Synology DiskStation DS1621+ NAS Server with Ryzen 2.2GHz CPU, 4GB Memory, 6-Bay, 72TB Bundle with 6X 12TB Seagate IronWolf

The right size unit for the job.

Have had this for 10 months now, I did max out the ram to 32GB, all bays populated with WD Red Pro drives, along with a DX517 also populated with WD Red Pro drives. The system drives are in an SHR2 array, and the DX517 in a second SHR2 array. Im also using an SSD cache drive (iirc, Samsung EVO drive). Transfer between the system drives and the external are at about 120MiB. Im also getting about the same transfer speed over my gigabit network connection. As to the review comment on USB speeds... You are probably better off adding 10GB Ethernet, though if youre using spinning drives, it wont really matter as USB is faster than what youre going to get out of the drives. Ive setup Plex server for the first time, which was relatively pain free, although the service does seem to have a bug where Plex will hang and need to be restarted on occassion... am considering a crontab to automate this check/restart. I have also enabled SSH. The Application Portal for reverse proxy is a really nice addition, though Im now using a dedicated Raspberry pi for wireguard, pihole and reverse proxy since Docker on this device is a pain, more so without docker-compose. All in all, a night and day difference from my old NAS. That said, many of the applications Ive tried to run arent worth running on this device. If you consider anything beyond file storage a bonus, youll be very happy.

This is my second Synology NAS and the price/features/quality/support is awesome. Running 6x Synology 8TB NAS drives, 2x 2TB Crucial P5 NVMe and 2x 16GB Arch Memory SO-DIMMs. No complaints! Migration from my old Synology NAS couldnt be easier. Originally started with 4x drives in SHR-1 config and added two more drives and converted the storage pool to SHR-2 and expanded the volume. Took a long time (nearly a month), but couldnt been easier to do. Use the NAS for TimeMachine backups, file storage, app server (mostly via docker containers) and more. Easy cloud backups to Wasabi which is inexpensive.

If you can stomach the up-front cost, buy a Synology. The convenience and ease of use are well worth the price. You could build a more powerful NAS yourself for less money, but it would use more power, take up more space, and (most importantly) require more time/hassle to manage. My previous setup was a Mac mini with some USB attached storage. That worked mostly great for about 9 years, and I was looking to update the setup and thought Id give some proper NAS options a look. I have always been put off by the relatively high prices of NAS devices, particularly Synology ones, but after reading about all the built-in features I took the plunge and gave the Synology DS1621+ a try. Im glad I did! This device has a fantastic array of features, most of which I dont really need, but the ones that I use work very well and (just as importantly) were extremely simple to set up. Here are some thoughts on the things Im using so far: Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR): Im using SHR-2 for double redundancy and it was painless to set up. I love that I can pop in another drive later on and expand the pool without any trouble. It also supports checksum validation and correction with the Data Scrubbing feature if youre using the default BTRFS file system, so Ive set that to run monthly to avoid bit-rot. I dont have enough experience with this yet to say how it works in practice, but in principle this is great. Shared folders: this is the bread and butter for a NAS, and it was extremely easy to setup and configure with Synology DSM. It works SO much better than the shared drives on my old Mac mini because it handles permissions properly and everything just works. Time machine backup: this is essentially an extension of the shared folders, with one extra configuration required to make the folder appear as a native network time machine backup destination. Worked seamlessly for configuring backups for a few Macs. Docker containers: I migrated all my docker containers which were previously running on Docker Desktop on the Mac mini to the Synology and they work much better than they did on the Mac. They are faster running and simple to manage with a decent built-in UI. Id have preferred built-in Docker Compose support, hopefully thatll come in the future, but for my use case configuring via the UI was OK. Application portal / reverse proxy: I love this feature, it makes routing requests to various services super easy. Im comfortable configuring nginx by hand or via automation, but for home use I prefer a simple UI like Synology provides. You can assign certificates to routes, and everything works great with my custom domain. Certificates: I has high hopes for the built-in Lets Encrypt support, but unfortunately it requires the server to be exposed to the internet (no thanks). Hopefully in the future they support the DNS challenge option, but for now the easy way to solve this is to use the open source acme.sh which has support for tons of DNS providers and has built-in hooks to register certificates with Synologys UI. I have acme.sh running with Synologys Task Scheduler and it works great. VPN Server: supports L2TP/IPSec so you can use the built-in VPN for iPhone / Mac, no third party apps required on your devices. This is the only thing I have exposed to the internet, and in my testing it has worked right out of the box with very minimal configuration needed. Other thoughts: - Synology Chat: Slack knockoff, works better than I expected honestly! I disabled this because I dont fully trust the security of this app for exposing it to the internet. - Hyper Backup: havent fully configured this yet, but seems to support a good selection of services - File Station: really nice web-based file browser which you can access via the admin UI, or as a standalone web UI There are so many more features that I havent even begun to explore, like the built-in Plex support, but I can say so far this NAS has exceeded my expectations and I expect that Ill keep finding new useful features as I keep digging and configuring. On the hardware front, I did a couple upgrades: - 32GB ram: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0899KV2L5/ - Synology 10Gbps ethernet adapter: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G9N9KJT/ Im using two Seagate IronWolf 8TB drives and two WD Red Plus 8TB drives so far and both work well. The Seagate drives have some extra diagnostic information available due to a special built-in integration with IronWolf drives that is very neat. Unfortunately the WD Red Plus drives say they are unverified because Synology hasnt added them to the official list of verified drives for the DS1621+, but I bet that was an oversight because the WD Red Plus drives are listed as officially verified with pretty much every other Synology NAS. Doesnt make any difference in practice. Despite the high all-in cost, Im completely satisfied with my purchase and expect that itll last me a long time.

Amazon Reviewers-before I ordered this Synology unit I downloaded, read, and reviewed the “Synology 1621+ User Guide”. From a user perspective this document is essentially a technical and specifications explanation of the NAS. It was not very helpful to me for procedures to follow to correctly configure and set up this NAS. However, the “Amazon Reviewers” were outstanding! I read through all of their reviews and submitted my questions for those technical areas for which I needed information, but that was not included in the existing reviews. In every case, responses were made within 24 hours and answered my specific questions. This information permitted me to confirm my selection and to know that this NAS would meet my requirements before I placed my order. Synology Technology- since December 31st this NAS has performed perfectly. However, I needed additional assistance for the set up and configuration. I contacted Synology for assistance and could not have asked for better support. The technician for my support case has answered all of my questions. Inquiries submitted during the week are answered with 24 hours. The technician who is assisting me always provides comprehensive answers to my questions. He also includes technical publication extracts related to my question with Screen Prints and the device Path. Better solutions to my strategies are also provided. I wish that Synology had “Remote Connect” but that is not available. The technician suggested that I create a Word document with Screen Prints and upload that Word document from the Synology technical support website (portal). This has worked so far. I am adding six WD 10 TB Red NAS Pro HDDs and should complete my setup and configuration next week. Adding a HDD, one at a time requires about 10-15 hours to complete. At this juncture the 1621+ has performed perfectly and the NAS performance is outstanding!

Synology lags behind others when it comes to catering to power users. Sure there is a slightly better processor in thier newer NAS products but all they can give you is USB 3.1 Gen 1? Come on there! The very least you can do is give us USB 3.1 Gen 2. Very frustrating. Sinology does not seem interested in those users who need to transfer really big files fast. I guess I have to look at the likes of QNAP to get what I need.

This is my 2nd Synology product (the first one is a ds1517+) and Im loving it! Im able to migrate some services I set up on the first nas over to the 2nd so eventually, I can reset my first one so I will be able to optimize it better than I initially did. The DS 1621+ has the speed I need and is upgradeable if I decide I need to install a 10gb network card or nvme cache to speed things up even more! Ive been using it for about 2 weeks now and so far its handling everything Ive thrown at it! I would happily suggest someone consider this if they need a nas with 6 bays and fast storage. If you plan on hosting your own media server because this model doesnt have onboard video in the processor I would avoid trying to run something like plex directly on it but instead set the plex server upon an old desktop or laptop or on another nas that has a processor with onboard/external graphics built-in so it can handle the transcoding portion while the nas handles the data storage portion of your home videos

Flexibility, 6 bays, setup fairly easy. I’m using 6 4tb drives giving close to 18tb avg. I’m using it on a win 10 network with 4 total NAS units. Speed and function were exactly as I expected. I store photos and data files all critical. I expect long service from the unit, drives will be changed around the 2-4 yr service life on a 24/7 cycle.

Incredible performance! I upgraded from a DS413 and this is noticeably faster and I’ve got two more slots to work with. No regrets besides the initial cost. Expecting 8 years out of this one

So far this is a great NAS system; took very little time to set it up, configure it, get it on the network, and start using it. Ive had no issues with the product at this point. However, one of the reasons I chose this model and purchased extra memory was so that I could have quick and easy VMs when needed, but the VM capability requires an extra license that doesnt come with the unit.