Synology Infrastructure Assessment Checklist Guide

Synology Infrastructure Assessment Checklist

A well-designed IT infrastructure is essential for protecting critical business data, maintaining business continuity, and supporting future growth. As organizations expand, their Synology environment often evolves from basic file storage into a platform that supports virtualization, Microsoft 365 backups, surveillance, disaster recovery, and collaboration. Without regular assessments, storage limitations, performance bottlenecks, security gaps, and backup issues can develop over time.

A comprehensive Synology infrastructure assessment helps organizations evaluate the health of their storage environment, identify areas for improvement, and ensure the infrastructure is prepared for future business demands. Whether you are planning an upgrade or optimizing an existing deployment, a structured assessment provides valuable insights that improve reliability, security, and operational efficiency. Conduct thorough Synology infrastructure assessments.

Why Conduct a Synology Infrastructure Assessment?

Technology environments continuously evolve as businesses grow.

Organizations often experience:

• Increasing storage requirements

• More users and connected devices

• Larger Microsoft 365 environments

• Expanding virtual machine workloads

• Additional surveillance cameras

• New business applications

Regular infrastructure assessments help identify potential issues before they affect business operations.

Review Storage Capacity

Storage planning is the foundation of every infrastructure assessment.

Administrators should evaluate:

• Total storage capacity

• Available storage capacity

• Storage growth trends

• Shared folder usage

• Archive storage

• Department storage allocation

Understanding current storage utilization helps organizations plan future expansion before capacity becomes an issue.

Assess System Performance

Performance issues often develop gradually.

Key metrics to review include:

• CPU utilization

• Memory utilization

• Storage latency

• SSD cache performance

• Disk I/O

• Network throughput

Performance monitoring helps identify bottlenecks that could impact users and business applications.

Check Storage Health

Reliable hardware is essential for business continuity.

Infrastructure assessments should include:

• Drive health status

• RAID integrity

• Storage pool health

• Volume status

• SMART diagnostics

• System logs

Detecting hardware issues early helps reduce the risk of unexpected downtime.

Verify Backup Protection

Backups should not only be configured, they should also be tested regularly.

Review the following:

• Active Backup for Microsoft 365

• Active Backup for Business

• Hyper Backup

• Snapshot Replication

• Backup schedules

• Backup success rates

Organizations should also verify that recovery procedures have been successfully tested.

Review Security Configuration

Strong security is critical for protecting business data.

Review security settings such as:

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

• User permissions

• Shared folder permissions

• Firewall configuration

• Security Advisor recommendations

• DSM updates

A security assessment helps reduce the risk of unauthorized access and ransomware attacks.

Audit Microsoft 365 Backup Protection

Organizations using Microsoft 365 should confirm complete protection for:

• Exchange Online

• OneDrive

• SharePoint Online

• Microsoft Teams

• Shared mailboxes

• Microsoft 365 Groups

Proper backup coverage ensures business-critical cloud data remains fully recoverable.

Assess Virtualization Support

Many organizations rely on Synology as shared storage for virtualization environments.

Review:

• VMware vSphere integration

• Microsoft Hyper-V integration

• Storage performance

• Available capacity

• Network connectivity

• Future virtualization growth

Properly designed storage infrastructure improves virtual machine performance, reliability, and scalability.

Review Surveillance Storage

Organizations using Synology Surveillance Station should evaluate:

• Camera capacity

• Video retention periods

• Storage utilization

• Deep Video Analytics workloads

• Archive growth

• Backup protection

Proper planning ensures surveillance environments continue operating efficiently as deployments expand.

Assess Disaster Recovery Readiness

Successful backups alone do not guarantee business continuity.

Organizations should review:

• Snapshot Replication

• Hyper Backup

• Off-site replication

• Disaster recovery documentation

• Recovery testing

• Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)

Routine testing verifies that recovery plans will perform successfully when needed.

Plan for Future Growth

Infrastructure assessments should look beyond current requirements.

Organizations should evaluate:

• Expected storage growth

• Workforce expansion

• New office locations

• Additional business applications

• Compliance requirements

• Long-term backup retention

Planning ahead helps avoid costly emergency upgrades while supporting long-term scalability.

Infrastructure Assessment Best Practices

Organizations can improve long-term infrastructure reliability by:

• Regularly reviewing storage utilization

• Monitoring system performance

• Testing backups and recovery procedures

• Keeping security configurations up to date

• Forecasting future storage growth

• Conducting periodic infrastructure assessments

Following these best practices helps maintain a secure, reliable, and scalable Synology environment.

Why Businesses Choose Synology

Synology provides centralized storage, virtualization support, Microsoft 365 backup, Snapshot Replication, Hyper Backup, Surveillance Station, secure remote access, and enterprise management within a unified platform. Its integrated ecosystem enables organizations to simplify IT administration while improving business continuity, scalability, and long-term operational efficiency.

About Epis Technology

Epis Technology helps organizations assess, optimize, and modernize Synology environments through comprehensive infrastructure assessments, storage architecture design, Microsoft 365 backup implementation, virtualization planning, cybersecurity consulting, disaster recovery strategy, performance optimization, and ongoing managed support.

With deep Synology expertise and practical infrastructure experience, Epis Technology helps businesses build resilient, scalable, and future-ready IT environments that maximize performance, strengthen data protection, and support sustainable business growth.