Speaking of Synology, its best consumer NAS enclosures usually comes to mind. While hardware plays an important role in network storage, it’s the software that defines your experience. And Synology’s DiskStation Manager (DSM) is among the most feature-rich NAS operating systems out there. After a major facelift last year, DSM 7.2 is the next big update packed with features that users have been asking for for a long time. Here’s everything you need to know about DSM 7.2.
Everything is new in Synology DSM 7.2 and other feature updates
With the upcoming DSM 7.2 update, Synology is adding a much sought-after feature – full volume encryption. This is a significant step up from the current shared folder-level encryption, which allows for full protection of the NAS’s data. There will also be no file path limit with the new encryption system, which is currently a limitation if you have many nested folders. Although encryption is applied to the entire volume, Synology promises a significant performance increase over what we have now.
The company does too its Google Drive alternative, Synology Drive is a more affordable option for those with large teams. Administrators will have the ability to remotely wipe a compromised or stolen computer to prevent data theft. For end users, they will see faster indexing of files when they do bulk transfers. The current implementation can take hours depending on the amount of data, but Synology claims the update will make things 10 times faster. That’s an impressive claim, but we’ll have to do some testing of our own to see if it’s true.
Mac users will get the same native Synology Active Backup software as Windows, which provides an easy way to take full system backups to a NAS. Compared to Time Machine, Synology’s backup solution is more useful for administrators of large teams who manage backups of multiple devices remotely and manage everything from a central dashboard.
Another feature aimed at enterprises is the addition of Write once, read a lot — or WORM, for short — in DSM 7.2. This allows you to share files with multiple people while protecting files against tampering to protect data integrity. Synology has additional options that allow businesses to adjust storage settings to comply with local record retention regulations.
Continuing Synology’s focus on data security in its 2023 forecast, Active Insight, the firm’s NAS health management tool, will soon be able to identify a ransomware attack and take a series of automated actions before an administrator can intervene manually. Similarly, Hyper Backup will gain the ability to perform a full backup of the NAS. This will come in handy when you need to restore the NAS and all its data to its original state after a breach or multi-drive failure.
That’s a ton of new features and improvements coming to Synology’s NAS enclosures. Power users have been asking for many of these utilities for some time and will finally have access to everything discussed here and more when DSM 7.2 is released in the first quarter of 2023.
Synology’s new hardware suite
Along with all the software changes, Synology also unveiled the new DiskStation DS923+ at an event in New Delhi last week. The new model looks exactly like its predecessor, the hugely popular DS920+, but there are many changes inside. Most notably, it now comes with an AMD Ryzen 1600 processor and a new, whopping 32GB RAM upgrade option. It also has an expansion slot to upgrade the LAN port to a 10GbE connection, as we’ve seen recently. DS1522+.
Among everything that changes on the DS923+ is the choice of processor. While quite capable, the Ryzen 1600 chip lacks an integrated GPU, making it worse at fast video encoding than the DS920+. the NAS to get To set up a Plex server. Synology is clearly positioning its new mid-range NAS for businesses and small teams, while Plex streaming is largely a consumer affair.
To be clear, the DS923+ can still stream your movies and shows without any problems – unless you need to pre-encode the video files.
Synology is also entering the surveillance camera market with two new offerings soon. These 500 series 5MP cameras are designed to work with Synology Control Station and include some smart features like the option to select activity zones. The best part is that you won’t need to purchase additional licenses to use these cameras with your NAS.
In addition, the new mid-range WRX560 Wi-Fi 6 router also appeared. It runs the same software as the more expensive RT6600ax.
Although the new router is already available for purchase, the rest of these products are expected to be released in the first half of 2023, along with all the major updates that come with DSM 7.2. Any Synology NAS running higher than DSM 7.1 should be upgraded to the newer firmware when it comes out next year, If you’re an Android user, it gives you even more reasons to get a Synology NAS.
