Page 4: DiskStation Manager 2.3
DiskStation Manager 2.3
Once you run the installation from the included CD and setup everything, you'll be able to log into the device by going to the IP address you set. If you have DHCP set, fire up the client software on the CD and find what IP address the DS210j is using and point your web browser to that. If you opted to use the longer installation, most of these things will be obvious. If you elected the quick installation, you can login using no password on the admin account. This is the screen that you'll be presented. The entire web setup is an interesting experience. Make sure you change the administrator password when you do login.
Our DS210j was loaded with 2x 500GB drives and the DSM 2.3 software setup the drives in a RAID1 configuration (which everyone should use) with a usable capacity of 454GB. If you plug in USB drives, you'll be able to access them from additional shared folders and mount them here. Internal drives must be setup using EXT3 (one of the many Linux default filesystems). USB drives can use EXT3, FAT32, or NTFS. This means you'll be able to plug in your USB flash drive and it'll be ready for use ASAP.
The first thing you'll probably want to do is to setup the DS210j for your specific network. On our network, we've assigned it to an internal address of 192.168.1.210 (DS210, see?) and since we don't have gigabit switches, we disabled the jumbo frame. Make sure to give the DS210j a unique device name. This will be used to find the device by Samba and Windows networking.
Any NAS should do shared folders. The DS210j is no different. You can setup as many shared folders as you want with different levels of security. This is share level security and works the same as setting up users and/or groups for each folder. If you want only certain users to read a folder and other to have full access, you can do this. As you can see, we've got a few folders shared for different purposes. Shared folders can use Samba (Windows type networking) or NFS for access. You can also opt to enable FTP support for all the shared folders. The DSM 2.3 can handle many different use cases.
To enabled file sharing with everything that supports Samba, click on the Win/Mac OS tab under File Sharing and make sure that the Windows file service is enabled. You can also set a workgroup and opt to use a domain controller, if you have one. An interesting thing is the CIFS recycle bin which saves files from deletion. If your users have an itchy delete key finger, you may want to enable this option.
What sets the DSM software apart from the pack is that it gives you access to the full hardware to do whatever you want. Synology packs in many features into the DSM software to enabled features that you may need with ease. One such use case is the built-in web server. If you want to have a light webserver with MySQL and PHP support, the DS210j can easily handle that. It won't be able to serve tons and tons of users, but for a light local network or a test server, this is a perfect setup. In addition to a plain old webserver, the DSM software gives you complete access to virtual hosting. As long as you have a DNS server, you can have all the virtual hosts you want. PHP is version 5.2.12 and MySQL is version 5.1.34. These are not too old, but Synology actively updates their DSM software to give you newer versions from time to time. If you'd like to see a phpinfo() of the environment, please post a comment. We'll be happy to post it.
What network application server would be complete without a way to offload downloads? The DS210j with the DSM 2.3 firmware can handle HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, and NZB downloads. Most use cases will fall on BitTorrent and HTTP downloads. You can setup this area by enabling the Download Station in the management interface under applications. We are downloading the newest Ubuntu Linux from BitTorrent.
Telling the DS210j to download is as simple as navigating to the Download Station and telling it the location of the file. It can handle HTTP authentication and once you hit "Create," it'll start the download process. You can control the download and upload rates of the DS210j. This is important so you don't saturate your upload bandwidth, especially using BitTorrent. This will choke your entire network. All downloaded files can be placed on a folder of your choice.
As a home based network server, the DS210j can do UPnP AV server duties. Combine this with the Audio Station to enabled a fully aware content management system. The DS210j is DLNA certified to work with all UPnP AV clients. Our recent »review of the WD TV Live Plus used the DS210j for serving content. It can also act as client itself and pump music through USB speakers or through the web interface.
Once you load up some music in the correct folder, the Audio Station is ready to play your media. Unfortunately, the web page kept telling us we needed to install Flash Player 9+ to play streaming music and we already had 10.1 installed. We plugged in a USB audio device we had around (the »Steelsound 5H) and the DS210j picked it up as a CMedia USB audio device and the Audio Station happily played the audio through the USB sound card. You don't need to stay on the Audio Station web page for it to keep playing through USB sound. You can leave and it'll continue to go through your playlist. This is a very interesting use case.
One of the best additional features of the DSM software is the ability to function as a security station. Enable the Surveillance Station and you'll get access to a range of features that would only be found on expensive DVR solutions. There are many IP cameras listed as supported and you can add any generic MJPEG source. Our »SkyIPCam777W wasn't listed as supported, but we pointed the device to the MJPEG stream and the DS210j happily started grabbing video from the device. The DSM software can handle motion detection and other such features as you would expect from a security solution.
The DS210j can make your USB printer available on the local network using one of the USB ports. The DSM software can even setup many common routers so that the DS210j can be accessible on the internet and has DDNS support built in. The DS210j can send you a SMS or an email when there are faults. The DSM software can even turn on and off the DS210j at certain times.
You can also install prepackaged additions to the device from third parties by downloading them and going to the package installation area of the management software. This is an excellent feature, but there is a better one.
The DSM software gives you full access to the Linux installation through telnet or SSH. You need to enable an admin password to get in since root logins can't be password-less. Once we SSH'd into the device, we saw that it had ARM based hardware and was running kernel 2.6.24. This is getting pretty old, but it is pretty stable. With SSH support, we could install anything we want and have full access to hack up the device.
The DiskStation Manager software is probably the best feature of the DS210j. Having full access to the operating system is fantastic and even if you don't want to poke around, the DSM will handle all its other tasks in a simple point and click interface.
Synology is also good on keeping up with the latest versions and features. They have just released a brand new beta of DiskStation Manager 3.0. This updates the Linux kernel to 2.6.32 and updates all the other pieces of the software to later versions. The back-end isn't the only change, though. The entire user interface has been reworked. Since this isn't the shipping firmware, we won't include it in this review, but we'll have a follow-up article on the new software. Regardless, this shows that Synology supports its installation base. The DSM 3.0 software works on units that are multiple generations old. It isn't just for new units, only. This is excellent support.
We really can't give you all the features of the DS210j and the DSM software in this review. They are really too much to write down. Needless to say, if you want to do something server related, the DS210j can probably handle it. It is only an 800MHz ARM processor, though. It won't be the fastest thing to handle hard jobs.
Once you run the installation from the included CD and setup everything, you'll be able to log into the device by going to the IP address you set. If you have DHCP set, fire up the client software on the CD and find what IP address the DS210j is using and point your web browser to that. If you opted to use the longer installation, most of these things will be obvious. If you elected the quick installation, you can login using no password on the admin account. This is the screen that you'll be presented. The entire web setup is an interesting experience. Make sure you change the administrator password when you do login.
Our DS210j was loaded with 2x 500GB drives and the DSM 2.3 software setup the drives in a RAID1 configuration (which everyone should use) with a usable capacity of 454GB. If you plug in USB drives, you'll be able to access them from additional shared folders and mount them here. Internal drives must be setup using EXT3 (one of the many Linux default filesystems). USB drives can use EXT3, FAT32, or NTFS. This means you'll be able to plug in your USB flash drive and it'll be ready for use ASAP.
The first thing you'll probably want to do is to setup the DS210j for your specific network. On our network, we've assigned it to an internal address of 192.168.1.210 (DS210, see?) and since we don't have gigabit switches, we disabled the jumbo frame. Make sure to give the DS210j a unique device name. This will be used to find the device by Samba and Windows networking.
Any NAS should do shared folders. The DS210j is no different. You can setup as many shared folders as you want with different levels of security. This is share level security and works the same as setting up users and/or groups for each folder. If you want only certain users to read a folder and other to have full access, you can do this. As you can see, we've got a few folders shared for different purposes. Shared folders can use Samba (Windows type networking) or NFS for access. You can also opt to enable FTP support for all the shared folders. The DSM 2.3 can handle many different use cases.
To enabled file sharing with everything that supports Samba, click on the Win/Mac OS tab under File Sharing and make sure that the Windows file service is enabled. You can also set a workgroup and opt to use a domain controller, if you have one. An interesting thing is the CIFS recycle bin which saves files from deletion. If your users have an itchy delete key finger, you may want to enable this option.
What sets the DSM software apart from the pack is that it gives you access to the full hardware to do whatever you want. Synology packs in many features into the DSM software to enabled features that you may need with ease. One such use case is the built-in web server. If you want to have a light webserver with MySQL and PHP support, the DS210j can easily handle that. It won't be able to serve tons and tons of users, but for a light local network or a test server, this is a perfect setup. In addition to a plain old webserver, the DSM software gives you complete access to virtual hosting. As long as you have a DNS server, you can have all the virtual hosts you want. PHP is version 5.2.12 and MySQL is version 5.1.34. These are not too old, but Synology actively updates their DSM software to give you newer versions from time to time. If you'd like to see a phpinfo() of the environment, please post a comment. We'll be happy to post it.
What network application server would be complete without a way to offload downloads? The DS210j with the DSM 2.3 firmware can handle HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, and NZB downloads. Most use cases will fall on BitTorrent and HTTP downloads. You can setup this area by enabling the Download Station in the management interface under applications. We are downloading the newest Ubuntu Linux from BitTorrent.
Telling the DS210j to download is as simple as navigating to the Download Station and telling it the location of the file. It can handle HTTP authentication and once you hit "Create," it'll start the download process. You can control the download and upload rates of the DS210j. This is important so you don't saturate your upload bandwidth, especially using BitTorrent. This will choke your entire network. All downloaded files can be placed on a folder of your choice.
As a home based network server, the DS210j can do UPnP AV server duties. Combine this with the Audio Station to enabled a fully aware content management system. The DS210j is DLNA certified to work with all UPnP AV clients. Our recent »review of the WD TV Live Plus used the DS210j for serving content. It can also act as client itself and pump music through USB speakers or through the web interface.
Once you load up some music in the correct folder, the Audio Station is ready to play your media. Unfortunately, the web page kept telling us we needed to install Flash Player 9+ to play streaming music and we already had 10.1 installed. We plugged in a USB audio device we had around (the »Steelsound 5H) and the DS210j picked it up as a CMedia USB audio device and the Audio Station happily played the audio through the USB sound card. You don't need to stay on the Audio Station web page for it to keep playing through USB sound. You can leave and it'll continue to go through your playlist. This is a very interesting use case.
One of the best additional features of the DSM software is the ability to function as a security station. Enable the Surveillance Station and you'll get access to a range of features that would only be found on expensive DVR solutions. There are many IP cameras listed as supported and you can add any generic MJPEG source. Our »SkyIPCam777W wasn't listed as supported, but we pointed the device to the MJPEG stream and the DS210j happily started grabbing video from the device. The DSM software can handle motion detection and other such features as you would expect from a security solution.
The DS210j can make your USB printer available on the local network using one of the USB ports. The DSM software can even setup many common routers so that the DS210j can be accessible on the internet and has DDNS support built in. The DS210j can send you a SMS or an email when there are faults. The DSM software can even turn on and off the DS210j at certain times.
You can also install prepackaged additions to the device from third parties by downloading them and going to the package installation area of the management software. This is an excellent feature, but there is a better one.
Code
root@192.168.1.210's password: BusyBox v1.1.0 (2010.03.12-16:58+0000) Built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. ASEDiskStation> uname -a Linux ASEDiskStation 2.6.24 #1141 Sat Mar 13 00:51:39 CST 2010 armv5tejl unknown
The DSM software gives you full access to the Linux installation through telnet or SSH. You need to enable an admin password to get in since root logins can't be password-less. Once we SSH'd into the device, we saw that it had ARM based hardware and was running kernel 2.6.24. This is getting pretty old, but it is pretty stable. With SSH support, we could install anything we want and have full access to hack up the device.
The DiskStation Manager software is probably the best feature of the DS210j. Having full access to the operating system is fantastic and even if you don't want to poke around, the DSM will handle all its other tasks in a simple point and click interface.
Synology is also good on keeping up with the latest versions and features. They have just released a brand new beta of DiskStation Manager 3.0. This updates the Linux kernel to 2.6.32 and updates all the other pieces of the software to later versions. The back-end isn't the only change, though. The entire user interface has been reworked. Since this isn't the shipping firmware, we won't include it in this review, but we'll have a follow-up article on the new software. Regardless, this shows that Synology supports its installation base. The DSM 3.0 software works on units that are multiple generations old. It isn't just for new units, only. This is excellent support.
We really can't give you all the features of the DS210j and the DSM software in this review. They are really too much to write down. Needless to say, if you want to do something server related, the DS210j can probably handle it. It is only an 800MHz ARM processor, though. It won't be the fastest thing to handle hard jobs.