Synology RS815+ vs Synology DS1817+

This unit utilizes the new AES-NI encryption engine, which is much faster and more efficient than the standard AES-256 used by most NAS units. This means you can work more with encrypted data without suffering performance drops from a heavy CPU load.

Great computational power allows this unit to be usable within pretty much any environment. It can handle multiple-stream transcoding, large scale file handling, or multiple stream surveillance data storage. Whatever the use case, this unit will most likely have you covered.

The expansion unit comes with four HDD bays and can add 40TB more to your total storage. While the NAS comes with 2GB of RAM by default, there’s an extra RAM chip slot so you can upgrade its memory to up to 6GB.

Like other Synology devices, this NAS has access to a wide array of apps such as cloud service, surveillance applications, file download and file transfer applications.

Despite potentially handling 8 disks at the same time and offering high processing and transfer speeds, this Synology NAS never suffers from overheating issues, thanks to its efficient (and mostly silent) cooling fans.

Being a Synology NAS, this unit supports having applications installed directly on it, which is not something commonly offered by other manufacturers. For example, if you use this NAS in an office environment where several people have access to it, you can have an internal chat system or shared calendar accessible via the unit itself.

Despite being a product intended for professional use, the DS1817+ is quite user friendly, both in terms of configuration and use. The visually appealing browser-based UI is easy to learn and there are wizards than can help you set up and configure whatever you want.

This NAS is quite easy to set up. To install the disks, you just need to press the front of each bay to make the disk case pop out, position the disk inside and fix it using the included tabs (no tools needed), and then pop everything back again into the unit. After this step, getting the NAS running is as easy as plugging in the power and ethernet cords and pressing the power button.

For users that handle big volumes of data, this 8 bay NAS is a very good choice. It’s capable of storing a maximum amount of 96 TB ( if using eight 12 TB drives ). This is already a high number, but it can be further expanded up to 216 TB, if one or two Synology expansion units are connected to the unit’s eSATA ports. It supports up to RAID 10, for stored data protection.

The DS1817+ is equipped to handle heavy data well and quickly, making it a great solution for professional settings that deal with media and/or big data. It uses a Quad-core 2.4GHz Intel Atom C2538 CPU, supports RAM up to 16GB, and ensures high transfer rates via its four 1 Gbit/s ethernet ports or four USB 3.0 ports.