Synology DiskStation DS1019+
Device
A great 5-bay NAS for those needing a bit more oomph.
NAS units are morethan simple fileservers thesedays. They run allsorts of server apps thatrequire faster CPUs andfaster storage than thehumble NAS units of thepast provide. Synology’snew DiskStation DS1019+ iskitted out with hardwarefeatures that reflect thedemands placed on NASunits in 2019.
The DS1019+ is builtaround an Intel CeleronJ3455, quad-core, 64-bit CPU.This CPU contains not onlyhardware video transcodingsupport (Intel QuickSync),but a hardware encryptionengine (AES-NI) as well.These features meanapplications like Plex orEmby can transcode video, oryou can encrypt your storagearray without an impact onoverall performance.
Also inside the DS1019+ is8GB of DDR3L RAM. That’squite a fair chunk of memoryfor a NAS, so it’ll be tough forthe average user to run outof memory doing the typicalhome server related tasks.That said, out of the factorythe 8GB is provided via two4GB SO-DIMMs that can beupgraded at your leisure,should you be runningapplications that demandmore than the included 8GBof RAM.
If four drive bays aren’tenough for your storageneeds, the DS1019+ has5-bays for 3.5-inch or 2.5-inchdrives. With the latest 14GBSATA HDDs, there’s thepotential for 70TB of rawstorage (more like 56TB afteryou’ve enabled Synology’sHybrid RAID).
One of the unique featuresof the DS1019+ are two M.2NVMe PCIe SSDs for blazingfast storage. What’s thepoint of these M.2 slots in aNAS? Synology also has afeature called “SSD Cache”that stores frequentlyaccessed data on the speedySSDs, reducing I/O latencyand improving systemperformance. SSDs installedin the M.2 slots can also beused to host serverapplications (e.g: internalwikis, databases,development servers, etc.)with superior performanceto SATA hard disks.
Considering the DS1019+contains a relatively fastCPU (for a NAS), loads ofRAM and two slots for superquick SSDs, it’s interestingSynology didn’t kit it outwith 10GbE LAN ports.There’s two 1 GbE LAN portsthat can be configured foreither link aggregation orfailover, but even with200MB/sec of bandwidth, aRAID array of modern disksand even a single PCIeNVMe SSD will bebottlenecked.
Software wise, theDS1019+ runs DiskStationManager 6.2 (aka DSM) –subjectively the best NASoperating system on themarket. There’s loads andloads of features, with somehighlights including Dockersupport, Let’s Encryptintegration, Office 365 & GSuite backups, iSCSI built-inand a vast array of thirdpartypackages – if it doesn’trun on DSM, you probablydon’t need it.
QNAP’s TS-473 is probablythe closest competitor, whichonly has four drive bays andless RAM, but packs 10 GbELAN, a faster CPU and PCIeexpansion card slots. Butwhat makes the DS1019+stand out is Synology’s DSMsoftware, which has a slightedge in features over theQNAP, making the Synology amore pragmatic purchaseunless the hardware specs ofthe QNAP reallymatter toyou.
Great baseline specs, and built upon the finest NAS OS out there.
8/10 Points