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

This review is for the Synology DS1621+ Ive just finished getting my new 1621+ fully installed and up to speed. It took about three weeks to install all the software packages and figure all the settings out and though Im still thinking through some of the decisions Ive made, Im ready to write a review. I bought the DS1621+ to augment a QNAP TS-453-Be I purchased just under a year ago as a replacement for a QNAP TS-453 Pro which had its motherboard die. This is my second Synology--my first was a two-bay model which was my first NAS. I use my server for the following: 1) Plex server. Music only. And for this purpose the Synology is great. 2) Photo organization. I use Synologys photo organization software and Lightroom. I like running duplicate software because if one goes on the fritz, I can turn to the other. Synologys Moments AI photo organization software is good. Perhaps a bit less capable than QNAPs QuMagie, but close and Synology wont ever be far behind on software. 3) Backups of Windows and Mac computers through Acronis and Time Machine. 4) Virtual machine Windows 10 for when I need to get to something and Im not at my own computer. And for running the disk indexer X1 to have all my documents immediately accessible wherever I am. I never thought I would return to Synology after gettting a QNAP, but here I am with the 1621+, and I find myself preferring my Synology 1621+ to my QNAP TS-453-Be for a number of reasons. But first, let me say that on the hardware front, QNAP probably wins. Its close, but QNAP seems to give you more hardware for the price. For instance you can get 2.5GB ethernet, Intel chip, VMM-capable four-bay NAS from QNAP for less than the price of this 1621+ which is stuck at 1GB (unless you buy a PCIE card). Of course, the QNAP would be a four-bay model to the Synologys six bays, but the QNAP would have an HDMI port, more USB ports, an audio jack, and on and on. Hardware is QNAPs strength. The reasons for buying Synology: First, Synology has a better three-year warranty to QNAPs newly-revised-downward two years. And my first QNAP died a bad death last spring right after the five year mark (prompting my purchase of the TS-453-BE) while my original two-bay Synology still runs today, eleven years after I purchased it. In the end, I will take reliability over features, and I consider Synology more reliable. The second reason I went with this Synology is the constant problems with security QNAP servers have had over the last several years. Its hard to fault QNAP for being attacked, and theyve probably hardened their security--perhaps even beyond Synologys--as a result, but Ive left my QNAP unplugged for much of the last year because of the constant attacks their servers have faced. But the ultimate reason to get Synology is the software. Synology software is just a cut above everyone else, including QNAP. It feels bulletproof. Most important for me was the Synology disk system which treats all your hard drives--and they can be of varied sizes--as one large storage pool across the entirety of which RAID striping can occur. With QNAP, if you want to increase the amount of storage you have in your NAS, you must back up the NAS, replace all your hard drives, do a restore and go on with your newly increased capacity. You cant replace just one drive with a larger drive. You are limited to addressing in all drives just the amount of storage available in the smallest drive. Thus, if you have one 4TB drive and three 12TB drives in your QNAP NAS, maximum RAID storage would be 12TB, not 40 TB, because only 4TB of each drive could be used for RAID. Synology allows the use of drives of whatever size you wish, placing them all together into one large pool, all of which can be used for RAID striping. So in the above scenario, Synology would have 40TB available in RAID format for your use. This is a huge Synology advantage. I could say much more about Synologys excellent software, but Ill finish by recommending that you buy more RAM if you want to run virtual machines off the 1621+. I added a 16GB ECC RAM module for a total installed RAM of 20TB. I allocated 10GB of RAM to a virtual machine running Windows 10 and its fairly snappy. I bought ECC RAM here on Amazon which cost half the price of Synology RAM, and it works fine without any reporting of non-standard RAM. The RAM I bought is available here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YXCBVWX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I replaced my QNAP 9-bay ARM based NAS to this, cuz I needed to run home assistant but the ARM HA rom never worked somehow. X86 home assistant works perfectly fine on this Synology unit, but other than that, there are few things that I am not very satisfied with. First, the USB transfer speed was really slow, it supposed be usb 3.1 port but when I try to transfer file from a usb 3.1 external hard drive, it took almost 6 days to transfer 3.5TB files into the nas. I have tried with different usb 3.1 cable, all front and rear ports on NAS, they all ended up with same speed, I don’t know why. Another thing that bothers me is, if I don’t use it for a little while, when I try to open the network mapped drive from my computer, the explorer will freezes for a few mins, feels like the NAS in sleep mode and restarted, but to be honest the response time is more than powering on the NAS from completely off, and I have set it not to sleep or hibernate, kinda confused me, these issues never happened on my QNAP. Other than these, it works just fine.

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.

Im the proud owner of a Synology DS410 which is finally feeling the pain of having no updates for a few years and it has survived 10 years now and still going strong (though slow in todays standards). This newer 1621+ is just incredible in speed and versatility where I used to have to build ESXi systems and connect them to the Synology for extra storage, now I can just host a few simple virtual machines on the Synology itself. The mounting brackets for the hard drives are included. Supports 2.5 and 3.5 drives. For 3.5 drives, it is a screw-less mounting design, which made it super easy. Also, comparing this with other NAS units out there, the ability to support mixed sized drives is also helpful when you can start smaller and then buy bigger and swap drives out as they becomes cheaper in price. Hoping for another 10 years out of this Synology.

Synology makes a great product. Never let me down. Even switching from a 4 bay to a 6 bay and then back it kept all my data in tact.

I have a 15 year old 1511+ Synology NAS that is still going strong. From time to time I have to perform a hard reboot on it so I decided to purchase a new one. My 1511+ is encased in all metal but it looks like similar models are now plastic and not quite what they were more than a decade ago. After doing some research I ended up going with the 1621+ and I couldnt be happier. I was able to dump my noisy window server for a VM running on the nas. I only have one app that doesnt run well in Linux and needed this running somewhere. I simply RDP into it from my linux gaming rig and there is little to no lag or hesitation. It comes in an all metal case, and the AMD Ryzen CPU easily handles running my Valheim server in a docker! This model has very quiet fans which I believe are an upgrade from lower-end models. I was able to migrate my cameras and surveillance settings easily along with their respective licenses.

This has been much faster and just as solid of a user experience as my previous Synology nas. I like that it has the faster processor and 6 bays. I have moved my two other nas units to backup roles, this is a worthy upgrade.

I needed to upgrade from another NAS that was almost a decade old. I finally had run out of space. I also wanted to be able to install Plex on the new NAS. Setting up a remote connection to my old NAS (which was not a Synology) and then having the files copy for about 36 hours (lotsa TBs) while I left it alone worked great. Setup was a snap, migration was easy, Plex installation worked first time. Im a happy camper. Hopefully this NAS will last me another 10 years.

I was worried that the NAS work be underpowered. Worried for nothing. Works great. The built in software makes all the difference!

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