Gadgetory

- Hey guys, this is Austin. We have been doing some major server upgrades here at the office. First steps towards that of course we did the Storinator project a little while ago, but Synology reached out and they wanted to sponsor a little something special. - Yeah, so this is their DS1019+. For something like this, because it's easy to actually configure this to have online access for. You want to throw things like finished video files, thumbnails. Like stuff that, you know, is crucial for us uploading onto YouTube, but say if something goes wrong and we're not in the office, we can actually access this from anywhere and grab those files and do what we have to do. - So we've actually both used Synology products in the past. I actually have one of their super secure ones that's like fireproof and waterproof at my house. I know you have... - [Ken] The DS416Play and I use that more for just media consumption. I have a Plex server running on it. I have all my music and movies. I'm not much of a network geek at all, but it was super easy for me to set up. - Yeah, these things are the simplest that they get. So, with this one Synology has we're able to do is have all kinds of files, not just videos, but primarily that's what we're going to be using it for, available anywhere anytime as long as we have a decent Internet connection. The first thing that you actually need to do is get this set up. You've got it just plugged in here, but we don't have the drives in yet. - Seagate actually provided these for us. These are their IronWolf NAS drives. They gave us three 2TB drives. So the DS1019+ has five bays in it and right now we're obviously using three drives. - This is just a test though. I do like these IronWolf drives, but with 2TB each, this is much more for a smaller project. Now, in theory, with five drives you can load this thing up with probably 50TB or so if you get some of those 10TB hard drives or something. - Yeah, if you really wanted to and on top of that if you want to have faster cache, on the bottom here, there are M.2 slots so you can actually, you know, put drives in there that'll help speed things up a little more. - So there are of course different ways of using the Synology NAS so one of which is just over your local network, right? So if you have everyone plugged in via Ethernet, and we'll test that in a second that all works, but if you're out and about and you're wanting to connect via WiFi or LTE or something it still does work, but when you have those SSDs it definitely does help to speed things up when you do have the cache set up. - [Ken] Yeah, it's cool that this is properly tool-less, too because it just makes it so easy to just hot swap these if you really want to. - [Austin] Yeah. - It's not super super foolproof, but there are plastic keys that kind of lock the drives in place. So if you want like a light level of security so no one just randomly snatches your drives, you can just quickly lock them and... - [Austin] Do you have a problem with people randomly snatching your drives? - It happens from time to time... No it doesn't. - Boom! We are up and running. So, it actually has a basically a full interface that you can use inside the browser. - [Ken] To put it simply, a NAS is like an external hard drive that's on your network that can be accessed by any of the devices on the network. - [Austin] Yeah, so right now I'm connected via Ethernet and all I need to do is literally just drag and drop a file in here. If I actually open up the cart one. Yeah, I mean, look we're at 112 - 113 megabytes per second. So, if you want to get in, you can actually do a lot of things to really customize the way the software works, permissions, all that kind of stuff, but the main thing is that it's hidden behind your password, right? - [Ken] Right. - [Austin] So as long as you don't give someone your username or password, they won't be able to get in and access your files. Of course, you don't have to set it up the way that we are. If you just want to keep it on your local network, by all means, go ahead. But because the main purpose of this is so we can pull our files down from anywhere, that is a huge advantage. You know the sort of the way we're thinking about this as a replacement for cloud services, right? - Right. - Because of course you could, say, upload to any number of various cloud services, but now that you have to pay for those monthly. Now, on top of that, you don't really own your data. With this, we have full control over whatever we want to do, change permissions, we can give specific people logins or whatever. We don't have to pay, you know, $20 - $30 a month for whatever we need to actually keep saved. - Yeah, and the other thing, too, is that, I mean, we have 6TB in here and if you actually price out, you know, how much those services cost a month and how much space you get, - [Austin] Oh, yeah. It's expensive! - Especially when you load it up with like 30 - 40TB, which is what this will probably end up being, - Right. - This is going to be nice - So we actually have the remote access set up where right now my iPad is on LTE and I can see the console where you can control everything. It's the same screen that he has up here. - It's impressive that it works pretty well on iOS. - Yeah, and then also what I can do is they have an app that is kind of simplified where you can kind of just see the straight up folders and files. - That's much easier when you're on iOS because with that, you can just, like say, download the file or transfer. Throw it wherever you want, right? - Right, and so what I can do is actually play that same Mystery Tech that he was playing and it'll actually open up automatically on VLC or even on its own app. You can choose which one. - [Austin] And I can say from my side when I'm actually on the local network, it plays basically immediately. So I think the main idea here is that you can use this for a ton of different aspects. For us, I think we're going to be downloading videos while we're on the go and when we're actually at the office or whatever, we can very easily use the local network to throw files back and forth to it. You can also very easily use this for backups and on top of that, one of the nice things is that because you're getting as many drives as you can fit into the bays, you can also expand the storage because it does take advantage of RAID by default. - [Ken] Yeah, you can pretty much have one of the drives go down and replace it and be totally fine. - [Austin] You don't lose any data because hard drives can die, you know, especially if you have them running for long periods of time. So it's nice to have some redundancy because obviously no backup is as good as a single failed hard drive. Nah man, that's not... That's not it. - I'm actually dealing with a lot 1080 files not 4K files. - You didn't even download them. You can just stream them straight up. - This is streaming right now. This is not downloaded to my iPad and it's running off LTE and it looks pretty smooth. - So unlike our very expensive server solution, this is a much better setup for what we're actually going to be doing with it, which, of course, is pulling down files while we're on the go no matter where we are. Now, of course, if you want 100TB, this is probably not the unit for you, but if you're talking about like ten, 15TB, twenty, in the normal realm of not 8K raw footage that is being uploaded everyday, then this is very much a better solution. And, in fact, we actually have one to give away, don't we? - We do! It's not this exact one, but we do have a... - That's ours. - Yeah, this one, this one's our baby. So it's the DS218+ which is their two bay system and Seagate is throwing in two 2TB drives, so that's 4TB total of storage and yeah, that should pretty much offer the same amount of stuff that's in here software-wise. Why are you laughing? - I like it when you do the giveaways. - Why? - It sounds so much more legit. "With your two 2TB hard drives for free!" Just pay postage and shipping and handling directly to Ken Bolido. - No, they're actually doing that, too. - Okay, cool! I was waiting for your angle of just "Give me a little bit of extra Mystery Tech money." - Oh, well I can always use Mystery Tech money. (Austin laughing) - So since Ken didn't plan out the giveaway, we're going to make this very simple. All you do is go follow us on Twitter @austinnotduncan as well as @Synology and just tweet what you want to do if you actually win the 218+. In two weeks, we'll randomly choose a tweet and you'll be gifted with a wonderful new Synology NAS. Did you do the Vanna White? You did do the Vanna White! Thank you very much! And of course if you guys want to check out this guy, the link will be in the description and stay tuned. We're definitely going to be doing a lot more server and networking fun videos soon. Does that sound fun? - Yeah. - That actually doesn't sound fun. - Well, 'cause you're going to be doing it. I'll just sit there and laugh while you mess things up.