant backup to it. I plugged my Z-Wave controller in to the USB port of the NAS. It showed up a few seconds later and I mapped it to the VM in Virtual Machine Manager. It has remained mapped ever since, the mapping has survived several reboots of the NAS. After that I went to Task Scheduler and created a new task to backup the VM weekly with the following command (note that I found that the VM's name needs to not have any spaces in it for this backup method to work, so first I renamed my vm from "Home Assistant" to "Home_Assistant"): /var/packages/Virtualization/target/bin/vmm_backup_ova --dst=vm_backups --batch=1 --guests="Home_Assistant"
- I created several shared folders for documents, backups, etc... and I used the Synology Cloud Sync package to automatically send the most important files up to my Google Drive. Synology Cloud made setting this up super easy and the synchronization is virtually instantaneous when there are changes or new files. This is an absolutely killer feature that I love. If I were doing this on a regular Linux box I'd likely need to mess around with some third party package trying to get something like this to work, and it likely wouldn't be anywhere near as good as this is.
- I wanted a second IP on one of the interfaces but I found that there's no option to do that in the DSM interface, so I found a simple but kind of hacky workaround of just creating a new task in Task Scheduler to run this command every minute (they didn't have an option in there to run on reboot): ifconfig ovs_eth1:0 10.0.0.8 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.0.255 up
- I installed the Snapshot Replication package from Package Center and I set it up to do btrfs snapshotting on several of the shared folders which I consider to have data that we want protected from things like accidental deletion and ransomware. The snapshotting keeps track of only the changes which are made to the files in the folder each time a snapshot is taken. This allows you to navigate through a snapshot folder and go back to a specific date and see the files and folders as they were on that date. So for instance if ransomware were to encrypt all of your files on a share you could just go back to the snapshot from the day before and get all of your files back. I have it setup to keep the last 128 days of snapshots for each folder. This is an absolutely killer feature which is one of my favorite things about the NAS. If you have a shared folder mapped as a network drive on your windows computer you're also able to navigate through the snapshots directly from there as well, making this even more convenient.
- I installed the Synology Drive package from Package Center and my wife and I are currently using that to view our documents that we have stored on the NAS (as we currently have a project to digitize as much of our filing cabinet as possible). The NAS also has a nice "Universal Search" package which allows you to tell it to index documents in a shared folder based on the text inside of them and then perform searches based on that, which makes locating documents much easier. We just need to make sure that we scan documents with OCR enabled and then the automated indexing takes care of the rest once the documents are uploaded to the NAS which is really cool.
- I setup QuickConnect which is a feature that allows you to securely access your NAS via two factor authentication remotely without needing to have any ports open on your router. I'm really liking this feature because I keep all of the ports on my router closed and this allows me to pick some obscure URL that no one is likely to guess and then to use two factor auth on top of that which makes it quite secure.
- I installed the Antivirus Essential package from Package Center and set it up to perform periodic scans on the shared folders. It's nice because it can detect whether or not a file has changed since it last scanned it, so it only scans stuff that has changed which makes the scan times significantly shorter after the initial scan.
- I installed the Document Viewer and Synology Office packages. The Document Viewer allows you to view documents from the DSM interface and the Synology Office package allows you to create new word documents or spreadsheets from the Synology Drive interface which is a really nice feature to have.
- I installed the Synology Photos package on the NAS and on my phone and configured it to automatically backup the photos from my phone to the NAS. I also installed other packages on my phone such as Synology Secure Signin (used for two factor auth), DS finder (used for managing the NAS from your phone), DS note (used for keeping notes, kind of a high end notepad which is also accessible from the NAS itself), DS file (allows you to browse folders on the NAS from your phone), Synology Drive (Allows access to the Synology Drive interface from your phone), DS get (allows you to tell the NAS to download a file).
- I also configured a feature called Active Insight which is free for up to 3 Synology NAS devices. It collects monitoring and event info from the NAS in to the cloud and allows you to access it any time from a browser or from the Active Insight app on your phone. It stores the historical data for up to 6 months. I tend to do most of my monitoring locally but it's nice to have a backup monitoring method like this just in case.
- I also configured email notifications on the NAS so that it notifies me if there are problems.
As you can see between the docker containers, the VMs, and the myriad of other features which are available this thing is a little powerhouse that can do just about anything you'd want to. I'd estimate that you can comfortably run around 4 or 5 VMs on this and probably like 30 docker containers before you really start to max it out (depending of course on what those VMs and containers are doing). If it's something overly intensive then you might max things out with just one docker container, it's really up to you to manage the resources appropriately, but this thing is no slouch when it comes to processor capabilities.
I highly recommend upgrading the RAM to 32GB if you plan to do docker containers and VMs. Also most unused memory will be automatically used as a disk cache which will help with overall performance as well. I recommend installing a couple of NVMe Gen3 M.2 2280 SSDs in it to use as disk cache. I'd recommend only using them as read-only cache as read-write cache can cause total data loss if a cache drive fails. Even when using them as read-only cache I'd recommend using them in a RAID 1 configuration just in case one of the cache drives dies so that you have time to gracefully shutdown the NAS and replace it. I'd recommend only using about 75% of the space of each NVME drive to leave blocks free to be used automatically as other blocks are exhausted, this will extend the life of the drive considerably. Do not buy Synology RAM or NVME drives, they are horribly overpriced. For NVME cache drives I'd recommend SK hynix Gold P31 and for RAM I'd recommend 32GB (2X16GB) DDR4-2666 PC4-21300 ECC SODIMM Compatible with Synology D4ECSO-2666-16G Memory Upgrade Module by NEMIX RAM. Much cheaper and works just as well. If you need a second 10gig port on the NAS then I'd recommend getting the Synology branded pci-e 10gig card for that, it's overpriced but it'll ensure that you're not dealing with driver issues like I've seen people report with other cards.
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From the manufacturer
High-end scalable NAS in desktop form factor
DS1621xs+ is a high-end NAS with server-class performance in a 6-bay desktop form factor. The built-in M.2 SSD cache slots, 10GbE port, expandable memory, and scalable storage design allow you to boost the performance of your NAS, making it ideal for small and medium-sized businesses that need an efficient and space-saving storage solution.
Supercharge your storage with speedy performance
DS1621xs+ comes with built-in M.2 SSD cache slots capable of providing I/O response speeds 20 times faster than hard drives without occupying front drive bays. The built-in 10GbE port provides fast data transmission and can be bonded with an additional network interface card for higher network bandwidth.
- Xeon D-1527 quad-core 2.2 GHz CPU
- 8 GB DDR4, expandable up to 32GB
- Over 3,100 MB/s sequential read
- Dual M.2 2280 SSD supporting NVMe SSDs
- Built-in 10GBASE-T for bandwidth intensive environments
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File sharing and syncingWith comprehensive support for all major file sharing protocols — like CIFS, AFP, NFS, FTP and more — DiskStation lets you centralize files in one place and access them using any device. Take files on the road or easily share them with other people, thanks to Synology's easy file sharing and syncing software. |
Bulletproof data backupEnsure data remains safe by backing up your computers, servers, and virtual machines to DiskStation, and defend yourself from human-error or ransomware with the multi-version backup. Finally, avoid disaster with the ability to easily back up DiskStation to an offsite location or to any major cloud service. |
Virtualization readyWith support for VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft Hyper-V, DiskStation serves as a seamless storage solution for virtualization environments. Additionally, Synology’s Virtual Machine Manager also lets you set up and run various virtual machines directly on DiskStation, including Windows, Linux, and Virtual DSM. |
Smart video surveillanceMake your own video surveillance hub. Surveillance Station helps you protect your home or business by offering the ability to manage multiple network cameras, check live camera feeds from anywhere with the mobile app, catch suspicious incidents quickly with intelligent alerts, and easily find relevant recordings. |
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| DS1621xs+ | DS1621+ | DS1821+ | DS2422+ | |
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| Customer Reviews |
108
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314
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302
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68
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| Drive Bays | 6 | 6 | 8 | 12 |
| Maximum Drive Bays with Expansion Unit | 16 | 16 | 18 | 24 |
| Maximum Raw Internal Capacity | 108 TB (6x18 TB Drive) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) | 108 TB (6x18 TB Drive) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) | 144 TB (8x18 TB Drive) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) | 216 TB (12x18 TB Drive) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) |
| Maximum Raw Capacity with Expansion Units | 288 TB (16x18 TB Drives) | 288 TB (16x18 TB Drives) | 324 TB (18x18 TB Drives) | 432 TB (24x18 TB Drives) |
| CPU | Quad Core 2.2 (base) / 2.7 (turbo) GHz | Quad Core 2.2 GHz | Quad Core 2.2 GHz | Quad Core 2.1 GHz |
| 1GbE LAN Ports | 2 (with Link Aggregation / Failover support) and 1 x 10GbE LAN Port | 4 (with Link Aggregation / Failover support) | 4 (with Link Aggregation / Failover support) | 4 (with Link Aggregation / Failover support) |
| System Memory | 8 GB DDR4 ECC SODIMM | 4 GB DDR4 ECC SODIMM | 4 GB DDR4 ECC SODIMM | 4 GB DDR4 non-ECC SODIMM |
| PCIe Expansion | 1 x Gen3 x8 slot (x8 link) | 1 x Gen3 x8 slot (x4 link) | 1 x Gen3 x8 slot (x4 link) | 1 x Gen3 x8 slot (x4 link) |
Videos
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NAS setup guide
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Videos for this product
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Synology DiskStation DS1621xs+ Review
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How to Add and Share Files on Your Synology NAS
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This Item  Synology 6 bay NAS DiskStation DS1621xs+ (Diskless) |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | Currently unavailable. | $1,799.99 | $296.99 | $369.99 | -7% $550.00 List: $589.00 | $469.99 |
| Delivery | — | Get it as soon as Friday, May 3 | Get it as soon as Friday, May 3 | Get it as soon as Friday, May 3 | Get it May 3 - 9 | — |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
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| Value for money | ||||||
| Sold By | — | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | AWHS Fulfillment | Amazon.com |
| size | 6-bay; 8GB DDR4 | DS1823xs+ | DS224+ | DS423 | 4 Bay | 157 mm x 248 mm x 233 mm |
| hardware interface | sata 6 0 gb | — | esata, pci, solid state drive | — | usb | esata |
| compatible devices | Desktop | Server | Laptop, Smart Phone, Desktop | Desktop, Laptop, Server, Smart Phone | — | Desktop |
| assembly required | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | ✗ |
| weight | 14.12 pounds | — | 1.3 kilograms | 2210 grams | 7.7 pounds | 8.62 pounds |
Reviews with images
Amazing NAS upgrade. I had no idea what I was missing until I upgraded to this!
I had an original Drobo 5N that I had been using since 2014. Unfortunately the Drobo stopped adding new space as I upgraded the drives and support was basically nonexistent and suggested to 'transfer data off the NAS and restore'. That's not very practical with 22TB of Data.So I gave Synology a try. This little beast has completely changed my impression of NAS's. Synology has a great software platform and when I bought this DSM 7.0 was already out. I'm really impressed at all of the great software features that are built into the Synology DSM, and blown away by learning how to run other programs safely in Docker.I can't recommend this product enough to anyone who has a NAS and wants to upgrade to a better NAS. The 1621xs+ is decently powered and will allow you to get a lot of usability. The 10Gbe port is blazing fast if you have a network that can support it.If you are coming from the Drobo platform like me, you will be blown away at the awesome functionality of the Synology software.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2022
So I gave Synology a try. This little beast has completely changed my impression of NAS's. Synology has a great software platform and when I bought this DSM 7.0 was already out. I'm really impressed at all of the great software features that are built into the Synology DSM, and blown away by learning how to run other programs safely in Docker.
I can't recommend this product enough to anyone who has a NAS and wants to upgrade to a better NAS. The 1621xs+ is decently powered and will allow you to get a lot of usability. The 10Gbe port is blazing fast if you have a network that can support it.
If you are coming from the Drobo platform like me, you will be blown away at the awesome functionality of the Synology software.
Amazing NAS upgrade. I had no idea what I was missing until I upgraded to this!
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2022
I had an original Drobo 5N that I had been using since 2014. Unfortunately the Drobo stopped adding new space as I upgraded the drives and support was basically nonexistent and suggested to 'transfer data off the NAS and restore'. That's not very practical with 22TB of Data.Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2022
So I gave Synology a try. This little beast has completely changed my impression of NAS's. Synology has a great software platform and when I bought this DSM 7.0 was already out. I'm really impressed at all of the great software features that are built into the Synology DSM, and blown away by learning how to run other programs safely in Docker.
I can't recommend this product enough to anyone who has a NAS and wants to upgrade to a better NAS. The 1621xs+ is decently powered and will allow you to get a lot of usability. The 10Gbe port is blazing fast if you have a network that can support it.
If you are coming from the Drobo platform like me, you will be blown away at the awesome functionality of the Synology software.
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2022
