Acronis Cyber Protect integrates backup with AI-driven cybersecurity to deliver comprehensive cyber resilience. It offers rapid, one-click recovery, and simplified management for all IT environments.
N/A
DiskStation
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
DiskStation is a line of network-attached storage (NAS) solutions from Synology headquartered in Taiwan.
The services are easy to learn and manage. The support team is very competent and resolves my issues that come s up easily. As a business partner, they are proactive in offering solutions and help to improve what we are doing. They are always there for engineering solutions that we are not sure how to do.
The Synology DiskStation is well suited as a NAS solution, easy enough to mirror a Windows file server shares setup. Access to the Hyperbackup utility eliminates the need to purchase a tape backup solution. A portable USB drive can be used as the initial backup target. For air gap purposes can connect Hyperbackup to the various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, GCP to copy backup data there. Utilizing it as a backup solution has also been great, instead of purchasing a tape solution, tapes and an offsite tape repository. Active Backup for Business is another excellent backup utility for physical servers, VMWare virtual machines, etc. Restoring files is fairly intuitive. Until Synology introduced the dual controller setup, using it as a SAN was less appropriate as there was occasional downtime when the controller had an issue but this was less important for the scenarios we were using it for. It would be more of a concern if we had used it for things that require more robust uptime requirements. Overall we are happy with the features of the Synology DiskStation.
Synology DiskStation offers lots of options for creating links to share files or request that some uploads files. It makes it really easy to just share a link that can have an expiration or a set number of times it is accessed.
We always had enough storage on our Synology DiskStation, we never had to worry about something being too big to upload or share.
Love how you can create folders that are shared and also have some that are private. This makes it so easy to have shared collaborations with coworkers or clients, but also allows you to have a private place to save things that only you need.
The website is pretty slow and will kick you off sometimes. I know they are working on this. For now, this is the biggest problem we have with Acronis.
Their support team isn't great. It can take a while to get an issue resolved, although issues do not happen frequently.
While BTRFS is a more advanced file system than ext4, it also is in a perpetual state of development, with many features not fully functional and a plethora of bugs. Synology has managed to overcome many of these limitations by placing BTRFS on top of a LVM, but there are much better file systems that Synology could have used, such as OpenZFS.
DSM's built-in backup software, HyperBackup, while robust, oftentimes runs into issues. Specifically, backups can be working fine for months or years, and then suddenly the backups will fail. Sometimes these failures can be resolved, but oftentimes the backups need to be completely restarted. Fortunately, even when the backup fails, the existing backups are still accessible, it is just that new backups can not be performed.
The underlying Linux OS provides significant benefits, but also adds a fair amount of complexity. Most of that complexity is wonderfully hidden by the DSM interface, but when certain problems arise, delving into the Linux command line is not out of the question.
Perhaps the biggest issue with Synology DiskStation is Synology's support. The issue isn't that the support is bad, but it can be frustratingly slow when dealing with a major issue. Synology does have a very active community that is always willing to help, but nothing beats first-party support.
They recently raised the pricing for backup usage and our price has nearly doubled. It is still lower than some other vendors, but we might review other options before renewing next year.
As long as Synology give us support for our hard drivers we will not change. I know Synology has now forced their hands to buy their own hard drivers and their new line of products. But if we still have support for old hard drivers from other manufacturers then we will still use Synology Nas. Otherwise we change manufacturers
Overall, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is powerful and effective. The platform has user-friendly features and a centralized dashboard that simplifies management across multiple clients. This platform integrates backup, recovery, and security features effectively, all in one. It makes our lives easier.
The Synology DiskStation is easy to set up and manage. The interface is clean and features are well documented. These units are reliable and can be set up to do scheduled integrity checks so failures can be mitigated before they halt business operations. The available packages for expanded roles makes these devices versatile.
Support has been helpful when we have had to reach out. We have not had to contact support that much so I do not have much feedback on them. I met the support team at the Cyber Summit and they are all very nice, smart individuals.
Unfortunately, the one time I've had to reach out to DiskStation support, it did not go well. My NAS appliance wasn't appearing on the network, and no matter what the support team tried, they could not get it back online. Instead of offering to send me a new unit, they told me to go buy a new one - obviously, this was a disappointing response and not very eco-friendly either! Fortunately, through some internet research of my own, and some ingenuity, I figured out I could restore my NAS to factory settings by removing all the drives and resetting. Only then did I realize I had a bad disk. I had to experiment for a while to figure out which one it was. Once I had done that, though, I was able to get the latest DiskStation loaded back on, no thanks to the DiskStation support crew. If notifications were rock solid, I suspect I would have caught the bad disk before it because an OS problem, but I never received a bad-disk notification.
Price! All the services have low entry points and then hit you with big fees. Acronis Advanced Backup provides better management and control of your cost then the other services we evaluated. We have tested a number of solutions not on the list that have are price competitive, but the support was lacking.
Synology DiskStation packs a punch with the latest and greatest feature set which goes above and beyond many other vendors. It allows for a turn-key solution to cover almost every use case in the SMB market leaving other vendors behind.
We have been able to further develop our customerbase and and more MSP as our partners
Overall the recurring revenue coming from Acronis, will help us to increase revenue and margin, without investing in new hardware and save on energy-cost.
It is time consuming to implement Acronis into our system and train our employees. With this there is also cost involved, but we believe in the long-term investements we make here.
