Synology DiskStation DS1520+

Product Information

Installing a Synology NAS is easier than you can imagine. This article is a Synology DS1520+ overview. I will show you how to set up and install your NAS for the first time. Also, how to use its dedicated operating system DiskStation Manager (DSM) and perform basic configurations.

It's great to have a home server - it's a little slice of the cloud, in your home. I like home servers because while I trust the cloud, I trust a computer I can touch about 1% more than someone else's computer. The DS1520+ also features an additional USB port for further connection of external storage, as well as a small number of supported 3rd Party USB peripherals. The DS1520+ does not arrive with a visual Port (HDMI, VGA, DisplayPort, etc), so a Keyboard, Video Mouse (KVM) setup is impossible here. But there are several wireless dongles supported by the device, as well as UPS failover devices and network monitoring tools. Also, many of you may already be aware are, but it never hurts to remind people, you cannot use these USB port to directly connect to the NAS system. Devices that utilise these USB Type-A ports will be seen as client devices to the NAS host system and therefore do not work utilising USB protocol in the same way a direct-attached storage (DAS) system might. But for this moment in time, the DS1520+ is a mighty powerhouse that can support many simultaneous users with massive amounts of storage, and most of that expense will be the in hard drives and not the DS1520+. You will be asked for the NAS credentials, and once you enter them, you will have access to NAS and shared folders.This system is straightforward, which is great for non-tech users. The first time logging into the GUI, the system will provide you three essential tips for its usage.

Synology Video Station – Manage all your movies, TV shows, and home videos. Stream them to multiple devices or share them with friends and family. Though both systems feature 8GB of DDR4 memory, the 1522+ has much higher pedigree and wins here thanks to its use of much more impressive ECC (error code correction) memory to identify and repair any bit level write errors and can also be scaled to a considerably higher 32GB of memory (with the DS1520+ maxing out at 8GB). NAS Model

🍪 Privacy & Transparency

Now in terms of the external connectivity and how it can be upgraded, this is another big area of difference between the DS1520+ and DS1522+ NAS. Both systems arrive with 4 1GbE RJ45 LAN ports, which can be combined via link aggregation/Port Trunking to allow up to 4Gb/s bandwidth between the system and a supported smart switch. However, the big difference in bandwidth potential between these two NAS centres around the DS1522+ features the option to upgrade it’s network connectivity to 10GbE by installing an E20G22-T1-mini 10G network upgrade in the available proprietary slot. Now, this is not a connection that is available in the default DS1522+ and is an optional upgrade, but still it is good to know that the option of adding 1,000MB/s bandwidth is available down the road. The DS1520+ does not include an option to increase the network connectivity in this way (though unofficial and not officially supported USB-to2.5GbE and 5GbE connectivity via 3rd party adapters are possible (but I wouldn’t trust their long term stability really) and for many, this will be a deal-breaker between these systems in the same way the CPU differences between these two NAS’ does. Both systems see the same sized chassis and the 10GbE upgradable slot on the DS1522+ using a smaller M.2 sized connector rather than the PCIe 3×8 slot of other Synology NAS, so it does not impact the size of the chassis. Model As you might expect, software support on the DS1520+ NAS is pretty high, but there is an extra little thing to consider when looking at how your file performance and handling will be on this NAS. The Synology DS1520+ NAS is one of only around 8 Synology of NAS in the range that feature twin NVMe SSD slots for vastly improving internal data speeds – but the DS1520+ also arrives with 4 LAN ports, so the external speeds that the device can reach (with the right RAID and internal media) can surpass 400MB/s Read/Write and likely all the way up to 450MB/s. Additionally, as it is arriving with quite an impressive internal hardware base, it means that you are going to be able to get practically every single Synology 1st party application (along with a whole bunch of solid 3rd party ones) running very well on the DS1520+ and every single application should’ve supported, such as: Having NVMe slots is a nice feature, but due to the LAN limitations of the DS1520+, they can only make a dramatic impact on some activities, and not user data transfers. Also located on the base of the Synology DS1520+ we find the two NVMe SSD bays, each of which allows you to install a PCIe-based SSD for caching support of the large hard drive RAID array with solid-state flash caching. This is a feature that Synology has seemingly introduced into every single one of the 2020/2021 PLUS series NAS hardware portfolio and one that allows users to vastly improve internal performance. Frequently of benefit to accessing large databases of data that contain numerous smaller files, large scale thumbnail generation, shared folder directories and more frequently accessed repositories of data. You can also encrypt this folder, so only the people with the encryption key can use it. For now, I don't need this option.

Where it is much harder to be critical is in respect of the Synology DSM platform, as this is easily the most mature NAS operating system around. At the time of writing the version on our review system was DSM 6.2.3-25426 Update 2, the initial release of DSM for this hardware. It is also worth noting that the E10M20-T1 card that upgraded the DS1517+ to 10GbE also gave it two NVMe slots, matching the DS1520+.

Business NAS solution with expansion in mind

The external performance when comparing the brand new Synology DS1520+ vs that of the fractionally older Synology DS920+ is probably one of the largest areas of disparity between both NAS systems. Although the additional 4GB of memory will play its part, the fact that the DS1520+ arrives with 4x 1GbE LAN ports by default, compared with the 2x 1GbE featured on the DS920+ largely makes this an open shut case. Even when using link aggregation the best throughput that four 1GbE adapters are capable is about 450Mb/s, where a single 10GbE port can do double that performance easily. Next up, let us discuss storage on the DS1522+ and DS1520+M, as these two systems are near enough identical on that one. Both arrive with 5x SATA storage bays, though you can deploy either NAS with as little as a single rive if you want. From there you can go ahead and install enough drives to accommodate a RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 or Synology’s own flexible RAID configuration, SHR. Both systems can be initialized to operate with either a BTRFS or EXT4 file system, as well as supporting the wide range of services and features of the Synology Storage Manager. Finally, as mentioned, both systems feature M.2 NVMe SSD bays and both only allow these to be used for caching with DSM and its services/storage. Even in terms of expandability, these systems are largely identical. with both supporting the connection of two DX517 expansion chassis and reaching a total potential 15 bays of storage. As both systems support the latest version of Synology DSM, that maximum volume, simultaneous volumes, active storage shares and hybrid storage support are largely identical. The only area where things might differ significantly between the DS1520+ and DS1522+ is regarding Hard Drive compatibility. Synology changed its position a bit on compatibility in a few of the 2022 series hardware releases (beginning with the RS3622xs+, DS3622xs+ and DS2422+ at the start of the year) with them stating that they fully support the use of their own HDDs and SSDs in these systems, but not in third party drives from the likes of WD and Seagate. These drives will still be usable in their systems, but the user will be greeted by a warning message regarding compatibility. Now, this is not a factor of the DS1520+ compatibility, however, we are still (at the time of writing) awaiting confirmation of the HDD compatibility list of the DS1522+ NAS, so although it is NOT CONFIRMED RIGHT NOW it is possible that your choice of supported HDDs might impact which NAS is better for your storage. Model

Digging deeper will only further increase your interest. Not only is this a 5-bay model that uses the rather peppy, and yet power sipping, Intel Celeron “Gemini Lake” J4125 processor. Not only does it come standard with 8GB of Samsung DDR4-2666 (and not 2400 as usually used) RAM, it also comes with nice to have features. Features such as dual NVME M.2 slots and dual eSATA ports for easy future expansion abilities. Much like getting a four core CPU, these are features that not that long ago were reserved for pricier models. Yet here we are. A ‘Plus’ line model that offers all that and still comes with an MSRP of under 7-bills. Anyway, my Synology DS1511+ is about ten years old and it's working great but I am using it more and more and throwing more and more at it. It did have some challenges running a Minecraft Server recently, on top of all its other responsibilities. Unlike the disparity in price point between the Synology DS920+ and DS1520+, the internal performance that is possible on both of the systems, like-for-like, is actually quite close. In fact, unless you populate both devices to the fullest extent of their individual hardware architecture, both the DS920+ and DS1520+ will perform near identically both in terms of first and third-party software. This is largely thanks to their near-identical internal hardware, the Intel Celeron J4125 CPU, DDR4 memory and inclusion of NVMe SSD for caching. If you populate these two NAS systems with the same degree of hard drive and SSD media, both of them will perform and execute the DSM software platform very well. It is only when you fully populate each device with more drive (as found in the 5-bay DS1520+ system) that you present the opportunity for increased internal performance, thanks to more hard drives featured in the array. However, this performance difference is still somewhat minimal with regard to RAID performance-boosting support, as a single HDD/SSD drive will barely present at most 50-100MB/s improvement between them. Additionally, this can largely be negated by the fact both systems support NVMe SSD caching (and the IOPs + multi-user accessing benefits it can provide). After you finish the DSM installation and initial setup, you will be brought to its system GUI, aka, the DiskStation Manager Desktop.

One can only conclude that while developing the DS1520+, the bean-counters at Synology decided that while some improvements were needed, but these needed to be countered by taking some very useful functionality away, disappointingly. Finally, use your Synology account to login into your NAS. After this, the system will bring you to the DSM Desktop. Synology High Availability (for Syncing Synology NAS and having instant failover support to ensure constant connectivity) First, you need to make sure the relative file sharing protocols have been enabled for your Synology NAS. Go to Control Panel > File Services, and enable all services you need based on your device's OS. At the moment, I just need SMB for Windows.