Synology 2-Bay DiskStation DS723+ (Diskless)

Product Information

Usable capacity for each volume will be lower than the maximum volume size and is dependent on the filesystem and the amount of system metadata stored. This device’s 1GbE LAN ports have a maximum transmission unit (MTU) size of 1,500 bytes.The USB 3.0 standard was renamed to USB 3.2 Gen 1 by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) in 2019.

This new unit delivers impressive performance and capability for its size," said Synology product manager Michael Wang. "With its extremely compact form factor, it will certainly appeal to those that have smaller storage requirements but don't want to give up on the convenience of centralized storage and the possibility to scale in the future."There is no avoiding that the CPU choice inside the Synology DS723+ NAS is going to split opinion the tiniest bit. Until now, this 2/7-bay expandable product family has been exclusively Intel-based and integrated graphics equipped (Celeron, with a brief dance with Pentiums in 2016) which all benefited from particularly good multimedia & graphical handling when it comes to server-side transcoding/conversions, especially with more complicated and dense media formats such as HEVC/H.265. This is why the DS720+ (and DS718+ and DS716+ predecessors) were so popular for use as a Plex Media Server, Synology Video Station, Surveillance Station and even Virtual Machine deployment. The new Synology DS723+ NAS on the other hand is the latest system that has jumped ship from Intel over to AMD, with the DS723+ being built on AMD architecture, with a Ryzen Embedded Dual Core R1600 processsor. Now, it is worth highlighting that the R1600 IS a very good CPU. It is the same processor that is in the DS1522+, which we demonstrated could saturate 10GbE in a RAID 5 (more on this later) and also the DS1522+ NAS performs well in Plex at 1080p and native (non transcoded/convereted) 4K too, so the switch by Synology from an Intel to this AMD is not without merit. Before we dig deeper though, let’s discuss the specifications that we know about the DS1522+ NAS, alongside educated guesses we can make that are based on the CPU, product family and Synology’s past with the diskstation series: Ideal for teams of professionals, small businesses looking to step into the world of centralized storage, or as an edge node in distributed deployments, the DS723+ can scale up to 7 drive bays with a DX517 expansion unit when more capacity is needed. The same was observed playing 1080p files and there was no buffering experienced throughout. A slight spike is seen in CPU utilization initially which settles down soon after. Memory utilization continued to run unaffected. 4K to 1080p transcoding Moving on to the underside of the Synology DS723+ you’ll find 2 x M.2 NVMes SSD slots, again designed to have plenty of ventilation to keep the drives cool during operation. For the first time Synology have finally catered for the possibility to create storage pools via these SSD drives in addtion to simply cache storage with the only caveat that you need to use Synology NVMe drives ( SNV3410-400G and SNV3410-800G). If you use non Synology SSD drives, you can only use them as cache drives.

Great emphasis has been placed to ensure passive cooling of the DS723+ as you’d notice there’s air vents on every side of the external enclosure to provide the best efficiency for the rear cooling fan. Given that these units are meant to run 24×7 the correct chassis design is very important to get right which Synology have done well here.Reduce transfer times with the DS723+, designed to accelerate your workloads. Easily add faster networking and NVMe drives to further boost performance. If you bummed out about Google’s policy change with Google Mail/Photos, Synology have their own solution called Synology Mail Plus and Photo Station catering for this exact need. Synology Office offers an alternative to Google Office/Office 365 and Surveilance Station offers NVR capabilities to your NAS allowing a central control center for all your IP camera feeds. Based on internal processor benchmarks between DS923+ and the prior-gen DS920+. Actual performance may vary depending on hardware and software configuration, workload, and testing environment. the number of connections that can be maintained when the recommended number of hosted files was reached)

Following what I thought was a system failure on my Synology (very old DS412+), I was in a real bind for a couple of weeks. I was torn between replacing it with a DS920+ or waiting on the pending release of the much vaunted DS1522+. The agony!The new server is very similar to the DS923+ in processing power and hardware specs, as you will note in the table below. Synoloyg DS723+ vs DS923+: Hardware specicications

Hybrid cloud capabilities provided by Synology Hybrid Share allow users to merge the benefits of on-premises and cloud by storing cold data in the cloud while keeping frequently accessed files cached on the local device for access at LAN speeds. Make the most of high-performance networking and file access without taking up unnecessary space. DS723+ comes equipped with 2 bays and can scale up to 7 bays with the DX517 expansion unit as your data needs grow. Actual maximum storage pool and volume sizes vary depending on drives used, the number of drive bays available, and the RAID configuration. Other than the fewer drive bays, both natively and via expansion, and all that implies, the DS723+ is expected to deliver the same performance and overall experience as the DS923+. Only caveat here is if you require hardware transcoding then the DS723+ might not be the best solution for you. We tested out the unit with Plex 4K Direct play

Performance backed by Synology drives

PCIe add-in cards, expansion units, and storage drives are sold separately. Refer to the compatibility list for compatible devices. Overall, the software support in DSM on the DS723+ is going to be very good and the depth of the hardware available means that although it will be a pinch less suitable for highly graphical tasks, it DOES have alot more capability in file handling and transmission – which is precisely what Synology want for this device and makes it increasingly appealing to traditional storage users. Equally, the architecture of this CPU inside the DS723+ allows its resources to be spread a great deal further (threads and simultaneous tasks) towards using the full range of services that DSM includes. The cloud/hybrid services too will greatly benefit form this architecture too and once again mean that this Synology NAS will bring a tremendous sense/feeling of ‘local’ storage to this network/remote server. Finally, it is worth highlighting that the DS723+ and it’s R1600 CPU benefit form more PCI lanes at PCIe3 rather than the PCIe2 of it’s predecessor, with allows better bandwidth availability to the hardware resources onboard (such as those m.2 NVMe bays) The Synology DS723+ NAS – Release Date and Price? Strictly Synology-approved SSDs: the Synology SNV3410 (presently available in 400GB and 800GB) is the only supported drive. Access files from all your devices and protect them with smart versioning. Manage, share, and sync your data across locations. Performance figures are obtained through internal testing by Synology. Actual performance may vary depending on the testing environment, usage, and configuration. See performance charts for more information.