Setup and Specifications
The DS1511+ ships with no storage by default. It can hold up to five 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drives. Maximum internal capacity is 15TB, but you can easily exceed that by making use of the four USB ports and two eSATA ports. If those expandability options are not enough, users can purchase the Synology DX510 expansion unit and scale up to a staggering 15 drives. Drives are hot-swappable, and memory is scalable up to 3GB (for additional costs, of course.)

The Setup is easy, comparable with that of Netgear's ReadyNAS Ultra 6 ($899,4.5 stars). Simply connect the device to your network and use the setup software on the accompanying CD. The CD includes a user guide; the Synology Assistant, which is what locates the NAS on the network; a Data Replicator, which allows users to backup an individual PC to the NAS; and the Download Redirector, a free app for managing Bit Torrents and other downloaded data.

In my testing, the Synology Assistant detected the DiskStation DS1511+ in seconds, and, once it did, it was a snap to access the DSM 3.0 interface. A handy Quick Start wizard walks users through configuring volumes, creating shared folders, setting up users and permissions, and other basic tasks. Advanced users may want to close the Quick Start and just dive right into the interface to setup, but it's a great and efficient way to initially configure the NAS without any errors.

My test DS1511+ was already configured with an SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) volume. SHR has some advantages over RAID 5, because not only can individual disks in the array be of differing capacities, but also SHR makes better use of disk space. For example, if you have five disks of the following sizes--80GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB--traditionally, RAID 5 is dependent on the smallest disk in the array, and your usable capacity would be about 320GB. With SHR and the same drives, your usable capacity would be about 810GB. If you prefer though, you can still configure manual RAID settings. Confused about RAID? Read my primer, RAID Levels Explained.

As mentioned, the DS1511+ has all the same features as the DS1010+. Apps include Web station with virtual hosting of up to 30 Web sites, PHP/MYSQL, alternative HTTP error page, and third-party app support. Synology packages are available to load on the device, such as MailStation, Squeezebox server, Webalizer, and more. There are also a few apps available to run on iPhone and Android.

The File Browser is the area in DSM where users can upload and manage files and folders. It's really easy to use and interfaces nicely with the desktop's file system. The DS1511+ supports advanced network backup—you can even select to backup data to Amazon EC2 cloud servers. Or you perform simple individual PC backups with the wonderfully straightforward Synology Data Replicator. Apple Time Machine backup is also supported.

Security options include FTP over SSL/TLS, IP Auto-Block, firewall, encrypted network backup over rsynch, HTTPS connection. The DS1511+ can serve as an enterprise offering since it integrates nicely into a Windows domain. Windows ACL can be used to set permissions on folders.

DSM 3.0 simplifies a lot of the more advanced tasks that users want to do with NASes. There's a wizard to walk you through setting up remote access and plenty of help with port forwarding rules. Another great thing about DSM 3.0 is it's compatible with IPv6, as are any Synology DiskStation NASes that are upgraded to DSM 3.0.