Diskstation Manager 5.0 (DSM 5.0)
So now I will talk a bit about the features of DiskStation Manager 5.0 or DSM 5.0 in short. DSM 5.0 is Synology’s newest operating sytem, and I really like it. It is easy, clean and fast also there are a lot of packages to install.
When you first get your NAS up and running, you will need to install the DSM software on the NAS. After that, you can start using the device. You can set up and configure a lot of extra settings if you wish but that is not really necessary. When you log in you see the interface looks really good like a desktop of a normal PC operating system like windows, Mac OS or Linux. That is also what makes DSM so good, it feels familiar and it is easy.
On the desktop you can set icons to your ‘apps’ like photo station, video station, download station….
The first time you boot on your NAS it is really empty, so why not install some packages to get more use of of it? The package center is a bit like the Apple app store, android market,… you can download and install applications, on the Synology system called packages. There are lots of things to install from the simple things like cloud station and video station to more difficult features like a mail, DNS or … server and lots more.
The file station is a bit similar to windows explorer, this is the place where you can see all the files on your NAS, set sharing links to share folders/files to you friends, up or download files, those kind of things. Here you can see a little bit of my iTunes library.
About iTunes there is also a package called ‘iTunes Server’ which basically lets you create a shared map inside iTunes with all your files. You can even set a password on it.
Then the audio, video and photo station are all a bit the same, it lets you access all the media files on the NAS and you can look, watch or listen to them. I personally do not use it, sometimes I do use the apps on my Ipod. To watch movies I mostly just use network locations on my Dell venue 8 Pro and stream them that way but on Ipads or android devices this is great.
Here you can have a look at all the Synology mobile apps. The mobile apps are available for IOS and Android; I have a Windows 8 Tablet at home and I find it a bit unfortunate the Apps like DS Video and DS audio are not available on the Windows platform.
Then this is something I really like: the download station. You probably all know programs like Bit torrent and µtorrent? Well this is something very alike. for small files I mostly use my computer but for very big or slow downloading files I just add them to download station, so I do not need to let my computer on the whole night since my NAS is online 24/7. And when I wake up 9/10 all the files are downloaded. Of course only download legal files! As you can see I am now downloading Ubuntu 14.04.
With the Synology assistant, you can use “Mapstation” to create network locations on your computer. Or just use windows explorer to create network locations. This is really easy if you want to have all your files or media files available on multiple machines without using their hard drives. I made a downloads folder, a video folder and a music folder. Now I can just watch my movies with VLC or Windows media player without having the movies on my computer or tablet. This is also how I watch movies on my windows tablet.
Then at last we have cloud station, I guess most of you know or even have a Google drive, Dropbox or Microsoft Onedrive account. There you have some space around 2 or 5 gigs available to use on their servers. But with the cloud station you own your own cloud service, no limits if you want you can make a cloud with 20TB on the DS 412+ you can also use it to for work. By syncing all the work files to all your colleagues. There are really a ton of options, you can add user, set privileges, add folders to sync,… really handy.
