Synology Announces DiskStation DS216+ – x86 NAS On A Budget

It almost feels like “another day, another NAS” at this point, but Synology will be releasing a new 2-bay NAS in the coming week, in its highly desirable plus range – the DS216+. Network storage as a concept has grown in spec over the last few years – from dumb storage pools, to advanced network services, and now media servers. The DS216+ is a more advanced type of NAS, but will be one of Synology’s more budget friendly releases with an Intel SoC.

Update: Our full review of Synology’s DS216+ is now available.

The DiskStation DS216+ is not really an update over similarly named 2-series plus models, such as the DS215+ and DS214+, since this new model comes with an Intel Celeron SoC rather than the much more common ARM based SoCs that are found in Synology’s other NASes.

The dual-core Intel Celeron N3050 that powers the DS216+ is quite the little beast (for one, it’s not an Atom), as it will allow for 4K video transcoding. The DS216+ only supports the H.264 codec through Synology’s video player; if you wish to transcode H.265/HEVC, you will need the DS216play… which doesn’t have an Intel SoC, so may not be supported by Plex. Confusing, but maybe a third-party can introduce H.265 support if the CPU is up to it.

Video transcoding isn’t the biggest selling point for the DS216+ (although still important). This new NAS will be one of the first NASes by Synology to support the Btrfs file system right out of the gate. This is a feature that will be rolled out with select models on the release of DSM 6.0 that’s currently in beta.

Btrfs is big news, as it will replace the much more common Ext4 file system that’s so prevalent in NASes these days. Without getting too technical, the important features to bear in mind are the ability to perform data snapshots every 5 minutes for granular backups, file versioning with Synology’s Cloud Station, and probably most important of all, data integrity checks through real-time checksums.

Other important features of the DS216+ includes near-native real-time encryption (AES-NI) through dedicated hardware, hot-swap drive bays, USB 3.0 support with a one-touch backup button for backing up an external hard drive or flash drive, and finally… dimmable LEDs! No, seriously, I’m actually glad at this; I have enough LEDs flashing in the office already.

The usual collection of Synology apps from the DSM OS will be supported; since we are dealing with an x86-based SoC here, expect to see a few extras as well. There is plenty of memory too with 1GB of DDR3, so plenty of plugins and services can be running at the same time. Small businesses can set up Windows AD and LDAP directories with ACL support. Mail, VPN and RADIUS servers can be setup, too. DSM plugins can also set up the DS216+ as a Web server with a CMS, such as WordPress, as well as version management services like SVN and Git.

The DS216+ lacks some of the extra features of the more advanced DS716+ that was recently launched, such as dual NICs with active failover and 5-bay drive expansion, but it does cost $150 less at just $300 (without drives). Total power draw for such a capable NAS? Just over 17.5Watts.

Availability will be in the next week or so; be sure to check out Amazon and Newegg if you are interested.