After Synology provided a first preview of DiskStation Manager 7.1 (DSM) in Synology 2022 and beyond, today sees the release of a first beta version of the new NAS operating system for system administrators.

Improved memory management

Among other things, DSM 7.1 offers new file aggregation portals and adds SMB DFS functionality to link multiple Synology systems. The new interface of DSM 7.0 has also been further improved. Background tasks are now summarized in an overview. This allows administrators to more quickly see and understand what tasks the system is currently performing, even across user accounts. In Synology’s high-availability clusters, users can now view and manage drives in both systems in a single storage manager. DSM already supports flash caching to increase random I/O performance, but with version 7.1, SSD caching can accelerate multiple storage volumes simultaneously.

Full system backup

Additionally, DSM 7.1 now also introduces full system backup. The ability to fully clone and replicate a system using Synology Active Backup for Business (ABB) can speed recovery time (RTO) in an emergency. Full system recovery also allows you to deploy identically configured systems.

Additionally, the following optimizations have been made for applications such as Active Backup for Business, Active Insight, C2 Hybrid Share, Directory Server, Synology Drive, MailPlus, or Virtual Machine Manager:

• Active Backup for Business: Bandwidth control, advanced monitoring and reporting capabilities, and support for DSM backups
• Active Insight: Centralized monitoring of login activity and status of Hyper Backup jobs
• Synology C2 Hybrid Share: Server-side snapshots for better file protection
• Directory Server: Support for read-only domain controllers to improve security and deployment flexibility
• Synology Drive: Redesigned Mobile User Experience and Improved Monitoring/Auditing Features
• MailPlus: Virtual DSM support, advanced management options, import and migration improvements
• Virtual Machine Manager: Storage I/O performance enhancements and QoS features

Available today in preview

DSM 7.1 Beta and associated apps and services are now available available as part of Synology’s pre-release program. Synology notes that interested users should only install the beta on non-production or virtualized systems.

The beta version of DSM 7.1 is not intended to be an update for the vulnerability in DSM 7.0 that was disclosed today, and is highly unlikely to close the vulnerability.