Synology DiskStation 5-Bay (Diskless) Scalable Network Attached Storage DS1511+ (Black)

by Synology

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9 x 6 inches ; 9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B004GKLT4G
• Item model number: DS1511+
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #4 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > External Data Storage > Network Attached Storage
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 21, 2010

Product Description

Size: Diskless

Synology DiskStation DS1511+ offers a high-performance, scalable, and full-featured network attached storage solution that meets the needs of small and medium-sized businesses that require an efficient way to centralize data protection, simplify data management, and rapidly scale storage capacity with minimal time spent on setup and management. The Synology DS1511+ is backed with Synology’s 3-year limited warranty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Latest release of Earth's best NAS, January 4, 2011

By 

Gav (Saskatchewan, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Synology DiskStation 5-Bay (Diskless) Scalable Network Attached Storage DS1511+ (Black) (Personal Computers)

After owning NETGEAR, WD and QNAP; Synology is the only brand I operate.

Pros
- very well built
- *packed* with features
- gorgeous, PC and web-based management software (there's a great demo on their website)

Cons
- although on par with other NASes, it's pretty expensive

Synology builds a solid piece of hardware with useful things like 4 USB, 2 eSATA, and 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports. And since it's a "Disk Station" the dives are hot-swappable. Although, that's standard stuff for this kind of device. What makes their products truly great is their fantastic software. The feature set is too long to list here, but it's basically a file/backup/web/email server, media streamer, and download manager jammed into a cubic foot box. Which, thanks to their software developers, can be almost completely configured in about 10 minutes.

The software is the same on all their models, so if you only need 1 or 2 drives, save a little money and get a smaller one. But really, who doesn't want to RAID 15 hard-drives together?

I've been running 2 DS509+ (with DX5 expansions), a DS710+, and now 2 DS1511+ since they were released. All the units have never given me a bit of grief since I first set them up. They are by far the best NAS devices out there.

I highly recommend any Synology model, but this one is awesome!

81 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great hardware, great software, terrible licensing policy, September 13, 2011

By 

J. Nelson (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Synology DiskStation 5-Bay (Diskless) Scalable Network Attached Storage DS1511+ (Black) (Personal Computers)

Moving from an Infrant/Netgear ReadyNas to the Synology Diskstation has been a real treat. The hardware supports some of the fastest read & write times you can achieve with a gigabit NAS device. Synology has obviously spent a lot of time and effort developing a browser-based DiskStation Management (DSM) operating system that is fast, intuitive, and beautifully designed. The DSM includes a number of applications which take the capability of the DSM far beyond mere network storage, and allow it to host blogs and wiki sites, share photos, and stream music to your mobile device (together with their free mobile applications, like DS Audio and DS Photo).

While I have run into a few technical difficulties with my DiskStation, most have been resolved quickly, or if not, are not problems that can truly be laid at the feet of Synology.

One problem I encountered was with the DiskStation's interaction with my UPS, the APC Back-UPS RS (BR1000G). When the UPS would cycle between power and battery too often (e.g., when a laser printer on the same household circuit would warm up, print, and then go into power-saving), the DiskStation system log would indicate that the UPS had been disconnected from the DiskStation (i.e., it would claim that the USB cable had been "plugged out"), and would no longer allow access to the UPS settings without rebooting the DiskStation. After opening a support ticket with Synology, they indicated the problem was a known one on their end, and would be fixed in a future DSM firmware release.

One disturbing thing about my interaction with the Synology support staff was how quickly they requested I provide them with remote ROOT-LEVEL access to my device, to help them diagnose the problem. As do many other people, I use my network-attached backup devices to secure my most important digital content, including financial documents, medical records, and other personal information I don't want disseminated. While I appreciate the willingness of their support technicians to provide such a personal level of support, I am not at all comfortable with giving them ROOT-level access to all my files just to sort out a quirk in their UPS software.

None of the forgoing would cause me to deduct any stars from what should have been a five-star review, however.

------------THE REAL ISSUE------------

The real concern I have with this product, and any product released by Synology, is whether the functionality I enjoy now will be functionality that remains free into the future.

One of the software titles that comes bundled with the Synology is "Surveillance Station", a program that allows the DiskStation to record video from an attached network camera. While the ad copy for the DiskStations may discuss the maximum number of cameras each of the different models can accommodate, it may not make clear that, out-of-the-box, each Diskstation has a license to use only one camera. You simply can not connect more than one camera to the DiskStation without buying a license code for each additional camera. Why Synology would choose to intentionally cripple one of their software titles, and charge such an exorbitant ransom to enable it, escapes me.

The DS1511+ is capable of supporting up to 20 IP cameras. (The word "support" here is used generously, as many camera models are not fully "supported" -- with many you won't be able to record audio, or stream a live view to anything other than Internet Explorer with ActiveX plugins). As with every DiskStation, the DS1511+ only includes a license for 1 camera. To fully enable the 20 "supported" cameras, you would have to purchase 19 of the Synology IP Camera License packs. Do the math (Amazon doesn't like people mentioning prices in their reviews), and you will discover:

THE LICENSING COST FOR THE CAMERA SOFTWARE WILL EXCEED THE COST OF THE (EXPENSIVE) DS1511+ HARDWARE!

According to the Synology moderators who locked (!) a discussion thread on this topic in their support forums:

"The ability to use 1 IP camera per DiskStation out of the box is for evaluation purposes and is not provided as a license key."

Therefore, the Surveillance Station software that they promote in their advertising copy is properly understood as an EVALUATION TRIAL COPY.

This came as a surprise to early adopters of Synology products, who previously enjoyed a copy of Surveillance Station that was unburdened by additional camera licensing requirements. Much to their surprise, a firmware update pushed out by Synology crippled the functionality of their software, and disabled any attached cameras that had previously functioned, except for one. Imagine how you would feel if you updated your Windows operating system, only to be told that now you owed Microsoft an additional $50 printer "license" fee for a device that previously functioned, and was now disabled.

Will Synology push out additional firmware updates in the future that disable additional components of their operating system? Will they begin charging a per-hard-drive "license" fee for their multi-bay units? Will the OS allow you to create up to 5 user accounts for free, but demand additional licensing fees for every user beyond these? If history is any indication, they might.

Not only have they done something similar in the past, but their admins will not guarantee that the software that works today will continue to work in the future without additional cost. Again quoting the same admin from the locked (!) thread in the Synology support forums:

"Majority of all features on the DiskStation Manager such as client access, or updates, at this time are free without any additional charges."

Make a careful note of his choice of language: AT THIS TIME.

The majority of the software features provided by Synology are free AT THIS TIME.

Be careful with those firmware updates - they're not downgradeable, and they may incur further licensing costs. Read the release notes very, very carefully.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, October 19, 2011

By 

Joseph Luke - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Synology DiskStation 5-Bay (Diskless) Scalable Network Attached Storage DS1511+ (Black) (Personal Computers)

I purchased the Synology DS1511+ after a decade of building my own NAS boxes running Linux for my home NAS system. I looked at all the options, Synolgy, QNap, Drobo, etc. I know that if I wanted to, I could buy a 5-disk chassis, an Atom-based Mini ITX motherboard and PSU for about half the price, but it's not about just hardware. It's about functionality.

Buying parts would gives me a computer. Fundementally any NAS box is a computer - and in any NAS box, the software is the key. The Synology DS1511+ is an appliance - it just works. DSM is outstanding. The simplicity of the system yet the sheer power of the functionility is fantastic.

Things I like about the DS1511+ and DSM are:

1) Simple updates - I updated to DSM 3.2 without a hitch. From inside of DSM. Updating your own Linux build is a learning experience. I've learned. Now I have a life.

2) Extremely quite. The saying is "out of sight, out of mind". Well, "out of earshot, out of mind" too.

3) Powerful functions with an easy interface. DSM makes all the difference.
Examples are the entire system - File system creationg with full permissions control, volume creation, iSCSI target , Mac TimeMachine target, Bonded Network ports, power settings including automatic integration with my UPS, firmware updates, adding new packages (add on functions), the list is long.

4) Consistency of the interface across Synology functions. Nothing is more frustrating than having one tool with a nice functionaly GUI, another with a nice editable config file, and another with GUI that is only partially there. Oh, and don't forget to SIGHUP those processes to get the config file changes running. None of that in DSM.

5) Add on functions in DSM - LDAP server, Syslog server, squeezebox server, and many more.

6) The DSM interface seems to run on everything - Windows, Mac, iPad, iPHone etc. Haven't tried Android.

7) 5 disks, easilty accessed and hot-pluggable from the front. I run a RAID 6 system. You would too, if you'd ever lost 2 disks in a RAID 5 system (and I have...)

8) So far (knock on wood), it's been extremely reliable. When I was testing the system I even had a disk failure and had to swap a disk and rebuild the system. 4 year old disks ...)

9) the Synology Forum, Wiki, etc. A wealth of information.

10) Finally, and admittedly contradicting myself, but I like that you can also log in and go to the linux command line (as root even) and change things if you need to. I think of it as an insurance policy.

What don't I like or what would I change?

1) Some of the more advanced features aren't 100% documented - you have to rely on the forums for that. An example is setting up the LDAP server. But it just got added, and it's pretty common that functionaliy comes out ahead of deployement examples, etc. We'll see.

2) I can't run my AppleTV off of the Synology. Somewhat of a nit. Maybe that will change in the future.

I was going to put that it needs USB 3.0, but frankly many implementations of USB 3.0 right now are bug city so actually I'm glad it's not there. For a storage box, I want tried and true technology.

Finally, when looking for a product, I don't just buy the product. I look at the track record of the team delivering that product - have they been adding new features, have bugs been getting fixed, are they innovating or just trying to catch up.

Synology for the past couple of years has been hitting on all cylinders. They're not perfect, but no company is. There's no guarantee they will continue to do well, but the best indicator of future success is past success. And Synology has a winner here.

jl

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