Synology 2 bay NAS Disk Station, DS218play (Diskless)

I bought this to replace an aging pair of Zyxel 2 bay network storage boxes on my home network. 1 for personal data and the other for 24/7 recording of 2 IP cameras.Setup was a breeze. No-tool rails secure drives in their cages. Finding the NAS on my network worked with no problems using the web address found in the manual. From there I was able to setup the management software to access all of the functions through a web browser.Was pleasantly surprised at the layout of the web UI. Was able to create a RAID 0 and RAID 1 volume with ease over 4 drives. The first for security camera recordings, and the second for personal data. Making shares through the GUI is easy as pie. After opening an HTTPS port on my router and adding a firewall rule, this is now my new little cloud accessible anywhere! This apparently does have software requiring a Synology login to access without port settings on router, but that is below my station and I have no need to give them any personal info or web traffic.I also bought this NAS because of the surveillance package available. I don't want a standalone PC for IP security camera recordings, and the web utility in my cameras driving traffic to my old NAS was bogging my network down a bit. After downloading the surveillance package, the IP CAM setup was a breeze and was up and running for 24/7 recording inside of about 10 minutes. Couldn't be happier ditching the camera's web utility to record.I did struggle with the price for a bit while I was questioning who exactly this was made for. Business or home users? And I guess the answer is yes to both, with limitations on the business end that won't be hit until you start getting into medium to higher levels of constant traffic, and very little limitations for a home power user. After getting it I have no problems justifying the price. Especially given some problems I've had on lesser grade network storage boxes.I'll be using this for personal use as well as recommending to a couple small business customers who are looking for an upgrade. I'm not usually one to give 5 stars, but I have yet to find a reason to deduct anything for my usage case. It's super quiet and does everything I need it to, and fast!

This is my first ever NAS unit. Simple hardware install. Simple and intuitive software configuration via Web interface. Works well; no problems at all. Elapsed time from opening the box to having my Windows Server begin backing up to the unit was about 75 minutes. From the first backup, it has been fast and flawless -- and yes, I verified a couple restored backups too.I bought the DS218play with a pair of WD 8TB NAS drives on Synology's compatibility list (wd80efzx - 68uw8n0). It automatically set them up with Synology's hybrid RAID configuration.I have not tested A/V transcoding yet.*** Update after 4 months of use ***Still working perfectly. I loaded quite a few apps on here, including a dynamic DNS DUC client, surveillance monitor that can records two of my IP cams, media server, secure FTP service, VPN, and more. The CPU rarely has to work hard, and the unit remains very responsive. I copied a bunch of 1080p videos to it, and on-the-fly transcoding through the Synology iOS and Android apps works very well.

Synology is a few bucks more than much of the competition, but its worth it. They features are great - from a hybrid RAID, to hosting a variety of APPS. And it comes with an easy to understand interface.Also, it's low noise and less resource intensive than the old box I had converted into a NAS using Unraid (although I still use unRaid on a differet box to run Plex).Well supported by the community, and with excellent documentation, this is a mature product. I use it with 1 couple of drives in the synology array, plus Each week I hook up an external USB drive to back up my documents - their backup application makes it easy to do this.If you can put together the scratch - this is a great piece of hardware, and an excellent OS.Recommended.