Synology DiskStation DS1618 + review | TechRadar

While everyday consumers have many affordable NAS options, high-end residential users or small businesses have a much smaller market. But for those who work with photos or videos, having large amounts of fast storage is very important.

And that's where Synology DS1618 + plus six-bay fits. It's affordable enough for business users, but it also has sophisticated hardware and upgrade options that will appeal to business users. Synology has offered excellent choices in the past (like the DS1517 +). So we did extensive testing of the DS1618 + to see if it was worth it. At first glance, its price is quite high, with a lot of features and scalability without being excessive. The excellent Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system from Synology also continues to progress.

Synology DS1618 + price and availability

As always, shop online at the best price. The DS1618 + is usually sold without a hard drive, although some retailers offer bundles. Generally, you will get the best deal by buying the drives separately and installing them yourself.

The DS1618 + is sold in a single configuration with 4 GB of RAM. The barebones NAS without any disk will cost you around $ 750 / £ 750 / $ 1,200 AU.

It is quite easy to add RAM yourself. If you plan to use multiple applications or multiple virtual machines, it is recommended that you install at least 8 GB in total, and an additional 4 GB should cost only $ 35 / AU $ 30 / AU $ 70.

For this review, we tested the DS1618 + with the fantastic 14GB Seagate IronWolf ($ 500 / £ 450) and IronWolf Pro ($ 600 / £ 550 / AU 950) discs. It is strongly recommended that you use real NAS drives, and at the moment 4TB disks are the best choice for maximum capacity.

The DS1618 + also supports PCIe expansion cards, offered in some models. The M2D18 allows the use of M.2 SATA and NVMe SSDs for caching, priced at $ 150 / £ 150 / AU $ 250. The M2D17 is only M.2 SATA and costs $ 110 / £ 115 / AU $ 225. A 10GbE network card will cost you around $ 150 / £ 150 / AU $ 250.

Design features

The six-bay Synology DS1618 + adds to the previous five-bay DS1517 +, offering the possibility of up to 84 TB of storage in a single NAS enclosure. Although many users will never need this space, having additional drive bays may also prove useful for smaller budgets. For example, you can easily drop the disks of your current NAS if you are upgrading from a smaller Synology model, while still retaining enough space to add new disks and updates. future level. Plus, having more bays gives you the ability to buy more low-capacity, low-cost drives, which can be much less per gigabyte than using fewer, larger, and more expensive drives. If you find a good deal on the drives, or if you aim for the best value, the savings on the drives (for the same overall capacity) can probably cover the cost of six bays instead of four.

While the DS1618 + has under the hood? The highly efficient 14nm Intel Atom C3538 processor was launched at the end of 2017 and is a decent upgrade from the C2000 series processors previously used by Synology. The Atom C3538 offers four cores that can boost up to 2.1 GHz, as well as 8 MB of L2 cache. The NAS comes with 4GB of DDR4 RAM, which can easily be upgraded to 32GB on two slots.

At the rear, four Gigabit LAN ports support link aggregation and failover. You also have three USB 3.0 ports (one at the front) and two eSATA connections for adding external drives.

But the real feature of the DS1618 + is its PCIe expansion slot, which allows for some convenient upgrades. Perhaps the most useful, you can use a 10 Gigabit Ethernet card for very high speed file transfers. For those who need fast random access speed, you can also add an SSD adapter card – supporting M.2 SATA disks or faster NVMe M.2 SSDs.

Configuration and software

Like most modern NAS devices, it is very easy to turn on the Synology DS1618 +. The six bays are tool-free and the 3.5-inch discs snap easily. Then simply plug it into your network, turn it on, and then point your web browser at http://find.synology.com and following the instructions. Synology even includes a convenient quick start guide to make it even easier.

During the installation, if you use multiple drives (and why would not you?), You will need to choose your RAID type. While mirrored drives are perfect for redundancy, we opted for the Synology Hybrid RAID system. Those with extensive NAS experience can opt for a different RAID configuration, SHR is a good compromise between redundancy and storage capacity and is well equipped to handle a mix of drives and future upgrades. If you are using Seagate IronWolf disks (as tested), you can directly monitor disk status and statistics from the NAS interface using Seagate IronWolf Health Management.

Synology DSM is one of our favorite NAS operating systems. Although we present here the highlights, the full list of features and options is extremely long. Fortunately, Synology has a convenient online demo where you can try it yourself (https://demo.synology.com/en-global). There are also over 100 different apps that can add additional features – check out the list at https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/packages.

As expected, the DS1618 + has all your favorite NAS features. Absolute priority for individuals and businesses, it offers an extremely comprehensive and flexible backup solution. The software also offers many security options (plus a Security Advisor that looks for problems), from the basics to high-end protection. You can also easily share and manage files, including creating a personal cloud.

The NAS can also run a VPN server, host mail, or support recording up to 40 IP cameras. It is also compatible with DLNA streaming and supports 1080P transcoding.

The DS1618 + really stands out from the lower NAS by its ability to run a virtual machine. With Synology's powerful hardware and Virtual Machine Manager, you can actually install and run complete operating systems, such as Linux and Windows. Not one – Synology evaluates the NAS to four. (Of course, the more virtual machines you run, the more RAM you will need.) Running a virtual machine makes it easier to experiment with different operating systems, as well as the test. or the execution of software requiring Windows. You can even connect remotely and use the operating system as a normal computer, thus allowing the NAS to host multiple users.

PCIe expansion and upgrades

By allowing users to select a PCIe expansion card, Synology reduced the initial cost of the DS1618 + and provided users with a variety of upgrade paths to meet different needs. It's very easy to add a card – just remove the NAS cover and the PCIe slot cover and plug it in.

Although many NAS enclosures offer integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, making it available as an upgrade provides more flexibility and allows the unit to appeal to a wide range of users. It also means that the DS1618 + is scalable enough, allowing you to add features if and when you need them. For example, a professional home user can use the DS1618 + for video editing. At the beginning, being able to connect the four gigabit Ethernet ports together gives a lot of bandwidth. But down the track, you start editing 4K footage, even 8K footage, and you need an extra bitrate. So you buy a 10GbE network card for the DS1618 +, and another for your computer. You can then connect them directly together and use the NAS Gigabit ports to connect to your existing network. This gives you top-notch speeds without having to immediately invest in a 10GbE router. Later, if you need to connect more computers to the NAS at a speed of 10 GbE, you can upgrade the network to manage it.

Alternatively, for those who need fast access to many different data but without a huge global throughput (think of databases, etc., in a small business), adding an SSD cache can actually improve performances. You also have two choices of cards: for example, if you already have an M.2 SATA NAS, you can enter the cheaper PCIe card and add it. Or, for optimal performance, you can choose the NVMe route.

The other upgrade option is the RAM. The NAS comes with a single 4GB chip, but has a second location to handle more. The upgrade process is very simple: just return the NAS and remove the access panel located below for easy access to RAM.

Although you need to drop the included RAM if you want to go for the 32GB as complete as possible, a drop in the second 4GB dimm is worth the $ 35 / AU $ 30 / AU $ 70 cost. The NAS not only benefits from additional RAM, but the Atom C3538 processor supports dual channel memory for increased performance. It should also be noted that although the pre-installed RAM is not ECC, the DS1618 + supports ECC RAM if you need the error correction function.

If you need more storage, the DS1618 + can handle external drives via USB or eSATA. You can also add Synology DX517 expansion units, for a total of 224 TB of storage.

Finally, the NAS also supports USB Wi-Fi adapters. You can create a local access point for connecting to mobile devices or as a backup on your wired connection.

Performance Test

We equipped the DS1618 + with six Seagate IronWolf disks (including two Pro models) and configured them using the Synology Hybrid RAID system. We connected the NAS to a standard Gigabit network and streamed streaming media to a range of portable devices and smart TVs.

Read / write performance with NAS devices is always a complex measure, as they vary depending on the drives you have used, the type of RAID, network, and applications that the NAS is running. We did not have this optional 10GbE NIC to test, but luckily our DS1618 + test maximized the throughput of a single Gigabit network connection (reads 113.2 MB / s, write 111.7 MB / s ) for large files. By using an additional 10 GbE card, speeds in excess of 1000 MB / s are theoretically possible, and with the right combination of high-performance disks and RAID configuration, you should still be able to maximize this network bandwidth. Wild tests with 10 GbE networks show that the updated DS1618 + hardware really gives the NAS a higher performance than older models. As noted earlier, it's a good idea to add 4GB of additional RAM if you plan to run many applications or virtual machines.

We found that under a heavy load or in a hot environment, the slightly smaller 92mm fans than the usual DS1618 + can become quite strong. The compact housing also does not do much to lessen the noise of the disc. It is therefore best to keep the unit away from the work areas. The NAS has excellent foam and rubber feet, which helps eliminate vibrations.

Final verdict

It's hard not to like the DS1618 +, with its powerful hardware mix and flexible upgrade options. As for high-end NAS devices, their price is also very competitive. Of course, it faces fierce competition from other models of Synology NAS, as well as competing products.

The PCIe slot is a good addition, but the DS1618 + really stands out with the Synology DSM operating system, which provides a large number of software options and additional packages. Combined with the ability to run virtual machines, this means that this NAS is an excellent choice for individuals and small businesses – and much more needs to be done to keep upgrades relevant in the coming years. .