Synology to boost firmware for NAS servers

Synology to boost firmware for NAS servers
Synology released in March its Disk Station Manager 2.0 software, which, in my opinion, was by far the most robust and intuitive firmware for NAS servers. The company announced on Wednesday, however, that it's going to provide a major update of the firmware with added features and improved functionality, including: • Support for RAID 6 in four-drive and five-drive Synology NAS servers. RAID 6 provides better protection than RAID 5 by allowing for data integrity even when two hard drives fail at a time. • Enhanced IP camera support with more cameras added to the list. • Support for SMART, the popularpredictive failure feature found on most hard drives. Users now can use the firmware to monitor the health of the NAS' hard drives. • Network File System support.The new firmware also offers an enhanced audio station that allows for playing music directly to a PC's speaker (instead of only to USB speakers in the current version), and an enhanced iTunes server that has a new playlist-managing feature.The firmware will be available later this month as a free download.Synology also announced its new NAS server, the DS408. The device supports up to four SATA hard drives with a combined capacity up to 4TB with multiple RAID configurations. The DS408 will also be available later this month for an estimated $749.95. Related stories:Review: Synology Disk Station DS-107+Software upgrade redefines Synology's NAS devices