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A dichotomy exists where Synology embraces the future with its Ryzen processor platform and yet fails to include standard technology like 2.5GbE by default. It also continues with eSATA as its expansion technology, an interface most people stopped using a decade or more ago. The DS1522+ is a follow-up to the DS1520+ and another addition to Synology’s Plus series of SMB/SOHO NAS solutions. Like its predecessor, the 5-bay DiskStation is outfitted with dual M.2 SSD caching bays to add quite a bit of performance flexibility, which was certainly established during our benchmarking. This time around, however, it features an AMD Ryzen R1600 CPU (compared to the last gen’s Intel Celeron J4124 4-core), up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, dual DX517 expansion bays supports (to scale as your business grows), and four 1GbE ports. Like all Synology devices, the DS15222+ is powered by DiskStation Manager (DSM), the company’s comprehensive NAS OS that features a vast range of multimedia and file management applications. If you use 2.5-inch hard drives or SSDs, a screwdriver is needed. In this case, the included bag of little screws will come in handy. For testing, we used an E10G22-T1-Mini 10GbE adapter and 2x D4ECSO 16GB DDR4 2666MHz SODIMMs. This increased the potential networking bandwidth to 14 gigabits (aggregate) and the total memory to 32GB.
The biggest upgrade over previous generations is the addition of 10GbE connectivity, although the path Synology took on the 15-series model over the years has somewhat limited certain features. The Synology DS1522+ is an improvement over the DS1520+, but the direction it takes is one the makers want to go, not necessarily its customers.
Flexible data management for homes and small business
At some point, those at Synology need to realise that cheap and effective NAS solutions that use 2.5GbE, have HDMI onboard and use USB 3.2 Gen 2 is coming at them from all directions.
In our last 4K test (standard deviation), we saw the DS1522+ with 128.01ms read and 230.59ms write in SMB and 185ms read and 125.84ms write in iSCSI. Using cache, the NAS boasted 25.12ms read and 4.23ms write in SMB and 1.45ms read and 6.65ms write in iSCSI. Installation on systems that support the E10G22-T1-Mini seems to be incredibly straightforward, with just two screws covering the bay and the module simply sliding into the slot. However, it is worth remembering that, as this is connected to the main board over PCIe, you will almost certainly be required to power the device down when installing (i.e not hot-swap/plugging). Not to use actively… Just to replace the many DOA units that died over the years, so they could access old cases and re-save the data on cheap USB drives (2x drives for “redundency”). All that, just to ensure the data can be retrieved / produced in the future.
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Other than the 2020 model, I've tested all DS15xx servers, starting with the DS1511+, and in my experience, this lineup is the most well-balanced. For example, when setting it up with a few large hard drives, you'll note that the server takes a long time to finish "optimizing" the RAID. Moving on to 4K average latency, the Synology NAS showed 1490.35ms read and 148.94ms write in SMB, while iSCSI reached 100.61ms and 145.78ms for reads and writes. With cache, the latency improved to 83.62ms read and 13.97ms write in SMB and 3.12ms read and 4.61ms write in iSCSI.
The DS1522+ is the first in the family to run DSM 7.1 out of the box -- previous servers originally came with DSM 6. As noted, a big change in this family is the CPU. The DS1522+ is powered by an AMD Ryzen R1600 (2-core 2.6 GHz with burst up to 3.1 GHz, an upgrade from the Intel Celeron J4125 used in the previous model), 8GB of non-ECC DDR4 RAM standard (upgradable to 32GB), and support for 3.5/2.5-inch SATA drives and M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for its dual cache slots. Synology has the best NAS OS, probably one of the most polished app selections and makes some sturdy equipment. For this review, I've used the DS1522+ for a week -- I will continue to use mine for years to come -- and the sever performed as expected. We used an ordinary NVMe drive for our testing, but Western Digital makes a NAS intended Red series NVMe drive, and other makers are supporting this use case.
Our Enterprise Synthetic Workload Analysis includes four profiles based on real-world tasks. These profiles have been developed to make it easier to compare to our past benchmarks as well as widely-published values such as max 4k read and write speed and 8k 70/30, which is commonly used for enterprise drives. These apps and features are generally available across Synology servers that run DSM 7. These are just some examples. There are more than 100 official apps and many more from third parties. As mentioned, the E10G22-T1-Mini arrives in a very unusual and rarely seen compact form. It is injected into the NAS horizontally into the chassis, unlike most PCIe network upgrade adapters that are introduced vertically and with the removal of the system’s external chassis. The connection that the E10G22-T1-Mini makes with the NAS main system is a PCIe Gen 3 x2 connector, which means that providing this upgrade option is going to occupy considerable less of the CPU PCI lanes than a larger traditional PCIe slot (such the PCIe Gen 3 x8 found on most other Synology NAS) would. That’s smart and means that much more modest NAS systems will be able to scale up to 10G much more easily. The familiar tool-free design: Each drive tray has two latches to keep the hard drive in place. You can assemble a 3.5-inch (desktop) drive to the server without a tool.
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