Designed for small-to-medium businesses, the Synology DiskStation DS1517+ ($799.99) is a five-bay network-attached storage (NAS) device with a few enterprise-level features, including built-in AES encryption, support for a 10GbE network interface card (NIC) or a dual M.2 SSD interface card, and numerous RAID configurations. It offers a user-friendly management console and plenty of media server, backup, mail server, and cloud synchronization apps, and it is whisper quiet. Just be prepared to pay a premium for all of this NAS goodness.
Design and Features
On the outside, the DS1517+( at Amazon) looks nearly identical to the Synology DiskStation DS1515+ ($585.80 at Amazon) we reviewed last year. The black enclosure measures 6.5 by 9.8 by 9.5 inches (HWD) and has five lockable, tool-free drive bays. Along the top edge are four LAN activity LEDs, an Alert LED, a system status LED, and a power switch. Each drive tray has an activity LED as well. Missing is an LCD panel, like the one on the Buffalo TeraStation 5200DN, that gives you the device's IP address, Ethernet speed, the date and time, and the firmware version. A lone USB 3.0 port is located on the right side of the front panel near the bottom, and there are three more located on the back panel. Also around back are four Gigabit LAN ports, two eSATA ports, two fans, and a PCIe x8 expansion slot that can be used to add an M.2 SSD interface card or a 10GbE NIC.
Powered by an Intel Atom C2538 2.4GHz quad-core CPU, the DS1517+ comes with 8GB of DDR3 RAM, which you can expand to 16GB (a 2GB version is available for $699.99). It supports link aggregation, and can handle up to 50TB of storage (in the form of five 10TB drives). The drives are hot-swappable and can be configured for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, Basic, and two Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) configurations that offer 1- and 2-disk redundancy and are designed to maximize the storage capacity of each drive. The DS1517+ supports numerous file systems, including NTFS, FAT, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, HFS+, and exFAT.
The DS1517+ can be accessed and managed from anywhere using the DiskStation Manager (DSM), a NAS operating system with a Windows look and feel. You can also use Synology's QuickConnect utility, which allows you to access the NAS from outside of your local network without having to use port forwarding or tweak firewall settings. In addition to a dedicated System Health window, which has a simplified resource monitor with CPU and RAM usage, the DSM desktop comes with several preinstalled programs, including the Package Center, which offers more than 70 Synology and third-party apps, including Plex and iTunes server apps, Synology's own Web Station app for website hosting, and Surveillance Station app for managing IP security cameras, mail server and bittorrent apps, backup and replication apps, and cloud synchronization apps.
Similar Products
Western Digital My Cloud DL4100 (24TB)
Synology DiskStation DS1515+
QNAP TVS-463
Buffalo TeraStation 5200DN (2TB)
QNAP TS-251
Western Digital My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 (4TB)
QNAP TAS-168
Synology DiskStation DS216j
Asustor AS3202T
The DSM desktop also has a Control Panel, where you can create shared folders, users, and groups, and assign rights. Here, you can also set up firewall protection, configure network settings, and enable push and email notifications if there are any system errors. The File Station is where you go to manage files and folders, view and share different file types, configure remote connections to files, and browse file-sharing activities for all users.
In the upper-left corner of the DSM home screen is a button that takes you to the Main Menu, where you can access a detailed Resource Monitor and use the Storage Manager utility to create volumes, configure RAID settings, create disk groups, and view detailed disk-health statistics, such as bad sector count, estimated lifespan, operating temperature, and firmware version. The Security Advisor scans the NAS for malware and makes sure that all users have strong passwords and that all the apps are up to date. There's also a handy Help feature that you can use to get help with the DSM operating system and all installed apps. The DS1517+ is covered by a three-year warranty. It ships with two LAN cables, a power cable, and two disk tray keys.
Installation and Performance
Since the DS1517+ does not come with pre-installed hard drives, I installed five Seagate 6TB HGST SATA drives. I downloaded the Web Assistant utility to my host PC, and connected the NAS to it and to my network. I launched the utility and followed the instructions to download the latest version of DSM, which proceeded to partition and format the drives. This took a little more than 10 minutes to complete. I then created an administrator account and set up QuickConnect. Next, I used the Storage Manager to create a volume and set up the drives using Synology's SHR1 RAID configuration with 1-disk redundancy.
In our read/write speed tests, in which we use a 4.9GB test folder containing a mix of photos, video, music, and office files, the DS1517+ turned in solid file-transfer speeds. Its write speed of 80MBps was faster than the four-drive Western Digital My Cloud DL4100 ( at Amazon) (69MBps) and the four-drive QNAP TVS-463 ( at Amazon) (79MBps), but a bit slower than its predecessor, the Synology DS1515+ (85MBps). However, its read speed of 84MBps topped the Synology DS1515+ (82MBps) and the Western Digital DL4100 (81MBps), but not the QNAP-TVS-463 (85MBps).
Conclusion
The Synology DiskStation DS1517+ may be overkill for most home users, but it's an excellent choice for small businesses that want to store and serve data locally. With five drive bays and a wide assortment of RAID options, you can double down on redundancy for extra protection or use it as a giant repository with up to 50TB of storage. A wealth of Synology-branded and third-party apps are available to let you use the NAS as a primary backup for your PCs and press it into duty as a media server, a mail server, a website host, and much more. At $799.99, the DS1517+ is not for the budget-minded, especially since you have to populate it with your own drives, but its solid performance and high-end, business-centric features are worth the money.
The feature-rich Synology DiskStation DS1517+ is a five-bay network-attached storage (NAS) device that is easy to manage, offers multiple RAID configurations, and supports numerous apps.
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