Synology 2019 London Launch Event Review

One of the biggest names in Network Attached Storage once again hosts their annual conference, appearing in numerous different countries over the next month or so, it is now the turn of London, United Kingdom to host the Synology conference to give us a taste of what 2019 has in store for hardware and software. With promises of direct interaction with their experts to gain valuable experience and knowledge, as well as an opportunity to learn their insights on storage, networking, and application serving industries, it is has evolved into a big, BIG deal! As much as that sounded like marketing bumpf, Synology 2019 in London showed us some genuinely innovate upgrades to the diskstation manager applications and how you can handle your data. This coupled with several brand new, first-in-series hardware and GENUINELY NAS software defining changes. Let’s discuss.

Synology DSM 7.0 Preview

One of the biggest things we have learnt from the Synology launch event by far was the announcements and preview of Synology Diskstation Manager 7.0. You can talk about hardware as much as you want, but any hardware without a versatile and usable UI is always going to be trouble. I am pleased to say that this is not the case with Synology DSM 7.0, the latest version on the incredibly innovative and user-friendly Synology storage platform. DSM is included with ALL their NAS devices and frequently updated and improved. This new version is still unavailable (but with beta access promised soon) and we were given glimpses of the highlights of what is to come. Below I have covered the highlights, but of course, we will learn even more with access to a beta version soon enough.

A New Mobile way to Access your Synology NAS

Improved Login System using Mobile QR Codes. Synology’s new DSM 7.0 features a new login screen design. In addition to the traditional account/password input method for accessing the system over the network or internet, you can also verify the login and pass the authentication system by scanning the QR Code via your mobile phone. It is more convenient and quick to enter the system for various applications or touch-screen appliances.

Synology Premium Service Announced

In line with the big push towards the business/enterprise users, Synology are now rolling out a premium support service for those that need more immediate service and consulting capabilities at the drop of a hate worldwide. Synology is unveiling the Synology Premium Service (SPS) service to help customers maintain the stability and integrity of Synology products, providing priority contact details and even preemptively predicting possible risks, notify customers in advance on any recommendations to the state of their storage and provide the fastest technical support possible. Although a premium business support line is not a new idea, it is definitely one of those service packages that (alongside extended warranty and extended post warranty care) has becoming a staple for business users who, rather than upgrading their equipment when official warranty expires, choose for support packages at a fraction of the price.

Synology DS Finder Improvements

Alongside the traditional means of setting up your Synology NAS for the first time with a desktop PC/Mac with the Synology Assistant client application, you will now be able to set a NAS up completely from scratch using the DS Finder mobile application for iOS and Android.

Massive Improvements to Synology NAS and Alexa, Siri and Google Home Voice Control

Synology are pleased to confirm increased support of voice activated control in the DSM 7.0 release. We will cover this further in a full article shortly!

Improved RAID Configuration with Synology NAS

Diskstation Manager 7.0 has also added a new form of high-speed RAID rebuild technology to help users reconstruct RAID array data much faster. A demonstration detailed the original 8 hours RAID recovery time and compared with the high speed provided by DSM 7.0. The RAID array can now be rebuilt in just 3 hours, greatly reducing the time required for data recovery following an HDD/SSD media failure.

This is, of course, still to be detailed in real-world examples but Synology did make efforts to highlight that this high-speed RAID reconstruction technology can greatly reduce the repair time thanks to Synology DSM 7.0 also tracking and recording which block of the hard disk is stored when the file is stored, so when rebuilding the data, You don’t have to start from scratch as you have a structure to work from, as long as you restore the data against the block, you can greatly reduce the RAID repair time overall.

Improved Synology Content Management System

The CMS applications that has been available on the DSM platform since DSM 5 has also been vastly improved and in DSM 7.0 provides an enormous coverage of content management. The Synology CMS can cover over 10,000 individual Synology devices and from this one portal access point can make generalized commands affecting all units, monitor the storage status of individual units or apply system wide updates as needed.

Synology Active Backup Suite – Free for all

Synology and their multi-server backup control panel software, Active Backup, is confirmed to be completely free at the UK event. The commercial backup software, Active Backup suite, allows users to protect their work profiles on physical, virtual work and cloud platforms from a single platform and user interface (such as Windows PCs, VMware, Virtual Machines and Office 365, and many more).

Already covered here on NASCompares and YouTube, the software is incredibly innovative and makes multi-layered business environments very, VERY easy to backup. Given that Synology could quick easily push for this as a paid solution (with 1-2 licence), it is refreshing to see this as a DSM free inclusive service.

Synology Drive Improvements

Synology also launched a Synology Drive additional synchronization functionality, which can integrate the cloud drive folder with your Windows 10 environment, streaming to the user’s device, so that the system can save storage space. In real-world use, it means that the file is displayed in the windows file manager is actually on the NAS. If necessary, you can also download the file to the device through the right-click function column. NAS-System synchronization isn’t new, but this feature is only now just becoming available to your local PC without the client app.

Synology Moments NAS Photo Editing with Live Photo

Synology moments, first unveiled and released late last year is already popular and innovative, thanks to that AI technology that allows the app to automatically recognize faces and subjects, to classify photos and assist retrieval/grouping as needed.

Now at Synology 2019, AI technology and iOS Live Photo editing has been added to automatically correct photos. Just use the Synology Moments App to access these editing functions. There will only be a few at the start, but bigger innovations are promised soon.

Surveillance Station Improvements introduce Deep Learning and Image Analysis

One of the most interesting things I saw was that Synology is introducing the already established AI technology surveillance application, provided users with a new Deep Video Analysis (DVA) function, that can instantly identify various objects through AI technology and deep learning to improve security. If the user wants to identify any specified object on the real-time monitoring screen, the DVA function can be used for analysis and identification.

Several examples of how the deep video analytics functionality could be implemented in many surveillance applications were provided. The first was how both the live view adn teh archive recordings could be analyized by the system live to provide different results. On the left it is keeping track of all people n the frame, whereas in the right the camera was setup to only notice/report if a ‘bike’ entered the field of view.

For example, if the user wants to identify whether there is a violation of a road vehicle on the surveillance archive screen, DVA technology can quickly identify vehicle objects in the history/archive recordings. It is worth highlighting though that if you require this level or real-time monitoring and identification, you will need a more powerful surveillance NAS than the NVR1218 and that is why Synology has announced the much more powerful 4-Bay DS1419dva NAS Surveillance storage device. The main unique feature of the DS1419dva is that it arrives with a NVIDIA graphics GPU to speed up the process times of image recognition.

The next example of Deep video analytics provided was one showing a man on a subway who left a suspicious bag. In the default camera recording, it recording the man coming, standing, leaving the bad and walking away – nothing else. Whereas in the DVA equipped system, the surveillance station application was smart enough to notice a bag was left, noticed and actioned an alert on it.

Synology MR2200AC Mesh Router and SRM 1.2 to be Released in October 2018

After a long, LONG wait, we are now being told that both the Synology MR2200ac Mesh Router and Synology Router Manager (SRM) 2.1 is due to be released in mid-October. We have discussed the newest addition to the Synology router family many times already and are still awaiting release.

The newly evolved SRM 1.2 for their router devices is just as good as ever, but now with some genuinely interesting control options for protecting your home/business, as well as your family members.

Watch the video review of Synology 2019 Below:

Brand New Synology UC300 Dual Controller NAS System

More than 25% of Synology enterprise users are currently using iSCSI services. To provide a more stable infrastructure, Synology has launched a new product line in the UC300 and it is the first iSCSI dedicated server with dual active controllers internally, with twin internal motherboards and each with its own PSU. The Active dual architecture allows enterprises users not to suffer disrupted service, in the event of a system critical event occurring (CPU failure, Memory burnout, PSU failure, motherboard damage, etc – basically the GAME OVER issues) the system has a whole second hardware system running in tandem and it automatically takes the primary lead.

The result is that your RAID-enabled storage, that is already supported with a multitude of local/network/cloud backup options (as well as all the advantages of DiskStation Manager) is able to without a system-wide critical hit! That is the kind of hardware assurance that is almost unheard of in NAS.

All the while the UC300 RackStation is providing well over 100,000 IOPS of high performance before, during and after a critical event (with all targets and locations unchanged from the hundred/thousands of connected users POV).

You can learn more about the Synology UC300 here in the dedicated article:

New Synology DS1819+ 8-Bay NAS for 2019

The new DS1819+ Diskstation sits on the shoulders of the popular 8-bay network attached storage that came before it, released in 2 year cycles (DS1817+, DS1815+, DS1813+, etc) and with each generation, the external changed marginally, but the internal hardware grew more and more (always maintaining a near identical price point too, which is pretty impressive in technology). With network storage drives being increasingly popular and home/business users want a good sized capacity in their NAS drive, a solid 8 HDD/SSD RAID equipped desktop NAS drive, that provides smooth storage is always in high demand.

Although the hardware is equipped almost all Synology first-party and third-party applications, the DS1819+ is geared more towards users looking for fluid, reliable file access and general file management for hundreds of users.

Likewise, it features great memory upgrade options, 10GBe utilization at a later date via the installation of the E10G18-T1 and E10G18-T2, SSD performance upgrades with the M2D18 and NVME SSD media and already arrives with 4 RJ45 LAN to enable upto 425MB/s speeds via link aggregation. In short, if you need fast, reliable access to your files, folders and directories for hundreds of users at once, the DS1817+ is a great entry point for you.

You can learn more about the Synology DS1819+ here in the dedicated article:

Nvidia GeForce Enabled Synology DS1419dva NAS Announced

There have already been some great advancements in the Synology Surveillance station application, with features such as LiveCam view with your mobile, YouTube camera streaming, improved time-lapse view and more. However, the Synology DS1419dva is designed to support AI these features, PLUS support new analytical and deep learning applications being introduced into Surveillance station 8.

These live and archival features (such as the system recognizing an object or person in searching, then actioning as needed) require a good chunk of rendering power and the DS1419dva arrives with an NVidia GeForce GPU component to assist in Deep Video Analysis (DVA). There is still not real confirmation whether the DS1419dva is a Surveillance ONLY device (such as the NVR1218) or if it is a DSM 7.0 enabled NAS like others (as I can see a lot of functionality for that GPU in non-surveillance applications).

You can learn more about the Synology DS1419dva here in the dedicated article:

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