EC News DeskSynology announced the Beta release of DiskStation Manager 7.1, giving system admins a chance to test out the expanded functionality. DSM 7.1 builds further on the massive platform upgrade introduced with DSM 7.0 and introduces many innovative enhancements designed to address IT challenges.
“DSM 7.1 is an important evolution for one of the most widely used data management platforms in the industry,” System Product Management team manager Shamrock Ko said. “Building on the solid foundation we set with 7.0, we can now focus on addressing the more specific challenges that our customers identify during their day-to-day use of the platform.”
Core storage enhancements
DSM 7.1 brings key improvements to the storage management experience. Starting with the introduction of file aggregation portals, it adds SMB DFS capability to enable administrators to link together multiple Synology systems, providing more convenient file access for end users by removing the need to remember separate addresses.
The new user interface introduced in 7.0 has been further optimized by consolidating background tasks into an administrator-friendly overview that provides greater transparency into what is happening on the system, even across different user accounts. For Synology High Availability clusters, users can now view and manage drives on both systems from a single instance of Storage Manager for easier maintenance and management.
On the performance side, DSM has long supported flash caching to boost random I/O performance cost-effectively. This new version will further economize SSD caching with the ability to speed up multiple storage volumes at the same time.
Full system protection
DSM 7.1 introduces complete, bare-metal level backups of the entire system. Powered by Synology Active Backup for Business, the ability to clone and replicate the entire Synology system greatly accelerates recovery time objectives (RTO) in the event of a total site failure. Full system restoration capability also introduces a quick and convenient way to deploy identically configured systems.
Ecosystem-wide improvements
In tandem with DSM 7.1, Synology is launching several major enhancements to applications and services.
- Active Backup for Business: bandwidth control, expanded monitoring and reporting capabilities, and support for DSM backups
- Active Insight: centralized login activity monitoring and Hyper Backup task statuses
- Synology C2 Hybrid Share: server-side snapshots for better file protection
- Directory Server: support for read-only domain controllers to improve deployment security and flexibility
- Synology Drive: revamped mobile user experience and improved monitoring/auditing capabilities
- MailPlus: Virtual DSM support, expanded management options, importing and migration improvements
- Virtual Machine Manager: storage I/O performance improvements and QoS capabilities
“Our constantly evolving DSM platform keeps adding capabilities to both new and existing deployments,” said Weili Lu, product manager for DSM. “The pre-release program provides a chance for us to work closely with our customers, providing early access to new features and obtaining valuable feedback in return.”
Availability
DSM 7.1 Beta and companion applications and services will be available starting today as part of Synology’s pre-release program. Interested users are invited to install the pre-release software on non-production or virtualized systems.
