Synology DiskStation DS716+II
While the DS215j felt a little flimsy when opened, that's definitely not the case with DS716+II. The unit1
looks really slick in black and has a metallic finish worthy of its
positioning in the Synology lineup. Anyone familiar with the Synology
naming scheme will recognise that the DS716+II comes with a support for a
total of 7 drive bays, but it's worth noting that the base unit itself
has only 2 drive bays, each capable of supporting a 10TB drive, giving
you a theoretical 20TB of storage (without redundancy).To bump it up to 7 drives (and overall capacity of 70TB), you will need to buy the Synology DX513 that costs Rs. 55,000 in India, over and above what you will pay for the DS716+II, and the drives to fill all those extra bays.
The DS716+II comes with two Gigabit Ethernet ports at the back, which
offer redundancy in case one of the links goes down, a feature that
will definitely be appreciated by the enterprise users. You also get two
USB 3.0 ports at the back, and an eSATA port as well. The rear also
features the reset button, a Kensington Security Slot to keep the unit
secure, and of course the power port and the fan.
Apart from the
two drive bays, each of which has a drive status indicator LED of its
own, the front has a status indicator that gives you an idea of the
overall health of the NAS unit. Below that there are the two LAN
indicators, with the power button at the bottom right of the front side
of the unit. In between, you have a USB 3.0 port and a copy button,
which lights up when you connect a USB drive or a camera, and can be
used to copy data from the connected device to the Synology unit.
We moved our two drives from the DS215j to the DS716+II by following simple instructions
on the Synology website. Between our previous review and now, Synology
pushed a big software update to most of its NAS units in the form of DMS
6.0, which brings a bunch of new features and enhancements.
Software We talked about the Synology package system in our previous review,
and one of the additions with the DSM 6.0 update is the MailPlus Server
package that turns your DS716+II into a full-fledged email server.
MailPlus needs a license to work, and one that you can use for up to
five users is bundled for free with the DS716+II. If you want to use it
for more than five users, you need to buy an additional license.
MailPlus Server includes basic functionality like spam control and
another bundled package called MailPlus that acts as a full-fledged
webmail client. You even get a mobile app that you can use as an email
client on your Android or iOS device. The MailPlus Server comes with
POP3 and IMAP support so you can of course use your favourite
third-party email clients such as Outlook or Apple Mail.We set up
the email server using one of our test domains with a couple of users,
and found that everything worked as you'd expect. Admittedly, we didn't
test this functionality with any kind of a load that the unit would see
in a real organisation, but in our limited tests the unit seemed more
than capable of handling a fair amount of load for a small to
medium-sized organisation that doesn't have to deal with crazy amounts
of email. Synology says the server can handle 81,300 emails per day,
with 50 the recommended upper limit for the number of MailPlus clients.
Another
feature on the DS716+II that will appeal to enterprise customers is its
ability to act as storage for VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix
platforms. Of course you will need a license from the respective vendors
and you will also have to set up the servers, but this makes the
Synology unit an ideal storage ground for most of your virtualisation
needs. The DS716+II also comes with a built-in VPN server with support
for up to 20 simultaneous connections.DSM 6.0 also brings a brand
new search feature that lets you quickly run full content searches
across your unit (or selected folders/ volumes) from the File Explorer
app on the Synology. The server searches through over 700 file formats,
including looking through metadata of media files if you want.
The update also brought in support for Btrfs, adding to the choice of
file systems available for your disk when you are setting up the unit.
Synology has shared a host of technical information
detailing why it believes Btrfs is a better file system, and if you are
setting up a new system, there are enough advantages to use it to
format your drives.
Specifications and video streaming The
DiskStation DS716+II is powered by an Intel Celeron N3160 64-bit
quad-core processor clocked at 1.6GHz, capable of burst speeds up to
2.24GHz, accompanied by 2GB of RAM. The chip comes with a dedicated
hardware encryption engine (AES-NI), which means you can keep your data
secure with minimal overhead and loss of performance.
Synology
says the DS716+II is capable of average read speeds of 226.1MBps and
141.19MBps write speed under RAID 1 configuration, though your
experience may vary depending upon the software and hardware
environment, including the drives you use inside the unit.
Interestingly, with encrypted data transmission, the DS716+II is capable
of hitting speeds of over 226.09MBps reading and 138.04MBps writing,
which is an insignificant difference compared to unencrypted data,
underlining the importance of hardware encryption on the unit. This
makes the DS716+II a great pick for anyone who values protection of
their data.
The other headline feature of the unit is hardware
transcoding engine, which may appeal to businesses looking to run a
streaming server off their Synology unit, but in the real world will be
music to the ears of anyone looking to run Plex or similar setups at
their home.Not only can DiskStation DS716+II transcode MKVs and
other non-native file formats on the go and serve them to the Apple TV
and apps on your smartphones and tablets, it is also capable of
transcoding and streaming 4K video at 30fps to one client, or three
simultaneous full-HD streams. Note that these limits are for transcoding
- an operation that requires converting the file from one format to the
other in real time - but if the media players can natively read the
file format, you can have dozens of clients connecting to the server
simultaneously without any problems.
Like we briefly touched upon in our DiskStation DS215j review,
Synology has a rather elaborate set up of apps, each for a specific use
case. Given the DiskStation DS716+II's strength as a video server, we
spent a lot of time with the DS video app on our iPad and our new Apple TV
and came to fall in love with it, especially on the smaller screen.
Before you can start streaming videos, you will need to install the
Video Station package on the Synology unit.Installing packages is
easy via the Web-based Synology interface that presents a Windows
desktop like UI insider your Web browser. Once the package is installed,
you need to run the Video Station app and point it to the folders
containing your Movies, TV Shows, Home Videos, and TV recordings; a
pretty familiar setup, if you've run any kind of video streaming servers
in the past. Once this setup is complete, you can safely close the
browser and go back to the DS Video app on your mobile device or Apple
TV, or you can choose to stream videos right in the browser. When you
point Video Station to your media files for the first time, it downloads
meta information related to the media from the Internet so that you can
see things like cover art and movie descriptions.
As we briefly mentioned earlier, where Synology really shines is the
DS video app. The app, backed by the transcoding engine at the back,
handled every file format that we threw at it, including MKVs and really
old AVIs. Controls are intuitive - you move your finger left or right
to go forward or back in a video, while you go up or down to change the
volume. There's a scrub bar that appears at the bottom when you tap to
see the controls, and where the DS video app really shines is how it
instantly finds its new place in the video and resumes playback near
instantly.
We've tried various media players in the past, and
found that most struggled with this aspect. With other media players,
going back and forth in a video file often resulted in out of sync
audio, and even the app crashing at times, but not once did we face the
problem with DS video. With most modern formats like x264 encoded MP4s
and M4Vs, scrubbing back and forth was instantaneous, with older
XVID-encoded AVIs there was a noticeable delay when trying the same
operation, but even this was a welcome change from players that simply
choke on such operations.
Other apps There are
several other apps including the DS Download app, which is a full
fledged download manager that even intercepts magnet links on your iOS
device and offers to download them onto your Synology unit, should you
come across something interesting while you are browsing on your iPhone
or iPad. The DS file app makes it easy to move files across folders or
volumes on your Synology unit. In fact the entire suite of DS apps make
it very easy to perform all day to day operations without having to
leave your iOS or Android device. The best part is that unlike many
other companies that seem to release mobile apps to just tick off that
item in a checklist, Synology's apps are regularly updated to bring in
new features and bug fixes.
The updates are not just limited to
the mobile apps. The packages we talked about earlier receive regular
updates as well, and even the Synology itself receives new features and
fixes via firmware updates (all of these can be set to auto-update
themselves silently or with notifications). The company truly has an
ever-evolving ecosystem.Another feature that has been available
across the Synology lineup that we didn't get a chance to talk about
earlier is the ability of these units to act as backup targets for your
Windows and Mac machines. You need to use the Cloud Station Server on
your Synology unit, and install the corresponding client that's
available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, as well as iOS to
automatically backup the data on these machines to your Synology unit.
Your Synology also advertises itself as a backup point for Time Machine,
so Mac users can use that feature without having to install anything
extra on their machine.
VerdictThe Synology DS716+II is available in
India at a price of Rs. 49,500, which isn't pocket change by any means.
However, the unit packs features like hardware encryption and 4K
transcoding, which, when combined with Synology's excellent software
ecosystem, make it a worthy purchase if you are going to utilise most of
those features.You can also consider the DS216+II (Rs. 35,000),
which has both 4K transcoding and hardware encryption, but lacks support
for the expansion bays and some other features like virtualisation.
Home users interested in 4K transcoding can consider the DS216Play (Rs.
27,000) as well.
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