Synology DS715: the small but complete NAS for home users.

A solution of data storage to be installed in the house: this is the Synology DS715, NAS 2 drawers that can be expanded with an external box with typical features of NAS products designed for companies.

For the home user needs a NAS can accommodate two hard disks operating in parallel is often more than enough. The reduced size of these units, an advantage in positioning the house, it goes to a storage capacity that becomes important when you use the latest hard drives of large cut.

Hence a NAS with two drawers as the model Synology DS715 can meet the storage needs of home users as to capacity and footprint, without failing a series of advanced features that typically are the prerogative of models to accommodate more number of hard drives.

The heart of this NAS is the chip AL-314 Annapurna Labs, a SoC with a clock frequency of 1.4 GHz quad-core architecture. This solution provides special support for the operations of transcoding of video streams in real time, a fact appreciated in a NAS that is assumed to be used mainly in the house to store and manage multimedia content.

The transcoding of video streams is managed directly from the video server Synology, which in turn requires the installation of the APP DS video on their mobile devices. This way, you can manage your device playback of video streams, letting the NAS to perform a real-time conversion of the original video in the format best suited to the product used for viewing.

The construction of Synology DS715 takes up the proposals for two hard drives: mechanical units are front access, removable for checking, maintenance when necessary and fixed to the chassis with a stick. In the back are located the cooling fan, the two Gigabit network connections, two USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA connector. In the front Synology it has placed the power button and three LEDs to monitor the status of the unit and the operation of the two Gigabit.

The presence of two connectors Gigabit network is a typical feature of the world of professional NAS: the two network cards can operate in link aggregation allows to reach a speed of data transmission higher, but this is a feature that is unlikely to be exploited and appreciated by a home user.

The presence of two drawers for hard disk is no limit to the configuration’s Raid: Synology DS715 supports a fact the external expansion, the classic model Synology DX513 with 5 drawers for hard drives, which can be connected at a later time by opening space for both a higher storage capacity, both at different Raid mode through which combine the different disk drives.

The configuration of all the features of the NAS, as well as monitoring of its proper functioning, are through DiskStation Manager in version 5.2: it is, as noted, the proprietary operating system that installs in all their Synology NAS and providing easy access to features of DS715 without sacrificing the ability to provide you with a level of intervention on the advanced configuration of the various services. Do not miss an APP store owner, from which you can download applications specifically developed by Synology NAS to adapt to the specific fields of use.

During operation, Synology DS715 is sufficiently quiet: with traditional applications the fan rotates at a speed that will not cause discomfort, while is felt more during the transcoding without becoming annoying: helps in this also the fact that a NAS is typically not installed in an open environment but placed in a well ventilated, but out of sight.

Synology DS715 is a NAS suitable for home users who do not want to compromise with the storage and management of their data, but by their quantity and overall size prefers a solution to two hard drives in Raid 1.