How to Set Up a Synology NAS for a Small Business (Without an IT Department)

A client of mine runs a small physical therapy practice — eight therapists, two admin staff, one location. They were storing patient documentation in a mix of Google Drive folders, a shared OneDrive account, and one therapist’s personal Dropbox. When I asked them how they’d reconstruct patient records if that system fell apart, nobody could answer the question.

We installed a Synology DS923+ last year. Now their files live on hardware they own, in their office, with a backup that goes to an external drive and to Backblaze B2 automatically every night. Nobody thinks about it. It just works.

This guide walks through what I actually deploy for small businesses that need local file storage, proper backups, and the ability to access their data remotely without handing everything to a third-party cloud provider.

Why a NAS Instead of Cloud-Only Storage

The honest answer is that cloud storage is fine for most things — until it isn’t. Here’s where local NAS storage wins in a business context.

Speed. Copying a 2GB file to a NAS on your local network takes seconds. Copying the same file to Dropbox or Google Drive and then downloading it somewhere else takes minutes, depending on your upload bandwidth. For businesses working with large files — video, CAD drawings, medical imaging, legal documents — this matters every day.

No monthly storage bill that scales with your data. Google Workspace charges per user, and if you need significant storage you’re paying for it monthly, forever. A NAS is a one-time hardware cost plus drives. At current prices, 24TB of NAS storage costs roughly $400–$600 in drives. The equivalent storage on Google Workspace or Dropbox Business would run $2,000+ per year.

Data retention and compliance. For businesses with HIPAA obligations, legal document retention requirements, or any regulatory framework that requires you to control where your data lives, putting everything in a third-party cloud is at minimum a compliance conversation and potentially a problem. A NAS in your office is infrastructure you own and control. You know exactly where the data is, who can access it, and what the backup chain looks like.

Ownership. If Google decides to change their pricing, retire a product, or if your account gets flagged for any reason, your data is at their mercy. A NAS in your office is yours.

The counterargument — and it’s worth taking seriously — is that cloud storage is harder to lose in a fire or flood. That’s true, which is why a proper NAS strategy includes an offsite component. More on the backup architecture below.

The Right Synology Models for Small Business

Synology makes a wide range of NAS devices. The consumer J-series units are cheap and fine for a home media server. For a business, you want something in the Plus series — more capable CPUs, ECC RAM support, better upgrade paths.

DS923+ is my go-to for small businesses. It’s a 4-bay unit running an AMD Ryzen R1600 processor with 4GB of ECC RAM. ECC RAM matters in a NAS context — it catches single-bit memory errors before they corrupt your data. The DS923+ also supports NVMe SSD caching (there are two M.2 slots on the board), which dramatically speeds up random read/write performance for frequently accessed files. Street price is typically $600–$650 for the unit without drives.

DS1522+ is the step up — 5-bay, AMD Ryzen R1600, 8GB of ECC RAM, expandable to 15 bays with a DX517 expansion unit. If you have a larger team (20+ users) or you know you’ll need more than 4 drives worth of storage in the next three years, this is the better starting point. Expect to pay $750–$800 for the unit.

For a team of 5–15 people with typical document and file storage needs, the DS923+ is the right call. Don’t overbuy.

Drive Selection

This is where people make expensive mistakes. Desktop drives — Seagate Barracuda, WD Blue, whatever’s cheapest on sale — are not designed for NAS use. Desktop drives are built for intermittent use: you spin them up, copy some files, and they sit idle most of the day. A NAS runs 24/7 with multiple drives in close proximity, vibration from adjacent drives, and constant read/write operations from multiple users. Desktop drives fail faster in this environment, and NAS manufacturers often void the warranty on units running non-approved drives.

Use NAS-rated drives. The two I recommend:

Seagate IronWolf — designed for NAS, rated for 180TB/year workload (IronWolf Pro is rated 300TB/year for heavier use), comes with a 3-year warranty and IronWolf Health Management integration with Synology’s DSM. This is the standard recommendation for most small business setups.

WD Red Pro — comparable specs to IronWolf Pro, solid reliability track record, also integrates well with Synology. Either brand is fine; I’ve deployed both without issues.

Sizing. Figure out your current data footprint (how much you actually have stored today), then project 3 years of growth. Double that number. Then pick the drive configuration that covers it with your RAID setup taken into account. For example: if you have 2TB today and expect moderate growth, plan for 8–10TB usable after RAID — which means 4x4TB drives in a 4-bay unit using RAID 5 gives you ~12TB usable. That’s a comfortable buffer.

RAID Basics (And Why RAID Is Not a Backup)

Before I walk through RAID options, let me say this clearly: RAID is not a backup. RAID protects you from a single drive failure. It does not protect you from accidental deletion, ransomware, a power surge that kills multiple drives simultaneously, or someone throwing the NAS out a window. RAID keeps your system running if a drive dies. Backup gets your data back when something catastrophic happens.

With that said, here’s what each RAID configuration means in practice:

RAID 1 (Mirroring): Two drives, identical copies of data on each. If one drive fails, the other has everything. Usable capacity is 50% of total drive capacity (two 4TB drives = 4TB usable). Simple and reliable for a 2-drive setup.

SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID): Synology’s own RAID implementation that handles mixed drive sizes intelligently. If you’re combining drives of different sizes, SHR maximizes usable capacity. Single-drive tolerance with 2+ drives, dual-drive tolerance with 4+ drives if you select SHR-2. Good for situations where you’re adding drives over time.

RAID 5: The standard for 4-bay setups. Data is striped across all drives with a parity block that allows one drive to fail without data loss. Usable capacity is N-1 drives (four 4TB drives = 12TB usable). Requires a minimum of 3 drives. This is what I use on most 4-bay deployments.

RAID 6: Two-drive fault tolerance. Usable capacity is N-2 drives. Overkill for most small business setups unless you’re storing data that’s genuinely irreplaceable and you can’t afford any risk.

My standard for a DS923+ with 4 drives: RAID 5. The math is good, the fault tolerance is appropriate, and if a drive fails you have time to order a replacement without panicking.

Initial DSM Setup Walkthrough

When you first power on the Synology, connect it to your network and navigate to find.synology.com from any computer on the same network. It will find the NAS and walk you through installing DiskStation Manager (DSM), Synology’s operating system. The process is straightforward — create an admin account, set a strong password (write it down), and let it run.

Storage Manager. After installation, open Storage Manager and create a Storage Pool using your drives. Select RAID 5 (or your chosen configuration), let it initialize, and then create a Volume on top of the pool. This is where your data will actually live.

Shared Folder Creation. Think of shared folders as the top-level directories on your NAS. Create them based on how your business is organized — something like: Finance, HR, Projects, ClientFiles, Shared (for general access). You’ll set permissions at the folder level, so keep the structure flat. Deeply nested folder hierarchies make permissions management a nightmare.

User Accounts and Permissions. Go to Control Panel > User & Group and create accounts for each person who needs access. Assign each user to the folders they need, with the right permission level (Read & Write, Read Only, or No Access). For a small team not running a domain controller, local Synology users are fine. If you’re on a Windows domain with Active Directory, Synology supports domain join — you can bind the NAS to AD and use your existing user accounts for authentication.

QuickConnect. Synology’s QuickConnect service gives your NAS an address like quickconnect.to/yourid that works from anywhere without port forwarding. Enable it in Control Panel > External Access > QuickConnect. This is fine for accessing files through Synology Drive or the web interface. For anything sensitive, I’d recommend setting up a VPN instead (covered below).

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Packages Worth Installing

DSM has a package manager (Package Center) that lets you add functionality. Here’s what I install on every small business Synology:

Hyper Backup. This is the most important package on the list. Hyper Backup handles backing up your NAS data to external drives, to other Synology units, and to cloud storage providers. Set it up to back up to an attached USB drive nightly and to Backblaze B2 (via the S3-compatible API) on the same schedule. Both backup jobs run automatically. You pay nothing extra for the software.

Synology Drive. Think of it as Dropbox, but self-hosted. Install the Synology Drive client on your staff’s computers and it will sync designated folders between the NAS and their local machines. Files are available offline and sync automatically when connected. For most small teams, this replaces the need for Dropbox or Google Drive.

Active Backup for Business. This package lets you back up Windows PCs and servers to the NAS automatically. It’s free for Synology users and uses incremental backup with deduplication, so it doesn’t consume as much space as you’d expect. If you have 5–10 Windows workstations, this is dramatically cheaper than a separate endpoint backup solution.

Synology Drive ShareLink. Adds the ability to share specific files or folders via a time-limited link — useful for sending large files to clients without giving them full NAS access.

Surveillance Station. If your office has IP cameras, Surveillance Station turns the NAS into an NVR (network video recorder). Synology offers 2 free camera licenses; additional licenses are paid. For a small office with 2–4 cameras, it’s a clean solution that stores footage locally without paying a cloud subscription.

Backup Strategy: The 3-2-1 Rule

The 3-2-1 rule: keep 3 copies of your data, on 2 different types of media, with 1 copy offsite. Here’s how I implement this with Synology:

Copy 1: Live data on the NAS (RAID 5 array)
Copy 2: External USB drive connected to the NAS, running a Hyper Backup job nightly
Copy 3: Backblaze B2 cloud storage via Hyper Backup, also running nightly

Backblaze B2 currently costs $6/TB/month. For a small business with 2–3TB of backed-up data, that’s $12–18/month — significantly cheaper than comparable services. Hyper Backup connects to B2 via the S3-compatible API and handles encryption before data leaves your network.

The external USB drive should be rotated. Keep two drives — one connected to the NAS, one stored offsite (in a fireproof box, at someone’s home, in a safe deposit box). Swap them weekly. This is the unsexy part of backup that most people skip, and it’s the part that saves you when the office floods.

Set up Hyper Backup Vault on a second Synology (even a small DS223 at someone’s home) and you can do LAN-to-LAN backup across a VPN as your third copy instead of using USB drives. This is cleaner but requires more setup.

Remote Access: QuickConnect vs VPN

QuickConnect is convenient. It punches through NAT without port forwarding, works from anywhere, and requires no configuration beyond enabling it. For casual access — an employee downloading a file from home — it’s fine.

For anything more sensitive — HR documents, financial records, patient data — I recommend setting up a proper VPN. Synology’s VPN Server package supports OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, and WireGuard. WireGuard is the right choice in 2026: it’s fast, the cryptography is modern, and the client apps (available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) are simple to configure.

The basic setup: install VPN Server on the Synology, enable WireGuard, generate a server configuration, create client profiles for each user who needs remote access, and distribute the configuration files. Users connect through the WireGuard app and once connected they’re on your network as if they were sitting in the office.

One network requirement: your router needs to forward the WireGuard port (default UDP 51820) to the NAS’s IP address. If you’re running a TP-Link Omada or UniFi setup, this is a two-minute configuration in the router management interface.

The Setup in Summary

A properly set up Synology DS923+ for a small business looks like this: RAID 5 with four IronWolf drives, local user accounts or domain join, shared folders organized by business function with permissions locked down to what each person actually needs, Synology Drive running on staff computers for file sync, Active Backup for Business protecting workstations, and Hyper Backup running nightly to a local USB drive and Backblaze B2.

That covers local speed, offline access, ransomware recovery (Hyper Backup has versioning and the cloud copy is air-gapped from your local network), workstation backup, and offsite redundancy. You’re not dependent on a subscription storage service, your data is in hardware you own, and if a drive fails you swap it, let it rebuild, and keep working.

Budget roughly $600 for the DS923+ unit, $400–$600 for four 4TB or 6TB IronWolf drives, and about $15–20/month for Backblaze B2. The whole setup runs around $1,200 upfront and $15–20/month ongoing. That’s less than Google Workspace storage for most small teams, and you own the infrastructure.

Set it up once. Document your configuration. Test your restore process — pull a file from Hyper Backup, verify it opens, do this quarterly. The NAS will run in the background and not ask for much. That’s the whole point.