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

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.

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!

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.

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.

Gonna keep this short. I got the Synology 6 bay NAS DiskStation DS1621+. Great unit. Does everything I wanted except video/plex steaming. (Itll do it, but not well) If youre looking for a streaming box, get an Intel Xeon unit. Intel will have hardware to let you view those 4K encoded videos. But I kitted out mine. Max RAM, Max SSD Cache, and Max HDD. Its more than I need, but Its been super reliable for me. Even in power outages (your milage may vary. I do recommend at least a 2.5 or 10GbE card if you need extra bandwidth. Be sure your computers MoBo supports it if you plan to directly connect it. In short, if you dont need a video connection or video streaming, this is a great option.

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.

I always built my own storage servers over the years but decided to try the pre-built NAS route this time. Processor - This has a Ryzen SOC that houses the first generation Ryzen 4 cores and 8 threads. It seems fairly powerful. RAM - Comes with ECC memory - since I dont like bit rot in my files I always used ECC RAM and I dont recall any models under $1,000 ever being sold that would take ECC. I upgraded to two 16GB ECC Arch Memory modules I also purchased from Amazon and I do not receive any warnings about having unsupported memory. I wanted the system to have dual channel memory and I figured I would buy two 16GB RAM to feed the caches. 4GB is probably fine in a most cases. M.2 - I have two 1TB NVMe modules from different manufactures using them as a cache in RAID1 - In DSM 7 you can also pin BTRFS metadata to the cache and speed it up even more, cannot wait for this feature! HDD - Easy to install lots of reporting on health etc. I shuck WD drives to use in the system and I convert them to 4Kn drives before using. I use BTRFS with RAID-5 for both RAID and data protection. SSD - I have a couple SATA SSDs in it and they work fine except for trim. Check compatibly because it will not use the trim command on some SSDs that support it. I back up to an external USB drive but Ill probably buy a second NAS and insert my left over 4GB ECC RAM module in it and do a NAS to NAS backup. Works great with my Unifi UDMPRO router setting up UPNP based port rules through the DSM web interface.

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

Been eyeing an upgrade for a while, finally got this DS1621+ last week. Migration from my older DS416 Play was easy, took about 24 hours, but essentially automated. If no issues arise, I plan to use my DS1621+ for the next 10 years. The reasons I upgraded: 1. I just wanted to. 2. Expandable storage. 3. Better CPU (Ryzen quad core CPU). 4. 4 GB DDR4 (upgradeable). 5. NVMe SSD Cache. 6. Upgradable to 10 GbE

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.