Synology has announced the beta release of DiskStation Manager (DSM) 6.1 and several packages, inviting the Synology community to experience the latest software and participate in the development process. “Synology is evolving to satisfy the needs of professionals and businesses by delivering tools that go beyond just storage. Today’s announcement highlights how Synology NAS can act as your office’s all-in-one server and become a central piece of your IT strategy,” said James Chen, CEO of Synology Inc.
The latest iteration of Synology’s NAS operating system introduces granular tools for monitoring the health of the system, file self-healing for enhanced data integrity, refined support for Apple’s Time Machine, as well as flexible system update options that simplify the lives of system administrators. A new Active Directory Server is also coming soon, which will allow select Synology NAS models to serve as a domain controller in order to manage users, groups, and devices in an office environment.
New applications in the latest DiskStation Manager include:
- Synology Universal Search: A powerful search tool that helps users find everything on their Synology NAS — from important documents and multimedia files to applications and help tips.
- USB Copy: For those who often store data on USB drives, USB Copy is a convenient tool that allows users to back up files to or from a Synology NAS by simply plugging in a USB storage device. The customizable rules allow users to specify exactly which folders should be copied.
- Snapshot Replication: Snapshot Replication ensures business documents, virtual machine data, or other crucial files remain safe and available in the event of a disaster. The updated application introduces management tools to monitor and pause ongoing tasks, as well as the ability to replicate to a local volume for greater flexibility.
- Hyper Backup: The latest version of Hyper Backup keeps backups safe with advanced integrity checks, reduces storage consumption with enhanced data deduplication, and allows users to customize and fine-tune version retention policies.
- Synology High Availability: When deploying a high-availability cluster, the latest version of Synology High Availability supports running S.M.A.R.T. tests and enabling SSD TRIM on both of the servers, and allows users to add a quorum server to reduce the chances of split-brain situations.
- Virtual DSM Manager: The latest beta release lets users seamlessly migrate virtual instances of DSM between two Synology NAS while keeping data stored on a third machine in order to avoid service downtime. In addition, by leveraging snapshot technologies available on Btrfs volumes, Virtual DSM Manager can clone and restore entire machines within seconds.
The DSM 6.1 beta and packages are available for download at https://www.synology.com/beta.
