Synology Disk Station Manager 2
Introduction
Synology has created a very profound name for themselves in the mainstream NAS market with the recent developments. The early releases of their products consisted of a rather lethargic interface in comparison to what we’re going to introduce to you today. Synology NAS products are quite powerful on their own accord and it’s undoubtedly going to get better acceptance from its customer base with the new Disk Station Manager software they have released. All Synology products can be upgraded with the Disk Station Manager 2, so if you own one of these products read on as we do an analysis of what’s on offer.
Synology seems to have overhauled the complete interface they had before and introduced AJAX functionality into the interface as well. All navigation menus have been placed in a more meaningful and easily navigatable manner and one of the most notable features is the inclusion of IP camera support. One is now able to use their Synology product as a network surveillance station and let it work on complete autonomy.
Currently there are a limited number of IP camera models that is supported by the Disk Station Manager 2. The maximum number of IP cameras supported will depend on the model you own; check the following link for more details.
Before the IP camera will be detected by the NAS, you need to set it up as per the instructions given by the camera manufacturer.
Once you set up the camera you will notice it appearing under the camera tab listed. The interface to setup the camera to act with the CS407 was very straight forward. Simply enter the IP address, port, IP address etc and click on test camera. There’s a list given of supported network cameras, however if you don’t find your camera fear not. Other cameras will still work with a little more tweaking of the settings.
You have the option to edit the settings given or delete the camera if you wish at a later time. The 2GB quota you see shown in the table is configurable to any capacity you wish to have.
The event tab shows all recorded content ordered according to time. You have the option to lock, unlock and delete a particular recordings as you please. If you lock a particular clip, it won’t get deleted in the next cycle when clips are deleted automatically upon reaching the quota limit.
A schedule can be made which allows you to select the dates and times you wish to have the camera in operation if you have such a requirement.
As seen in the image you can select if you want continuous recording or motion detection only.
In terms of archiving the data, a few options are available as per the image.
It’s upto you to decide the capacity of the archive folder, and it’s recommended to have an area larger than 2GB.
You can also setup email notifications so that you’re informed soon as some event occurs.
This feature will alert you when ever some event occurs that was captured by the IP camera. This feature is pretty cool as you don’t always need to be looking at the monitor for activity.
You can also add upto 10 favorite items into the favorites section simply by dragging them to the favorite’s area shown. This is also a cool feature and is very handy as you can simply drag and drop functions that you require constantly.
RAID-5 has also been added into the feature list giving greater redundancy for your data.
Backup
The backup manager 3 is also a mark improvement from the previous versions. You have the option of backing up to another Synology NAS or to a remote rsync compatible server.
Audio Station
The look and feel of the audio station has been improved to be in line with the current GUI.
Photo Station
Photo station has been upgraded as well so that you could add your own blog in addition to hosting images.
Conclusion:
As we can see a host of new features are offered in the new Disk Station Manager 2 and we highly recommend upgrading your old firmware to the new one as it’ll offer a range of benefits.
Some users had complained of various issues while upgrading to the new firmware, which can be seen if you visit the official Synology forum, however we did not come across any issues during our tests.
Furthermore SSODS still works on this new firmware and if you wish upgrading to SSODS 3 is recommended.
Synology certainly keeps their minds on the roll at all times and we can hope to see greater improvements for these products in the near future. It’s gratifying to know the immense effort being put into making their NAS products some of the most feature rich and powerful NAS products out there. It can be considered one of the cheapest video surveillance devices out in the market at the moment and depending on your requirements you can keep adding more cameras to your current setup with ease.
Overall this is a very welcome upgrade in contrast to the previous firmware’s on offer and it turns your existing Synology NAS to a truly unique device.
