I have been using Synology devices since 12/20/2013. I was initially happy with Synology products, as they were the best option available, but this is no longer true. There are many other options available, and they provide much better support. The first thing that I noticed is that Synology will add new features that change previous functionality and turn on that new functionality by default. Over time, this will cause your NAS to fail, leaving you to figure out why. Their support will immediately place the blame on you, when you may not have touched any of the configuration in 3-4 years.I have wasted hundreds of hours of working with their support, and on my own, to find solutions for what is broken. I would say that we have been about 50/50 successful in fixing issues, which are 100% based on what I discussed in the previous paragraph where support blames you for making configuration changes that breaks the system until you can prove that it was them. I save all logs, and when they go through them, they can see that I never made the changes that they accused me of, and they can see that it was their updates that caused the issues. Not once has Synology taken responsibility for their mistakes, including this latest issue which almost caused a complete loss of data.I purchased this unit to replace a previous unit that went up in flames, literally. Nothing else in the rack was affected, nut the MB on the previous NAS burned up and blew out the PS as well. When I received this new unit, I immediately transferred the rails to it from the old unit, pushed it into the rack, and found that it was stuck in the rack. The RKS-02 rails have a serious design flaw that makes it impossible to use the latch release buttons in the front handles. After a couple hours of messing with it, I found that if I remove the side panels to the rack, I can access the latch directly from inside the rack and release it. You won't have this option if you have it installed in a multi-rack installation.After that, I also found that the rails do not allow the front of the chassis to be flush with all of the items in the rack. The reason for that is that a nut in required to tighten the rail in place on the front, and the front panel on the chassis does not have an indent to fit the nut, leaving a 3/8" gap between the vertical rack mounting points and the front panel of the unit. This is an obvious design flaw that support refuses to acknowledge. They told me to look at the installation instructions again, and make sure that it is properly installed, even though I pointed out this nut in the installation guide pictures.Once I was able to pull it out, I then proceeded with the data migration. The UI for this is best defined as "scary", as some of the wording will make you think that your data is being destroyed in the process, but it actually isn't. Synology needs to reword many of these notices to be more user friendly. A long story short, the NAS was down for 5 days in total, it took 2 full days to fully recover and validate the data of a ten 4TB drives, and to rebuild the entire configuration. It was during the rebuild of the configuration that I found the answer to 1 of the issues in the previous NAS that was causing disconnections, which Synology support was not able to help me fix in the previous NAS.You might be asking, "Why are you posting this?". If you are asking that, then you will probably ignore everything said until you run into these same issues. Just be warned, when Synology is switching to a new major DSM version, they do exactly what Apple does, where they introduce issues that they will not fix prior to ending support for the old major version. BEST

I have had a few desktop NAS devices by Synology before this one and have loved every one of them. Just like those this one does not disappoint. I maxed the memory, added the NVME adaptor and 2 SSD for cache and added a 10Gb fiber network adapter. The performance has been unquestionably top notch. Synology is doing their level best to push people into their overpriced branded hard drives. If you know what you’re looking for you can get better, higher capacity drives for less money. The drawback being that you’ll have a storage pool warning about incompatible drives that are working just fine. But wait…. There is a “fix” for this. Google is your friend and the collective user base out the supports each other better than any company would or even could. There is a script that you run (and schedule to run at startup) that simply moves your drives from the untested to the compatible list. Please note, it will not do this for drives that are on the incompatible list.I have always enjoyed the vast array of mostly free apps that run on synology devices available to install from their package center. It really adds value to their product.In summary I’m quite happy with the purchase and would purchase it again.

Why does Synology not support other major brands of hard drives anymore? SO ANNOYING! Are you really that desperate for money that you now only support one drive manufacturer? So incredibly disappointing. When a company does something like this it shows its current and future customers that it is more interested in squeezing every last cent out of it’s supply chain than actually providing the best options and choice for it’s customers. I hope this reflects as shortsighted as it is inconvenient for your customers.

immediately upgraded the default 16 GB RAM to 64 GB RAM with an option for another 64 GB RAM if necessary ; Virtualization limited by both the Number of Core Processors and the amount of RAM . . .

This thing has everything you need for storage. I did try contacting synology tech support for an issue adding additional drives. That was weeks ago and I still haven’t gotten a response that I am able to find. It was done through their online support. Thankfully, it ended up being an issue with the size of the drive I was adding. You can’t go smaller than what is already in place.Only real issue I have now is that the unit is too long for my rack. It looks like I may end up making a mount for it. As the racks it will work with as large and a bit costly. It might sit on my shelf until I muster up enough to switch out my current rack setup.The best part of this unit was upgrading from a small desktop synology NAS was a snap. Synology has great articles online to follow. I am thankful for the resources they provide to follow. They were good to work with swapping out my old unit under warranty.Overall, I am extremely pleased with this purchase. It makes reassuring me that my data won’t disappear without a trace with a failed hard drive. I have lost years of photos with my carelessness in the past.