Synology Launches DSM 6.0 Long-Term Beta and New Hardware

We had the opportunity to attend the Synology 2016 Conference in San Francisco last month. The event gave us quite a bit of insight into what Synology has lined up for the market over the next 6 months or so. The conference dealt with three main topics – Synology NAS units in a business environment, multimedia aspects for home consumers and backup / disaster recovery solutions enabled by the DiskStation Manager (DSM) OS. Synology also took the opportunity to launch the long-term beta for DSM 6.0 and gave us a sneak peek at the new hardware in store for the next couple of quarters.

A few slides from the presentations at the conference are reproduced below along with our comments on how the proposed features fare against what the competition has to offer in this market segment.

Evolution of DSM and Business Applications

It is a well known fact that the NAS market is experiencing rapid growth, particularly over the last few years. That said, it is difficult to get a breakdown of the number of NAS units sold by each vendor. To our surprise, Synology made it public that they have more than 3.2 million NAS units in the field. Obviously, this is the number of units sold since the first Synology NAS – the DS-101 – was introduced into the market in March 2004.

Synology has slowly moved up the ladder in terms of market appeal. While the initial units targeted home consumers, SOHOs and SMBs, some of the current products even cater to the SMEs (small and medium enterprises).

The evolution of the Synology OS – the DiskStation Manger (DSM) – has been dictated by two separate aspects – business trends including virtualization, cloud access and an emphasis on data protection, and home consumer trends including the ‘private cloud’ concept, ease of access from mobile and wearable devices and an emphasis on consumption of stored multimedia content.

Synology talked about a new beta program for the DSM 6.0 release. Slated to go live in a few weeks, the new DSM 6.0 beta program will last for approximately six months – allowing for a couple of betas and a release candidate version before the official release. This program is similar to the one adopted by QNAP with great success for QTS 4.2. As of today, QNAP’s QTS 4.2 is in RC5 status, and we have seen user feedback being take care of with each successive release. The long beta cycle will definitely help Synology in improving the quality of the official DSM 6.0 release.

Last year, Synology was in the news due to the SynoLocker ransomware. It created a lot of bad publicity, but it also made Synology look into security issues proactively. Towards this, DSM 6.0 will be subject to the QualysGuard security and compliance suite in order to continuously monitor each release for vulnerabilities.

Synology is also improving 64-bit support in DSM. Even though the core DSM has been 64-bit capable for quite some time, the add-on packages have never been able to take advantage of the 64-bit architecture (being limited to 4GB of RAM). DSM 6.0 will remove that bottleneck for the add-on packages as well as apps.

Synology launched the RC18015xs+ with btrfs support back in June 2015. DSM 6.0 expands this support to more models. With these Intel-based NAS units, DSM will present an option for the file system (EXT4 or btrfs) when configuring a volume.

    
Users will get the full set of benefits from btrfs – data checksumming and snapshots included, with flexible restore options. Compression is also supported, with claims of up to 30% storage savings in use-cases where the majority of the content is source code / text.

DSM 6.0 will also expand SSD caching support. I/O performance in mixed HDD / SSD environments can be maximized using up to 12 caching SSDs. This aspect deserves more investigation, particularly when compared against QNAP’s Qtier auto-tiering technology.

DSM 6.0 will also enable Synology NAS units to act as network security appliances. Support for 802.1x network access authentication will be expanding the capabilities of the NAS units.

The NAS units can act either in detection mode (IDS) to monitor network packets and provide logs for future evaluation or in prevention mode (IPS) as an in-line system that can drop questionable packets in transmission.

DSM 6.0 will also have a load balance feature. This service can help redirect client requests to the appropriate servers in order to maximize overall throughput.

Synology is also introducing a new mail server (similar to Microsoft Exchange Server) component. The MailPlus Private Cloud service mainly targets enterprise users. It includes features for service continuity and load balancing to help with high availability. Spam filtering is also available.

The MailPlus server can be accessed by users via the web or via mobile apps.

Virtualization is one of the hot topics in the industry right now. In particular, container-based virtualization technologies like Docker have taken off rapidly in the last couple of years. Unlike vendors such as QNAP who provide support for both container-based virtualization using Docker and the standard virtualization scheme using QEMU, Synology is betting big on Docker alone. DSM 6.0 brings about the ability to run DSM itself in a container. This allows a single NAS unit to be able to actually run different versions of DSM at the same time.

The advantage of this for enterprise users is live migration without service interruption and cluster expansion based on demand.

Multimedia and Collaboration Advancements

Moving on to the wearables side, Synology is also coming out with a couple of apps for the Apple Watch. The DS audio and DS note apps allow for interaction with the NAS (in terms of contents such as audio playlists and notes that usually need access from wearable devices).

Other interesting updates in DSM 6.0 include a new Spreadsheet package which appears to be a private cloud cut-down version of Google Sheets.

DSM 6.0 also includes better search capabilities. Synology didn’t go too much into the details, but it appears to go head-to-head with QNAP’s Qsirch feature. The Note Station package in DSM 6.0 also receives some updates with features such as offline mode.

Moving on to the multimedia packages, the new Video Station will have an offline transcoding feature in addition to the existing real-time transcoding. This feature has been around in both Asustor and QNAP NAS units for quite some time now.

The interfaces for Video Station and Photo Station will also be receiving updates. The complementary DS Video and DS Photo apps will also be getting Windows 10 versions soon.

Synology also talked about their Cloud Station suite for backup and disaster recover. The suite brings together a number of disparate packages that have been in place to provide backup and sync capabilities to Synology users. The previous set of apps presented a disjoint (and sometimes, confusing) picture to end-users. Consolidating them under one umbrella is definitely good news for Synology users.

Cloud Station Drive (the new name for the Cloud Station PC client) can now sync multiple PC folders on to one shared folder. In the same way, a particular folder inside a shared folder can also be selectively synced on to a PC. Synology is also implementing an ‘Intelliversioning’ algorithm for versioning purposes – choosing the right version to rotate instead of using a simple FIFO model.

DSM 6.0 also simplifies backup and restore while maximizing efficiency using both block-level and cross-version deduplication. Backup Explorer will also be integrated within the DSM File Station feature.

Off-site backups are also simplified with export and relink capabilities making it unnecessary to transfer large volumes of data over a network connection. Disaster recovery features are also available.

Upcoming Products

Synology also took the opportunity to launch a set of new products. The DS716+ 2-bay NAS unit (expandable to 7 bays) will sport a Braswell SoC (Celeron N3050) and support hardware-accelerated encryption capabilities. This is an update to the Atom D2700-based DS713+. The DS716+ supposedly provides 4K transcoding capability – it is not clear if this is using the Quick Sync engine or via software.

We have already had a look at the DS216play targeting the budget-conscious consumers looking for a transcoding NAS. Synology also plans to launch a AC1900 router with an OS based on the DSM. If the DSM UX is carried over to SRM, the traditional router vendors will need to sit up and take notice.

Synology claims that their router is the only AC1900-class one with QoS based on the application layer. The mobile apps and package center add-ons for DSM will receive router versions.

The NVR216 is a 2-bay NAS with HDMI output capabilities. It supports up to 9 cameras (and comes with a license for 4 cameras). It is expandable via eSATA using a DX213.

Concluding Remarks

On the whole, Synology seems to have exciting things planned for the next few months. The features in DSM 6.0 beta target both enterprise and power users with equal focus. The long beta cycle should help in creating a stable official release. The Synology DSM 6.0 beta will be a free download for users who own a DiskStation or RackStation x11 series and onward.

Positives aside, we would have definitely been more enthused if Synology had launched NAS units with 4+ bays using the Braswell platform. On the DSM side, in addition to the existing extensive Docker support, it would have also been nice to get support for running full-blown virtual machines. This would allow for running of other operating systems on a Synology NAS (similar to QNAP’s Virtualization Station). It is definitely a surprise if Synology doesn’t see a demand for this in their target market.

Synology’s DS216play – A Transcoding NAS with ST Microelectronics STiH412

The Synology DS214play was one of the unique NAS units from Synology released last year. It used Intel’s Evansport platform (the CE5300 Berryville set-top box (STB) platform re-launched for network-attached storage purposes) and took advantage of the transcoding engine to deliver a unique media server experience. Intel has not provided any updates to their STB platform since the CE5300 was launched. Vendors such as QNAP and Asustor resorted to utilizing Quick Sync that came as part of most Bay Trail and Braswell Atom SKUs. Synology, however, has decided to retain a STB platform for the follow-up product to the DS214play – the DS216play.

Synology wants to project the play series as an affordable NAS unit in the market, ruling out a x86-based platform. Instead, we have a new SoC in Synology’s lineup – the STM STiH412 from ST Microelectronics. Before discussing the SoC itself, let us take a look at what DS216play brings to the table.

The unique feature of the DS216play will be the real-time 4K transcoding capabilities (up to 4Kp30 for H.265/HEVC and  4Kp24 for H.264/AVC). The design uses a single GbE port and Synology claims performance numbers of 107 MBps reads and 91 MBps writes for a RAID-1 volume. The unit is also DLNA certified as a DMS (Digital Media Server). The Video Station package in DSM allows for users to also record TV programs with a DVB-T / DVB-S stick. Other multimedia packages such as Photo Station and Audio Station are also available in the DS216play to strengthen its multimedia focus. These packages are complemented by mobile apps on both iOS and Android. Despite the unique SoC, all the features that users have come to expect from the DiskStationManager (DSM) OS for ARM-based systems are available in the DS216  play also.

Synology’s claimed power numbers include 15.08W during operation (which will depend heavily on the drives being used in the system) and 6.83W during disk hibernation. The other technical specifications are summarized in the table below.

The STM STiH412 STB SoC

Moving on to the SoC itself, we find that the STM STiH412 is a dual-core Cortex-A9 design with the CPU cores running at up to 1.5 GHz. It also includes a Mali 400 GPU and HDMI Rx/Tx, though both of them are not necessary for Synology’s use-case in the DS216play. The block diagram of the SoC is reproduced below.

The aspects of the SoC relevant to the DS216play are summarized in the lists below:

• Video Decoding:
  • HEVC L4.1 (2160p30)
  • H.264 AVC, one L4.2 (1080p60) plus one L4.1(1080i60/1080p30) streams, or three L4.1 (1080i60/1080p30) streams
  • H.264 MVC, [email protected]—1080p30L30R
  • H.264 SVC
  • WebM VP8, up to 1080p60
  • VC-1, MPEG4, MPEG2
• Video Transcoding:
  • H.264 or VP8 video encoding up to 1080p30
  • Up to 3 x 1080p30 to 720p30 video transcoding

The SoC connectivity options include the following:

• 2x USB 2.0 host (1x used in the DS216play)
• 1x USB 2.0 / 3.0 (1x used in the DS216play for the USB 3.0 port)
• 2x SATA III (2x used in the DS216play for the drive bays)
• 2x SD / eMMC (not used for any external ports in the DS216play)
• 1x Ethernet GMAC (Used for networking capabilities)

Interestingly, there is no support for HEVC Main10 in the video decoding support section. However, given the low cost of the DS216play compared to other 2-bay NAS systems (seems to be available for pre-order at £170 in the UK right now), we expect another model to come into the market by the time HEVC Main10 becomes relevant to the average consumer. We will update the article with ship date and pricing for the North American market once we have the information in hand. Based on the UK pricing, our guess is that the unit will come in between $200 and $250 for a diskless configuration – similar to most other 2-bay ARM-based NAS units.

Netgear’s New ReadyNAS 21x Models Go Quad-Core

We had covered Netgear’s ReadyNAS 200 series launch at the 2015 CES. Based on a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 SoC designed by Annapurna Labs, the ReadyNAS RN202 (2-bay) and RN204 (4-bay) brought some advantages of the btrfs file system in a cost-effective manner to the SOHO / consumer market. We recently reviewed the Netgear RN202 and the unit performed reasonably well in our evaluation.

Today, Netgear is introducing two new models in the ReadyNAS 210 series, the 2-bay RN212 and 4-bay RN214. Both of these come with quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 SoCs (again, from Annapurna Labs). Other than the increased processing power with an updated SoC, the units are identical to the ones launched earlier this year. This means that the new units also have 2 GB of RAM, three USB 3.0 ports and one eSATA port. We have dual GbE links capable of link aggregation (802.3ad LACP), and Netgear indicated that the RN21x would have better performance with port trunking compared to the RN20x.

Focus is also on the software transcoding capabilities that come as part of the media server feature. The claim is that the quad-core platform allows real-time transcoding of 1080p content to lower bit-rates and resolutions (particularly for delivery over the Internet). The transcoding is still done in software, though. Netgear also has an anti-virus engine that allows inspection at line rates (resulting in minimal performance loss).

Performance claims for the ReadyNAS RN212 and RN214 point to 200 MBps reads and 160 MBps writes – not the best in the market, but in the top half of the scale when it comes to ARM-based units. As expected from any COTS NAS nowadays, the units come with a mobile app (Netgear ReadyCLOUD). The contents of the NAS can be securely accessed even from an external network using the app, thanks to the VPN tunnel that gets configured with minimal user input.

Netgear is launching the RN21x in tandem with the Nighthawk X8 R8500 router. The link aggregation capabilities of the NAS go well with the newly added capability on the router side. Multiple streams to/from the NAS should easily allow saturation of 1GbE clients as well as the 802.11ac Wi-Fi connections. Tech-savvy consumers can easily relate to the benefits of btrfs (bitrot protection and continuous snapshot protection). For the rest, the projection as a complement to the Nighthawk X8 AC5300 router will tend to boost visibility.

The diskless RN212 and RN214 models are available for purchase today, carrying MSRPs of $329 and $499 respectively.