We have been doing some major server upgrades here

at the office.

First steps towards that of course we did

the Storinator project a little while ago,

but Synology reached out and they wanted to

sponsor a little something special.

- Yeah, so this is their DS1019+.

For something like this, because it's easy to actually

configure this to have online access for.

You want to throw things like

finished video files, thumbnails.

Like stuff that, you know, is crucial for us

uploading onto YouTube,

but say if something goes wrong

and we're not in the office,

we can actually access this from anywhere

and grab those files and do what we have to do.

- So we've actually both used Synology products in the past.

I actually have one of their super secure ones

that's like fireproof and waterproof at my house.

I know you have...

- [Ken] The DS416Play

and I use that more for just media consumption.

I have a Plex server running on it.

I have all my music and movies.

I'm not much of a network geek at all,

but it was super easy for me to set up.

- Yeah, these things are the simplest that they get.

So, with this one Synology has

we're able to do is have all kinds of files,

not just videos, but primarily that's what we're going

to be using it for,

available anywhere anytime as long as we have

a decent Internet connection.

The first thing that you actually need to do

is get this set up.

You've got it just plugged in here,

but we don't have the drives in yet.

- Seagate actually provided these for us.

These are their IronWolf NAS drives.

They gave us three 2TB drives.

So the DS1019+ has five bays in it

and right now we're obviously using three drives.

- This is just a test though.

I do like these IronWolf drives,

but with 2TB each, this is much more for a smaller project.

Now, in theory, with five drives you can load this thing up

with probably 50TB or so if you get

some of those 10TB hard drives or something.

- Yeah, if you really wanted to and on top of that

if you want to have faster cache,

on the bottom here, there are M.2 slots

so you can actually, you know, put drives in there

that'll help speed things up a little more.

- So there are of course different ways

of using the Synology NAS

so one of which is just over your local network, right?

So if you have everyone plugged in via Ethernet,

and we'll test that in a second that all works,

but if you're out and about

and you're wanting to connect via WiFi or LTE

or something it still does work,

but when you have those SSDs it definitely does help

to speed things up when you do have the cache set up.

- [Ken] Yeah, it's cool that this is properly

tool-less, too because it just makes it so easy

to just hot swap these if you really want to.

- [Austin] Yeah.

- It's not super super foolproof,

but there are plastic keys

that kind of lock the drives in place.

So if you want like a light level of security

so no one just randomly snatches your drives,

you can just quickly lock them and...

- [Austin] Do you have a problem with people randomly

snatching your drives?

- It happens from time to time...

No it doesn't.

- Boom! We are up and running.

So, it actually has a basically a full interface

that you can use inside the browser.

- [Ken] To put it simply, a NAS is like an external

hard drive that's on your network

that can be accessed by any of the devices on the network.

- [Austin] Yeah, so right now I'm connected

via Ethernet and all I need to do

is literally just drag and drop a file in here.

If I actually open up the cart one.

Yeah, I mean, look we're at 112 - 113 megabytes per second.

So, if you want to get in,

you can actually do a lot of things

to really customize the way the software works,

permissions, all that kind of stuff,

but the main thing is that it's

hidden behind your password, right?

- [Ken] Right.

- [Austin] So as long as you don't give someone

your username or password,

they won't be able to get in and access your files.

Of course, you don't have to set it up

the way that we are.

If you just want to keep it on your local network,

by all means, go ahead.

But because the main purpose of this is so

we can pull our files down from anywhere,

that is a huge advantage.

You know the sort of the way we're thinking about this

as a replacement for cloud services, right?

- Right.

- Because of course you could, say, upload

to any number of various cloud services,

but now that you have to pay for those monthly.

Now, on top of that, you don't really own your data.

With this, we have full control over whatever we want to do,

change permissions,

we can give specific people logins or whatever.

We don't have to pay, you know, $20 - $30 a month

for whatever we need to actually keep saved.

- Yeah, and the other thing, too, is that,

I mean, we have 6TB in here

and if you actually price out,

you know, how much those services cost a month

and how much space you get,

- [Austin] Oh, yeah.

It's expensive!

- Especially when you load it up with like 30 - 40TB,

which is what this will probably end up being,

- Right.

- This is going to be nice

- So we actually have the remote access set up

where right now my iPad is on LTE

and I can see the console where you can control everything.

It's the same screen that he has up here.

- It's impressive that it works pretty well on iOS.

- Yeah, and then also what I can do is

they have an app that is kind of simplified

where you can kind of just see

the straight up folders and files.

- That's much easier when you're on iOS because with that,

you can just, like say, download the file or transfer.

Throw it wherever you want, right?

- Right, and so what I can do is actually

play that same Mystery Tech that he was playing

and it'll actually open up automatically on VLC

or even on its own app.

You can choose which one.

- [Austin] And I can say from my side

when I'm actually on the local network,

it plays basically immediately.

So I think the main idea here is

that you can use this for a ton of different aspects.

For us, I think we're going to be downloading

videos while we're on the go

and when we're actually at the office or whatever,

we can very easily use the local network

to throw files back and forth to it.

You can also very easily use this for backups

and on top of that,

one of the nice things is that because you're getting

as many drives as you can fit into the bays,

you can also expand the storage

because it does take advantage of RAID by default.

- [Ken] Yeah, you can pretty much have one of

the drives go down and replace it and be totally fine.

- [Austin] You don't lose any data because

hard drives can die, you know,

especially if you have them running

for long periods of time.

So it's nice to have some redundancy

because obviously no backup is as good

as a single failed hard drive.

Nah man, that's not...

That's not it.

- I'm actually dealing with a lot 1080 files not 4K files.

- You didn't even download them.

You can just stream them straight up.

- This is streaming right now.

This is not downloaded to my iPad

and it's running off LTE and it looks pretty smooth.

- So unlike our very expensive server solution,

this is a much better setup for what we're actually

going to be doing with it,

which, of course, is pulling down files while we're

on the go no matter where we are.

Now, of course, if you want 100TB,

this is probably not the unit for you,

but if you're talking about like ten, 15TB, twenty,

in the normal realm of not 8K raw footage

that is being uploaded everyday,

then this is very much a better solution.

And, in fact, we actually have one to give away, don't we?

- We do!

It's not this exact one,

but we do have a...

- That's ours.

- Yeah, this one, this one's our baby.

So it's the DS218+ which is their two bay system

and Seagate is throwing in two 2TB drives,

so that's 4TB total of storage

and yeah, that should pretty much offer

the same amount of stuff that's in here software-wise.

Why are you laughing?

- I like it when you do the giveaways.

- Why?

- It sounds so much more legit.

"With your two 2TB hard drives for free!"

Just pay postage and shipping

and handling directly to Ken Bolido.

- No, they're actually doing that, too.

- Okay, cool!

I was waiting for your angle of just

"Give me a little bit of extra Mystery Tech money."

- Oh, well I can always use Mystery Tech money.

(Austin laughing)

- So since Ken didn't plan out the giveaway,

we're going to make this very simple.

All you do is go follow us on Twitter @austinnotduncan

as well as @Synology

and just tweet what you want to do

if you actually win the 218+.

In two weeks, we'll randomly choose a tweet

and you'll be gifted with a wonderful new Synology NAS.

Did you do the Vanna White?

You did do the Vanna White!

Thank you very much!

And of course if you guys want to check out this guy,

the link will be in the description and stay tuned.

We're definitely going to be doing a lot more

server and networking fun videos soon.

Does that sound fun?

- Yeah.

- That actually doesn't sound fun.

- Well, 'cause you're going to be doing it.

I'll just sit there and laugh

while you mess things up.