The Managed Synology Service is to support Departments and Projects to purchase Synology NAS devices and connect them to the University network. iSolutions must approve all NAS device purchases. We will advise as to suitable devices and provide remote monitoring and security patching by adding them to the iSolutions Synology CMS (Central Management Service).

When Synology NAS devices can be used as data storage solution

Synology NAS devices must only be used as a data storage solution in the following circumstances:

• It’s transient data that is easily reproducible and is not valuable/unique research data
• Highly secure storage of the data (for example: medical data) is not needed
• Data is anonymized, does not contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
• You don’t require backups for disaster recovery purposes
• High performance storage is not required
• You need flexible data storage and you wish to manage storage capacity yourself

What Managed Synology Service provides

The Managed Synology Service provides the following:

• Advice on purchasing suitable Synology NAS devices
• Monitoring installed Synology NAS Device patch status
• Updating Synology DSM (the operating system used by Synology NAS devices)
• Monitoring hardware failures e.g. failed HDDs (Owners will be advised of Alerts)

What to do if your data are not suitable for a Synology NAS

It’s worth bearing in mind that for data not suitable for a Synology NAS device the University Research Filestore service provides high performance, highly resilient and backed up data storage to host and protect valuable research data. This would be a more appropriate solution when the data you wish to store is:

• Highly valuable/critical research data
• Research data sets are very large, or contain huge numbers of files
• Data is in constant use via processing tools or applications
• Data access profiles require high performance
• Access to data requires traditional access methods, for example an NFS or SMB mount
• Dataset migration is required to/from Iridis High Performance Computer platform

Requesting Synology NAS devices

To request a Synology NAS device raise a ticket to ServiceLine.