Finally: Synology’s DS213air NAS has built in WiFi

Today connected storage provider Synology announced the DiskStation DS213air, a two-bay networked-attached storage (NAS) device with built-in WiFi and the company’s latest firmware, DiskStation Manager 4.1. The inclusion of native wireless is a first for Synology and still a relative rarity within the NAS market.

Given how rarely home and small business users actually need to interact with a NAS, these devices are, ideally, plugged in, turn on, and then left to run for years on end under a desk, in a closet, or on a bookshelf. They should be quiet, not too bright, have modest power consumption, and be insanely reliable. While Synology has gotten good at most of these requirements, the addition of wireless will greatly help with placement of this compact storage appliance.

Many other NAS units, including those from Synology, are able to connect with wireless networks using a USB dongle. This may seem like an easy solution, but it’s far from it. Synology’s compatibility page lists 158 different USB dongles that their storage units are compatible with, but offers up no recommendations as to which are the best. Synology’s online community, which is generally very strong, doesn’t have much good advice either. When I polled one of the company’s engineers about the huge list and lack of community support he recommended Hawking’s products, but the DS213air will make that a non-issue.

The inclusion of 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n wireless means that the DS213air can act as a router or access point, but past that it’s a standard consumer/SOHO NAS. It has support for Synology’s Surveillance Station (which means it can connect to multiple cameras, record, stream to a mobile device, etc.), works with the normal assortment of smartphone apps, encrypt data, Time Machine support, and most everything else you would expect.

DS2413+

And if specs are what you want, the DS213air is looking good. Power consumption is rated at 22.44W during access and 5.76W during hibernation and transfer speeds are quite speedy with Synology’s numbers putting it at 58.66MBps up and 108.07 MBps down (using a single 5GB file, and presumably with a wired connection). It runs dual 3.5-inch drives that are up to 4TB. It has dual USB 3.0 ports at the back if you want to drop in some addition storage or backup the NAS. It will sell for about $300.

Today the company also announced the DS2413+, a pro-level NAS that can handle from 12 drives (24 with an expansion unit) and up to 96TB of storage. This model does 201.03 MBps reading and 196.87 MBps writing, and has some nice perks you won’t find on smaller models, like VMware and Hyper-V compliance. It supports iSCSI and VAAI (vStorage API for Array Integration) which is big with the VMware crowd. Synology is pushing this model as a solution for demanding photographers, but it does seem like it will be overkill unless if they happen to be an IT administrator on the side.

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