Synology 2 Bay NAS DiskStation DS218 (Diskless)

I had tried a few different storage solutions for my Home and family's small business, but no solution I tried seemed to work the way that it was advertised or meet my needs. In all honesty it was because of my choice to try to find a budget solution because $400 for a NAS and then another 4-500, at least, for drives to put in it is a lot of money. I can't begin to describe how happy I am I did it though. This is a solid product. I can't speak to the uses for a media server, because I haven't gotten around to testing those features yet, but for a storage solution I can. This NAS makes back ups, data storage, and file sharing extremely easy and not just because I'm a computer science major. Even for people who may not be the best with computers, set up is super easy and the web interface is simple and very intuitive. Set up on a local network is extremely easy. Set up for remote access for multiple users though, while still much simpler than something like an Ubuntu server, still will probably require a little more than average technical and networking knowledge. Especially if running an antivirus and/or firewall as you will have to make exceptions for the remote IP address. For creating a remote network drive, you will also need either a static IP address or a domain name and a DDNS service.Overall though so far, I couldn't be happier with the product and am glad I decided to spend some extra money and get something that works great, is easy to manage, and meets all my needs. I will try to come back and update once I have the opportunity to text some of the media server features.UPDATE:So I have now had the opportunity to test some of the features using this as a media server. I have put some movies on it and and was able to stream them. My conclusion is I have some good news and some bad news. Lets get the bad news out of the way first.Bad News:If you are a fan of Plex you may be out of luck. Synology seems to have discontinued support for Plex for all model NAS servers aside from those using an intel processor. According to the Plex forums, some of the older DS418 models do have the intel chips but almost all of the new ones have the Realtek quad cores in them. Fear not though, I did find an alternate solution I will share in the good news. One other thing I did find is if there are some other services running while you are trying to stream HD video you may get some stuttering occasionally while there is other uploading or downloading going on in the background. I'm not sure if this is related to the processor or the limited amount of RAM but I plan to add more RAM in the near future I have also recently enabled the ethernet port aggregation and will test to see if that makes any difference as well. **Note: True Port aggregation will only work if you have a router that supports it. They do have a Load balance bonding but it is not the same as port aggregation. Will retest after these modifications and report back again with another update.Good News:The good news I found is, though there is some stuttering it is pretty easy to work around it by pausing some of the back up services you may have running while tyring to streaming video, which, while its not ideal, I don't find to be that big of a deal given the price point compared to other solutions. The port aggregation I enabled recently along with my plan to increase the RAM may even resolve this issue. The other good news is, for those of you who don't have your heart set on Plex, there is an application for the Amazon FireStick called Archos that seems to work very well in my opinion. You can browse all your folders on the server look at pictures, play music, and stream video. So far I have only tested this while streaming on my local network and have not yet tested remote streaming using this application. Once I have had the opportunity I will again report back with another update.

Bottom line up front, this is an amazing powerful NAS and if you purchased it you would not be disappointed!I spent a few months looking for a replacement for my Drobo FS NAS. I thought about just buying a newer version of Drobo but I was never really happy with the read and write speed. One of the feature I really liked was the BeyondRaid technology they implemented that among other features allowed me to mix and match drive size, speed, and manufactures in the same disk array without losing capacity. However, the apps I could use was abysmal and again the speed was really slow. I could copy to the Drobo at 15MB/s and download from it at 20-30MB/s. Since I was using it as a media server and to back up large data files this was a problem. The only way I had to manage it was to limit access to the Drobo but it did what it was supposed to do.However after 10 years of service, it was finally time to upgrade. I work in IT so I wasn't afraid to analyze all the different file server / NAS options available to me including building my now FreeNAS server. After about a month of research and speaking with my colleagues I found that Synology NAS boxes were highly recommended. Also they had their own version of BeyondRaid called Synology Hybrid Raid which had a lot of the features I needed for single disk redundancy and the ability to use drives of different sizes. So I decided to give them a try, I chose the DS418 because of it's dual gigabit NICs and 4 bays is enough for my use.The set up process was amazingly simple. I literally backed up my files from my Drobo, pulled the drives from my Drobo and put them into the Synology and turned the power on. I accessed the Synology NAS via my web browser and completed the setup in about 5 minutes and I immediately had access to the storage pool. It took about about 48hrs to finish doing some parity checks but the storage was available the whole time. One of the big feature I was interested in was setting up a dynamic LAG (Link Aggregation Group).To keep it simple, setting up a LAG allows you to bond the two gigabit ports to effectively double the bandwidth of your NAS. You will need a managed switch in order to set up a LAG and if you have a managed switch you most likely have the skills you need to set up the LAG. Once I got the LAG set up, I started transferring files and I was blown away by the speeds. It was 5 to 7 times faster than my previous NAS. I was regularly recording transfer and download rates of 150+MB/s and average sustained transfer rates of 90MB/s.Also there is 50+ apps you can download and install with the click of a button really opening up what you can do with this NAS. This NAS can be used by professions of my mother which is deceiving because it hides all the advanced features available to an advanced user if you just dig a little deeper.Again, I highly recommend the Synology DS412 and really there whole product sweep. It is worth every penny.