Synology

Synology ASIHLAMZ522 DS1520+ NAS Server 20TB HDD Bundle

A 5-bay Synology NAS bundled with 20TB of storage and dual NVMe cache SSDs, ready for business file serving out of the box.

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Overview

Power Your Business with Synology DiskStation DS1520+ NAS Server

The Synology DiskStation DS1520+ is a versatile network-attached storage solution tailored for business environments. It excels in various server roles, including backup, file storage, email servers, and domain controllers.

  • Form Factor: NAS Tower Server
  • Internal File System Format: EXT4, Btrfs
  • Ports: 4 x RJ-45 1GbE LAN (with Link Aggregation/Failover), 2 x USB 3.2, 2 x eSATA
  • Processor: Celeron J4125 Quad-Core 2.0GHz 4MB CPU
  • Memory: 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300 2666MHz SO-DIMMs
  • M.2 Storage: 1TB (2 x 500GB) M.2 NVMe SSDs
  • File Storage: 20TB (5 x 4TB) 6Gb/s SATA 3.5 Inch HDDs
  • Power: Single Power Supply
  • Operating System: Synology DSM Software

Pros & Cons

👍 Pros

  • Ships fully populated with 20TB of HDD storage and dual NVMe cache SSDs, eliminating the need to source and install drives separately.
  • Four Gigabit Ethernet ports with link aggregation and failover provide both higher throughput and network redundancy.
  • Synology DSM software is a mature, feature-rich operating system supporting backup, surveillance, Docker, mail server, and dozens of other packages.
  • Btrfs support enables data integrity features like snapshots, checksums, and self-healing that protect against silent data corruption.
  • Expandable via eSATA to additional Synology drive enclosures for growing storage needs.

👎 Cons

  • Limited to 1GbE networking — lacks 10GbE or 2.5GbE ports, which can bottleneck throughput for multiple simultaneous users or large file transfers.
  • The Celeron J4125 processor is adequate for file serving and basic apps but may struggle under heavy Docker container workloads or 4K video transcoding.
  • At 20TB raw capacity, usable space will be significantly less when configured with RAID redundancy (e.g., roughly 16TB in SHR/RAID 5).
  • The bundled 4TB drives are relatively small per bay — larger individual drives would yield more usable storage per slot.

Frequently Asked Questions

It includes the Synology DS1520+ 5-bay NAS, five 4TB SATA hard drives (20TB total), two 500GB M.2 NVMe SSDs for cache acceleration, and 8GB of DDR4 memory (2 x 4GB).
Yes, the DS1520+ has two eSATA ports that can connect Synology expansion units (DX517), allowing you to scale storage capacity beyond the built-in five bays.
It supports both EXT4 and Btrfs. Btrfs offers advanced features like snapshots, file self-healing, and flexible shared folder quotas, while EXT4 is a straightforward, proven file system.
The two M.2 NVMe slots are used as SSD cache to accelerate frequently accessed data. They work alongside the main SATA drives to reduce latency for random read/write operations.
It has four 1GbE LAN ports with support for link aggregation and failover, providing up to 4Gbps combined throughput and network redundancy.