 Tom here from Lawrence Systems and we're gonna talk about Synology DSM7 and talk about some of the new fancy features that they've finally Have rolled out into DSM7. I say finally because this was actually an update that's been a long time in the making There was a lot of re-engineering going on in the back end to bring this update to light And I started as a beta tester on it and the beta test went so well and now it's in full production And yeah, I figured it's time to talk about it. It was actually a pretty smooth transition through all the updates I didn't notice so far any major problems But that's why I wanted to cover to get more people on this version And if there's any issues be reporting them back over to Synology before we dive into those details If you'd like to learn more about me my company head over to Lawrence systems calm If you like to hire for a project including Synology consulting There's a hires button right at the top if you want to help this channel out in other ways There's affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services We talk about on this channel and first the machine We're going to be using here for the Synology DSM 7 is an RS 1 2 2 1 plus that actually I have at home right now It's been a solid system for the things that we've been running and we'll be covering some of the details and some of the testing In there and talking about some of the new features they have in there And I want to bring up this is the latest DSM as of today July 19th 2021 DSM 7.0 41890 let's jump over to the release notes Which are for this exact version and there's even a bulletin release about some updates for DSM 7041890 and They were updates to fix sand manager active insights and SMB service So hopefully you got the latest on those these are some new features specifically active insight is and it is a way to Well, we'll show you are to offer active insights and kind of monitoring for the system But let's go to before you update the update is expected to be available for all regions within the next few weeks So if you are not seeing an update for your system as it says here wait a few weeks After the installation DSM 7 you will not be able to downgrade to a previous DSM version I wanted to make sure that gets highlighted because With a new version you can't easily roll back and I say they officially by Synology the answer is you cannot roll back My understanding from reading in some of the forum posts and talking to people There's an unofficial way to try to get it rolled back, but either way I want to say not a good idea It's not officially supported by Synology So don't you don't want to have to roll back so make sure that everything that you want to do will work in DSM 7 and I say it like that because there are some things that Have been deprecated Including lots of USB devices are no longer supported as in Wi-Fi dongles Bluetooth dongles 3g 4g dongles USB DAC speakers and DTV dongle all these are no longer supported DSM will end support for ext 3 We strongly suggest backing up the data stored on ext volumes and transferring the data to volume supported file systems before the update DSM 7 by default disables Ntlm v1 and enables Ntlm Ntml v2 only now that's important because that's basically the older version You know Windows XP media players and some older network printing systems There's a lot of older stuff that's looking for that support and it has been removed It's not something that Synology only has done. There's a lot of flaws in that particular protocol. It's old It's deprecated all over the place So Synology's just joining in on the systems that will no longer be supporting that by default So I would definitely if you have a need for that Yeah, you may have to wait now NSF NFS for v4.1 and related advanced functions multi-pathing are no longer supported on Synology NAS models with the following package architecture Now I bring this up too because it is also one of those use cases You may have if you're using this with multi-path NFS It's a fairly advanced feature, but it's missing now on these particular models So that's going to be one of those things. It's an edge case But you may have that edge case. These are really important things to know So I wanted to cover these right at the beginning Creating ssd caches on block level. Lungs is no longer supported existing ssd caches Lunge will function normally after the update. I find it interesting that you can't create anyone But it'll keep supporting them. But interesting NT four domains are no longer supported currently NT four domains will be Unavailable after the update the ice cuz he manager is now that sand manager the update that we've seen in there So they've changed name But actually kind of looks the same we'll cover that shortly When you reconnect ice cuz he targets from your vmware esx i-host After a dsm update the data stores and the luns that are mapped to the targets may not be mounted properly This happens when Luns to created before the update and they have a vmware right up on how to get around that not a vmware user So it's not something I run into But overall I would say this particular update if you're using your analogy as a storage server While there are some speed advantages they have with it the important things to consider is going to be Are you using this as storage server? And do you have any of the edge cases that were mentioned here that would Potentially break things because it's not like an update that you can roll to seven and just jump back to six because it didn't work The way you had hoped so I really recommend if you're using this as a storage server or as a storage target for a hypervisor specifically vmware here that you really go through and make sure all of these Edge cases have been met and that this will actually work with your configuration And this particular one's kind of an oddball one but something of note here video conversion to flv and mp4 Part two formats on the following models are no longer supported So kind of an unusual drop that they had there now packages This is where there's obviously a lot Synology moments and photo station will be upgraded and merged as analogy photos I'd previously done a video on Synology moments and I did that because videos I know a lot of people are probably going to stay in 6.2 for a little while But yes, I will be doing a new video on Synology photos And that's what I started using so I started with moments and dumped a lot of data in there Then I let it merge and migrate over to photos So the photos app is the new unified app as opposed to the way they had it set up before with the two apps And uh, I think this is better for them It's going to be able to focus on one application and so far I like it It's syncing just as well as my Synology moments app did so I haven't had any issues with it so far And I still have a lot more data to dump into it because I'm actually doing a big migration project For my updated video on it where I take just a massive Archive of data and throw it in there and see how it handles it because we really want to know how it works at scale And I'm hoping to answer that question at least on my Synology rs series that I have now they'll go down on here and list a lot of other little packages in the release notes Such as maria db 5 is incompatible. So you had to do maria db 10 This is where some of the nuance gets in there and there's a lot of packages that are not supported In that's quite a long list here. These are important because these are maybe things that you were using They did a lot of re-engineering underneath so to speak to fix Security and the way they segregate all the applications But by doing that they broke compatibility with all these different independent third party apps So make sure that you're not using some of these On your system in order to do the upgrade because as I stated earlier what you do forward You can't roll backwards on this now before we dive into the new features The last couple little pieces of rata that I think really matter here is for models below You can download the upgrade patch from the Synology download center and list them out here For these models dsm 7 for f s s a x s and x s plus and dva series models Are currently under development and will be available in the next quarter Which means and unfortunately i'm unable to test this with my ds 16 21 x s plus So we'll be using as a demo system of you know kind of a reminder of what it used to look like versus what it looks like Now and I guess this is a good place to start is look and feel How does it look does it feel different? Does it have like a lot of different features? Will I be confused actually not really? I think they did a nice job of polishing up. They did a great job on the icons But it's still the familiar Synology interface. We still have the same user management over here We still have the control panel and while it does look much the same and we'll go like just open up the actual close and open it So right this page very similar But you know you can see it kind of has an updated refreshed feel on here Now one thing right away that you'll notice though is if you go into the storage manager This is the old storage manager and in this one We get this nice little view now for each Synology on dsm 7 They have a view that gives you an idea of what it looks like and it supports You know showing you where the drives are installed and being able to click on each of those drives So you can jump right to it. I really like this This is just a nice enhancement instead of labeling bays or knowing which one it is I think they did a nice job of you know overall as you go through it You'll see all right everything's there that i'm used to but a little bit more Sometimes there may be an extended menu for a new feature But there's an overall feeling of the same but more polished which is what I like This is a nice easy transition into a newer more Modern interface without having to go. Oh crap. I have to learn a completely new product It's it's trying to find that happy middle It's hard because as much as we love new and exciting things Trying to hunt and find for things when you do an update sometimes can be quite aggravating Now let's jump over to the Synology page and you know, this is their marketing page Which they have all their fun, you know breakdowns of everything and can give you a more detailed overview Maybe there's one particular thing you're interested in so of course, you know, I'll leave a link to this here But user management and security is somewhere where they did make a lot of enhanced changes As I said before the base of it's still the same But they also have now a high availability directory server Now this is not something I've really tested out yet, but it's something that I want to take a look at It's interesting that they're offering a lot more sign-in options here With secure sign-on single sign-in app role delegation flexible administrative role delegation A lot of this will probably end up as some separate videos I do in the future But they've really built a lot in here to kind of create a fully serviceable Directory system for it management that will tie together with a series of synologies pretty slick Now Synology C2 I've done a video on using this for backup But they want to extend this further and this is all part of dsm7 A cloud for safe data and it does support encryption prior to sending which is an important aspect So you don't have to trust the cloud you can encrypt before you send which is great But they also want to offer a interesting use case where secure file sharing occurs And efficient backup and file syncing now what this allows you to do is once again This will be another deep dive I probably do on this specific feature is offer cloud based sharing where you may want to share it But you don't have this much bandwidth as is available in the c2 cloud So it's kind of a hybrid sharing system that allows you to take files on your Synology have them available in c2 so they're not The download I should say is not limited by you as in your connection It'll be able to share a file that it gets pulled from the c2 cloud But it's backed up from your Synology to the c2 cloud in a sharing format So it'll be some learning to figure out exactly how they implemented all this But I think it's a really smart way. They're doing this Now the sand solution Is something there they've renamed the way the ice guzzie works in here It also comes with some extra features in there And I haven't had a chance because the only one that we have is our current Synology that doesn't support the Current dsm7 is the one we're using as our sand internally here at the office. So Yeah, I'm hoping to get it so I can really dive in and test it But the way they're doing the ssd the caching and this is going to be an interesting dive And to see what other features it does I think this is just Synology's commitment that they really want to be a solution for you know a Storage server for targeted with hypervisors. So I think that's really cool. They're doing a lot of enhancement that I haven't really other than reading through some of the stuff in here that they have better fiber channel support I haven't really dove deep into this in terms of use case yet because the one server that we have for this is Currently not supported. This is this is why I wish it was supported now. Synology photos I've been using this at home and I've been migrating All of my data over here and I'm pulling all the data I have in the google cloud system into here So once I get around to doing the updated video On that it'll be based on having quite a bit of data in there right now I'm just you know populating all the different things I have locally not in google cloud But yeah, I am doing a cloud migration with google takeout And I'll cover the import process in there So for people looking to de google file the life that is a real option here with Synology photos And it kind of comes at the right time because a lot of people are looking for a solution because google What was given away for free for a long time is now being charged for so I know between privacy concerns and being You know racked up a bill that you can get for having what used to be an unlimited photo storage system Has a lot of people looking at other options And I think Synology photo is going to be a pretty popular option for that and it puts the data back under your control Now they still offer all their backup solutions, which is you know your active backup office 365 google workspaces and hyper backup There's not really anything changed there that was dramatic that I noticed but overall Um, I still really like this as solution I do have videos on this and nothing really looked any different on there But they do have it as part of the Synology DSM 7 suite and it really is one of the popular features that people look for And the Synology setup now. Let's talk about active insights. This is a beta feature But a really cool one and if you're a it business owner like myself This is where you go. Hey, I'd like to have a fleet of these out there But I want to know what they're doing. I want to know if there's a problem I wanted to get warnings and critical statuses of all of these and this is what Synology active insights does it lets you look at events I suppose there's any drive issues how much storage is used on each of these systems and it's only supported in DSM 7 So as DSM 7 rolls out, I think this is going to be a more important role here But I like that it gives you statistics. So each one of these are sending those stats to it It's an opt-in for those of you that don't want to send any stats to Synology But that's perfectly fine. That's what you're looking for from it management standpoint If you have lots of these out in the field Currently, these are just our in-house ones for testing that we have a tied to this active insights account But I think this is a pretty cool feature where they're going with this And it's something that I'm looking forward to to see how it's developed And it's just my understanding at least is it's going to be free But free for up to 50 hosts So even if you are a home user, you're going to be able to have a pretty decent amount of insights And once you have over 50, I'm not sure how they're exactly going to Offer different subscription plans. It's all in beta right now, but I still think this is kind of cool So ad host description plan for premium features. It's just longer retention of cystics more frequent data updates or custom event triggers Like I said, they do have some upselling in here, but you know from a business standpoint I think this is a pretty cool feature. Now last thing I'll mention is the interface like I said is pretty much similar But I would say it's a little bit faster now things like Going through the packages scrolling through them seems to work pretty fine And one of the things that's of note here. So loading packages, you know, looks pretty good This one's being routed over a vpn So this server is actually at my house and I'm here at my office and rolling through things opening the applications and launching things Like if I open up any of these really no issues at all, it's Shockingly Fast and overall, like I said, quite snappy. So I think the new interface does at least give me the feel I don't have any real Objective data on that to tell you that other than it feels faster than the other one But either way the interface is for a lot of these things like I mentioned is pretty much the same So besides having a more polished interface, you're still going to be unfamiliar territory Now if you look at the beta packages, they do have plex in here as a beta I am running plex at home. It is working fine. I've had a few people ask me does plex work So far the answer that is yes, but you know, I know there was some issues if you imported I loaded plex after I did it. So you may have to Remove plex and reinstall it to get it to work properly. I know that was the case with a couple of the applications that people commented with the upgrades I know plex went through a couple updates as well That I've loaded and they have all loaded fine, but I didn't have any problems with it, but I also didn't Load dsm 6 load plex and then dsm 7 I loaded dsm 7 and then loaded plex So that maybe why I had less trouble with it But overall my data was still there so it didn't really matter And I moved it over from another server that I had at home with all my plex media and imported it So that overall went pretty good I may do some videos on it because there's a couple ways you can link your data Pulling it from another server and copy it in here I think sounds you did a good job of making that easier But there's going to be a lot to cover when you talk about future future videos in here because there's you know All those little nuance changes and some of the new features But overall, I don't see a reason unless you have one of those edge cases mentioned in the beginning of the video Not to upgrade to astrology if you are not using any of those or you don't have a need for the usp dongles I think this is a great upgrade overall One thing I will comment on I thought was pretty cool and actually close this and we're going to go here to the astrology account Is when you tie this to your synology account enable active insight and performance metric collection Also, it can do backups on here as you sign in your astrology account quick check dns and conversion Automatic backup of your synology NAS all happens in there. I think this is pretty cool that they're offering this Um, this is a nice nice city to me to be able to have the configuration automatically backed up But this is a opt-in not something you have to try to opt out of So those of you that don't want it talking to technology or you're more concerned about privacy Then yes, you don't have to use this service But it is this service they do offer for performance metric collection and these active insights I think they're pretty cool But they let you choose and I think that's an important aspect of it is giving the user the choice on that All right I'll leave links down below to the release notes because there's a lot to cover in there and uh, thanks And thank you for making it to the end of this video if you enjoyed this content Please give it a thumbs up if you like to see more content from this channel Hit the subscribe button and the bell icon to hire a sure project head over to laurancesystems.com And click on the highest button right at the top to help this channel out in other ways There's a join button here for youtube and a patreon page where your support is greatly appreciated For deals discounts and offers check out our affiliate links and descriptions of all of our videos Including a link to our shirt store where we have a wide variety of shirts and new designs come out well randomly So check back frequently And finally our forums forums.laurancesystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics covered on this channel Thank you again, and we look forward to hearing from you. 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