Business and home users that want to go easy into the world of IT, NAS, backups and internal services will enjoy the simplicity and versatile options od DiskStation.

DiskStation systems are a mix of software and hardware. The hardware can come in different set-ups eg. space for 2 or 4 hard disks, different CPUs and memory, different form format… The software is what will make you a happy “expert” in managing NAS. DiskStation makes easy to set the system up. It will ask you how do you want to configure the disks (like, sum the capacity of the disks, use ones as backup copies of the others, or a mix of both). The software will do all the work of setting the underlying OS for you. There are tools to create users, groups, share folders and control services. But DiskStation does not end here! It has lots of softwares and services you can install for free (or a little price sometimes). If you are using it in an office environment, you will find some jewels: VPN service, backup to another NAS or external service, LDAP, Mail server, Dropbox.com-like service for your users, backup-time machine service, a suite of office and collaboration online tools (like Google Suite) and other Open Source apps (CRM, ERP). For domestic and home office, check the Video (home theater, Kodi-like) app, music server, photo gallery, P2P background download, auto-copy an USB pen drive when connected, and many more. Every service has a ton of nice features (eg. forget Dropbox, upload a file to the NAS and share it via an expirable URL). Many DiskStation services have a counterpart in app version. For example. DS Photo uploads the photos in your mobile device to the

Some times you are short on information when things “happen”. Eg, there appears a symbol of “indexing” but you don’t know why it’s indexing now and how much it takes.

I have been using disk station for more than 10 years. Thanks to its RAID configuration, two disk failures in that time went without any data loss. I have used it in a few different ways (including hosting a website and running own cloud file station!).

What I appreciate the most about the Synology DiskStation is the versatility. It is not a simple NAS drive. Through the comprehensive, yet easy to use extension system, the disk station can be expanded with Email server, Git server, VPN server, Media server among other functionalities.

The firmware upgrades could be simpler. Sometimes it is not as straightforward as I would have liked.

It do the job designed for, it is not the fastest but do the job.

It is very easy to remove and copy a new copy of the virtual machine, so everytime the students want to break the computer we can recover to use very fast

We can not sync with google drive and most of our exercises are in google drive. If they could creaty a sync with google drive will be a good solution for us.

Many features available in an invisible appliance. I use 2 disk stations, one at our dental office and one at home. I have them linked to back up to each other, so offsite backups are painless. Essentially I control my own cloud. Accessing data via mobile is very easy using my iPad so I can get a needed file quickely. The hardware has been rock solid over the years, and the software updates come regularly, eliminating threats and adding features, while not being buggy. Truly a great product that keeps getting better. They continue to support the units I have with software updates even though they are several years old. So far no feeling of obsolescence.

A few things that require set up can sometimes be a bit confusing. Unless you are willing to read a bit online and think it through, it's a bit of work to get the most out of this highly capable system. If you happen to be experienced in setting up NAS systems, then I'm sure it's not that hard. For me, however, even though I'm an electrical and computer engineer, I still have to relearn some things each time I interact with the software. This is probably a complement since it means that it runs well enough that you end up not interacting very often to make adjustments.