Synology 8-Bay DiskStation DS1823xs+ (Diskless)

I'm coming from a hand-me-down QNAP NAS. I was originally going to update to another QNAP device because of familiarity. I decided to go big with Synology instead based on some positive reviews from others that I know. This NAS is probably overkill for home use, but my reasoning in buying this particular device was that it will provide for my needs for many years.Since my purchase, I've upgraded to 32GB of RAM. I plan to install the NVMe drives eventually, but it still runs great even without them.Lots of the reviews out there mention the warnings about non-synology drives being installed. Don't let that be a reason not to buy this. There is a config file that you can edit that eliminates the warning for "unapproved" drives. I'm running 4 10TB WD drives, and 4 8TB WD drives, and they work great.

Users of Synology don't need convincing, and those who haven't decided yet will probably be convinced soon by a bad experience when they wonder what happened to their photo archive. Synology operates reliably and, in my opinion, has the best customer service. Many complain about the price, it's true, it's not low, but in return, we get a top-notch product. Previously, I used two DS1621xs+ models which pleased me and continue to help me to this day. The DS1823xs+ has become the successor to those two previous models, which are used every day, performing backups and snapshots. Without hesitation, I recommend it to anyone who wants to sleep peacefully and not worry about their data!

Synology is all about their software, which honestly is quite nice and comprehensive. They do make some odd choices here, which I understand from the perspective that they want you to have good performance in a higher-end machine, but really they should let me decide. (I'm talking specifically about array options and media lock-downs.) You pay a premium for their machines vs. DIY, but that could be worth it as it's a nice environment. But even tho it's a newer CPU platform, it's not going to win any awards for speed running VM's, and the stock memory is not enough even for the base 8 disks in ZFS - 16 would be much better, and go get yourself some dual SODIMMs and max this out at 32 and you will be happier. You CAN run VM's on an expanded memory, but be aware of that CPU and another problem setting MTU's on the virtual NIC's (You can't as of right now, even tho it will take the settings, but it will break.) But do set the MTU on the physical network cards if your router supports it - SMB work much nicer with at least double and more. Finally, no Thunderbolt here, nor USB 4, so external expansion is limited if you need the speed.

I've only just set this up so this won't be a great review, but it's working well. It was easy to configure.I'm looking forward to using this for backing up all of the computers and running a surveillance system.

Synology ds1823xs+ marks all of my Samsung SSD 870 EVO disk as of having CRITICAL WARNINGSbecause they were not purchased from Synology.These drive operate perfectly, but I am unable to monitor the health of my systemdue to these CRITICAL WARNINGS.Synology does not report back disk drive SMART data, an industry standard.