Synology DS2422+ tower NAS, 12 bays, AMD Ryzen V1500B, 4 GB, 4 × 1GbE

The DS2422+ offers the capacity of a rackmount unit but stands on a desk or the floor like an ordinary tower PC. All 12 bays are designed for 3.5-inch drives and accept both HDDs and SSDs. Drives are hot-swappable: a failed disk can be pulled out and replaced without switching the NAS off, so your colleagues keep working while the array is repaired in the background.

The AMD Ryzen V1500B is a quad-core, server-class embedded processor running at 2.2 GHz. With 4 GB of DDR4 memory it handles office file sharing, several users working at once and regular backup jobs. If heavier applications come along later, adding memory is worth considering, but the manufacturer data does not state the number of memory slots or the maximum supported amount.

Four 1GbE RJ-45 ports let you connect the NAS to several networks at once, for example separating office workstations, backup traffic and security cameras, so one stream does not slow down another and a single broken cable does not cut everything off. Two USB 3.2 ports are there for external drives, for example to make a second copy on a backup disk that is kept away from the office.

The NAS has one PCIe slot for an add-in card and a separate expansion port for connecting an additional drive enclosure. That means you do not have to replace the whole unit when your data or your network speed needs grow. The exact cards and expansion units that are supported are not listed in the manufacturer data, so pick them from the Synology compatibility list.

RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and Hybrid RAID are supported. In a twelve-drive array RAID 6 is a sensible choice, because your data survives even if two drives fail at the same time. Hybrid RAID lets you mix drives of different sizes and grow capacity step by step. Two fans keep a fully loaded chassis cool, and the unit weighs 11.6 kg.

Small and mid-sized businesses that need plenty of disk space but have no server cabinet; photographers, video producers and design studios whose archives grow by terabytes; and IT administrators who want hot-swap bays, four network ports and a PCIe slot that lets the system grow later.