Synology DiskStation DS1019+

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.