Hands on with the Synology DSM 4.0 Beta

I have installed the latest beta from Synology upgrading the DSM on my DS411 from DSM 3.2 to 4.0. First it could be good to know that 4.0 is now available to publicly download as beta for your NAS. Right now it is available for all NAS back to 2008 and forwards. When the upgrade is officially released it will be available for all of these NAS. Another thing that I wanted to point out is that even if it is supposed to be a beta right now it feels alot more stable then that. Obviously all the features are not yet working but what works, works really excellent. I actually instaleld it first on my DS411 wanting to test it out before I fully installed it on my other machines but just a week later I have installed it on my DS712 NAS.

One important aspect to note is the UI. Compared to the previous one, which was not bad either it now feels you like have a real OS in front of you. Just when you enter items such as the control panel you will notice that the NAS has gotten a lot more of a user friendly interface. For example the control panel looks a lot better right now they have upgraded the UI and it now feels like they have a lot less clutter in the control panel. Just by browsing around the interface I have noticed that they have merged some items. You do not longer have to enable several items for one item to work properly instead you just enable one and it works almost immediately. One thing that got me to test the DSM 4.0 were that I read that it now supports Apple Airport Extreme. As my router is an Airport Extreme I were really excited to for this since I no longer needed to use one of the different hacks available to make it fully compatible with my network.

Version 4.0, which currently is in beta at the moment, includes a brand new cloud feature called Cloud station that allows users tosynchronize files from all their devices, via the local network or Internet. Cloud station thus acts both as Dropbox with a synchronized folder, but also saves a copy of your Disk Station as a backup.

There is also a feature called Quick Connect, which lets users access the server over the internet without having to set up the port forwarding. Some of the other new features currently is:

Built-free iSCSI LUN backup software
Enhanced support for ADS / ACL editing regardless of operating system.
Flexible messaging system for control over delivery methods like email, IM or push notifications.
Improved support for Apple airport devices, and full integration with icloud.
Scheduled smart scans to warn Adminstrator in advance problems.
New and improved GUI to simplify the workflow for all types of users.
Free antivirus package included
Enhanced support for mobile systems and updated apps for both Ios, Android and Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

One feature that really has me impressed so far is the is the scheduled smart scans to warn you in case of different types of problems. Just to see how well this works I actually inserted a drive that I knew was bad so I would see what type of notifications you get when you have a bad drive (you can see a picture in the gallery below). Just that they show you how well it works and what kind of error it gives you, gives an option of search for errors in your drives.

Cloudstation allows a folder to be specified on the NAS and linked to another folder on one or more PCs capable of accessing the unit. CloudStation then sets up a sync mechanism in such a way that changes to the contents on one machine are automatically reflected in the NAS as well as the other PCs syncing that folder.

So far this is just my experience of using it for a short time. Expect it to be updated as I explore the different options