We are dealing again with a white shiny plastic chassis as we have seen with the DS213air:
On the front we have the main LED area along with the power button:
The LEDs are placed for showing the system status, LAN activity, but also Disk1/2 read/write operations:
The power button also has a blue LED in the middle, which blinks during boot-up and shutdown procedures:
In the lower left corner we can see the product logo:
On both left and right sides, the Synology logos act as intake grills:
In the back we have a single 92mm silent fan, but also one Reset button hole, two USB 2.0 ports, one LAN port, the DC-IN jack and a Kensington lock button:
On the bottom side of the enclosure we can see a small sticker with the power rating, which also shows how to open the enclosure (by sliding). Four large rubber feet help the unit to be stable on the surface we will put it on and in front there are some additional ventilation areas:
After the removal of the plastic cover, we will reveal the internals, which can hold two 3.5’’ HDDs; indeed, the unit does not come with 2.5’’ drive support from the start but for this we will have to buy some optional disk holders from Synology:
The bays have rubber grommets for avoiding vibration transmission to the rest of the chassis:
https://www.synology.com/products/pr...13%2B&lang=enu
it's modularity with custom scripting, cronjobs and Hybrid Raid make it a worthy dedicated OS server replacement. What my server currently does, I can now mimic 99% of it under the DSM of Synology (tested with one at work):
- file server (duh!)
- print server
- backup to clould storage (amazon glacier default, crashplan+ through custom config)
- backup from clients to server (Acronis backup)
- iTunes media server
- streaming media (live conversion of formats to match client needs)
what I don't know it can do is scheduled automated FTP backups (have a cronjob running now that downloads a backup of the site through ftp, from what I can see, it's not easily done through the GUI... and even command line I didn't immediately see a copy-paste solution... to be investigated )
going to a NAS vs complete OS you do lose a lot of flexibility, in return you get more freedom of troubleshooting through tried&tested plug in modules you just add to your system.