Synology has made a name for itself in the network-attached storage (NAS) market, especially among small and medium-sized businesses and consumers. But they’re not stopping there—they’re aiming for the enterprise sector too.
The company specializes in hard disk drive (HDD)-based NAS systems. While they have an SSD line called the FS, they’re setting their sights on competing with giants like Dell, HPE, and NetApp in the cold data space. Ivan Lebowski, who leads Synology’s sales team in France and Africa, shared, “We still target SMEs, but a third of our revenue now comes from large enterprises. For instance, Unesco backs up 70 virtual machines (VMs) at various locations using our products. We also cater to many hospitals in France that find our NAS units more affordable, user-friendly, and compliant than cloud storage.”
Synology offers a range of NAS boxes: the DiskStation (DS) for desktops can hold up to 12 drives, while the RackStation (RS) arrays range from 1U to 4U and accommodate between four and 16 HDDs, reaching up to 320TB. Their 4U High-Density (HD) 6500 can fit up to 60 HDDs, achieving 1.2PB raw. For high-performance needs, the FlashStation (FS) supports up to 24 flash drives, suitable for databases and online transaction processing.
These products feature dual redundant connections, and the drives employ RAID for outage protection. You can extend an array by adding up to four additional shelves, pushing the HD6500 to a staggering 6PB in raw capacity and 4PB usable after accounting for RAID redundancy. Lebowski noted the HD6500’s success in hospitals, particularly for medical imagery and video production archiving.
Synology’s arrays provide NAS file storage shared through Ethernet, with some models capable of block mode use via Fibre Channel or iSCSI, often for backup tasks with VMware or Hyper-V VMs. They plan to introduce new models accommodating SSDs next year. “We use NVMe SSDs in our products now, mainly as cache,” said Lebowski. “By 2025, they’ll serve as primary storage. This is in response to enterprises requiring higher throughput.”
Cold data is where they see a lot of potential. This type of data is written frequently, yet accessed less so—think backups, surveillance videos, or business documents. Synology provides software solutions tailored for different use cases. For instance, there’s Active Backup for creating on-site or cloud backups, Snapshot Replication for secondary remote copies, and Surveillance Station for managing camera footage.
Lebowski highlighted the prowess of Synology’s Disk Station Manager (DSM) interface. Surveillance Station can be deployed from an app store, equipped to label video where movement is detected. Customers can use their own cameras or pay a €50 licensing fee per camera for Synology’s offerings. “We also offer NAS with more robust controllers, known as DVA, that add advanced analysis capabilities, like face and license plate recognition,” he mentioned, pointing to QPark as a satisfied user of those features.
Recently, Active Backup has upgraded to align with other backup solutions. Now, users can define immutable copies, which cannot be altered or deleted for a set period. If production servers go down, Synology’s systems can run up to seven virtual machines and restore them to production VMware or Hyper-V servers seamlessly.
The DSM interface includes Active Insight, allowing users to monitor array firmware updates easily. If any firmware is outdated, it can be downloaded directly. It also alerts customers to unusual access attempts, be it from unfamiliar locations or rare user access on Active Directory.