Synology at Computex 2026: New Generation DSM with Agent AI and Bee Series Private Cloud
At the Computex 2026 in Taipei, visiting the Synology booth allowed us to see the company's complete ecosystem in action. This year marks a special milestone for the brand, with the DSM operating system celebrating its twentieth anniversary and a global deployment of over 14 million shipped systems managing a total of more than 400 exabytes of data worldwide.
The company, with a long-standing tradition in the storage sector, outlined a clear and concrete vision during the conference to address radical technological paradigm shifts that historically occur every five years: bringing artificial intelligence directly on-premise, guaranteeing users and businesses absolute control over security, reliability, and privacy without depending on external cloud providers. As stated by President and CEO Philip Wong, data is at the heart of every development, and trust is the indispensable foundation.
New Generation DSM: From Operating System to AI Governance Platform
The most significant innovation is the new generation of DiskStation Manager (DSM), which evolves from a storage operating system into a true intelligent platform for data. Synology proposes a complete technology stack that starts from GPU-accelerated infrastructure to local models, passing through a memory model equipped with contextual awareness and advanced tools capable of interfacing with MCP APIs, command lines, and system workflows.
On the hardware front, the preview of the new Rackstation 26 series with integrated GPU stands out, capable of running local Large Language Models (LLM) at about 26 billion parameters to locally manage RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines or corporate AI assistants. For large enterprises, the company will introduce the AI Station enterprise-level platform, engineered to support models over 100 billion parameters and capable of sharing its GPU computing resources with various connected NAS on the network, acting as a centralized computational hub.
The new DSM transforms business data, system logs, and metrics into a private knowledge base that is operated by fully on-premise AI agents. The new DSM Agent 1.0, available from the beginning of this month, initially positions itself as an on-demand AI consultant for troubleshooting, guided configuration, and operational advice, based on pre-established competencies for common IT scenarios (daily operations, disaster recovery, and security investigations). With the upcoming release 2.0, the agent will push the limits of its executive nature, orchestrating tools in complex multi-step workflows across various DSM services. All this occurs under strict governance controls and multi-layered protection mechanisms: from granular access permissions to guardrails for the entire data lifecycle, up to de-identification systems and outbound anonymization if external AI services are used, ensuring total data sovereignty for the IT administrator.
The Evolution of DSM: Insight into Field-Tested Agent AI
The new generation of DiskStation Manager (DSM) at the company's booth is undergoing its most significant evolution today, transforming into a true intelligent platform for data. At the booth, we could see the applications of agent AI, witnessing concrete demos that show how the NAS ceases to be a static archive to become an active team member, capable of working in the background on daily operations and security analysis.
The ecosystem integrates generative AI features into the Synology Office Suite (Office, MailPlus, Drive, ChatPlus, and Meet), providing writing assistants for emails, content generation, real-time translation with subtitles in meetings, and convenient natural language search for Excel formulas. To achieve this, the platform harnesses embedding technology, capable of converting unstructured data (which represents 90% of the corporate information assets in the form of slides, documents, videos, and audio files) into indexable formats comprehensible by AI through local text models, speech-to-text, OCR, and image recognition.
We witnessed a real collaboration session where messages in Spanish sent by a colleague were instantaneously translated into English within ChatPlus. Subsequently, utilizing semantic search in Drive based on embedding, it was enough to type a simple discursive description to recover a file whose exact name was not remembered in a few seconds.
In the demos shown at the booth, the AI agent demonstrated the capability of integrating genuine execution tools that can manage complex workflows in natural language that previously required 4 or 5 manual steps across different applications. For example, we saw the DSM Agent tackle a real security simulation: following a morning alert for failed access attempts, the operator queried the agent, which, utilizing the on-screen awareness functionality (the awareness of what is displayed on screen), analyzed the Log Center window opened by the user.
The agent promptly isolated a highly anomalous behavior (user Linda's account downloading 1500 files in just 20 minutes from a public IP), concluding a potential threat and recommending the immediate deactivation of the profile; the administrator simply needed to type a straightforward "yes" in natural language to confirm and execute the operation in real-time. In another scenario focused on reducing repetitive tasks, through a single text prompt, the agent autonomously gathered usage data from multiple applications (like the Storage Manager), generated a detailed monthly report on storage status compared to the previous month, emailed it via MailPlus, and automatically scheduled the same task for the following month, eliminating any manual intervention.
Similar flexibility was also demonstrated for end users in the business world: a sales manager was able to generate a complete draft of the QBR (Quarterly Business Review) report for the first quarter simply by asking the agent to collect and synthesize information from weekly presentations, KPI spreadsheets, and group conversations on ChatPlus, publishing the final document directly within Synology Drive.
This orchestration transforms business data, logs, and metrics into a private knowledge base that is operated by on-premise agents, supported by NAS GPUs and dedicated appliances. For large infrastructures, the Cluster Manager unifies the fleet management through containerized and isolated workloads for flexible migration. On the security front, the revamped Log Center adds enterprise observability features, while access control expands with an even more granular RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), complemented by an integrated secure element and an ongoing FIPS 140-3 certification.
ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 and DP5200: Proactive Protection Against Threats
Another significant element that emerged from the conference and was further explored at the booth relates to data protection with ActiveProtect Manager (APM) 2.0. A fundamental business fact for companies is that all system functionalities are included in the appliance's price, removing the need for additional licenses, function blocks, or cascading subscriptions: a philosophy of "buy it and you have everything". ActiveProtect therefore includes all critical enterprise backup functionalities without feature-gating-based licensing.
Today the infrastructure faces rapidly changing virtualization markets due to VMware pricing shifts, prompting companies towards alternative hypervisors or mixed technology stacks, as well as increasingly sophisticated ransomware threats that leverage AI models to uncover zero-day vulnerabilities hidden for years. On a technical level, Synology's AI thus finds itself at the center of a full-blown cyber war between external threats and proactive resilience tools. To overcome the historical limits of the classic 3-2-1 strategy (now vulnerable as ransomware directly targets snapshots and backups), APM implements a rigorous 3-2-1-1-0 approach, introducing immutable or isolated copies via air-gap and guaranteeing "zero errors" to protect operators from alert fatigue.
The system is capable of continuously analyzing the last 30 backups to build a personalized and predictive behavioral model, learning how users interact daily with files. When a new backup is collected, the machine learning engine monitors the metadata and key metrics to automatically detect historical anomalies such as unusual variation rates, mass deletions, spikes in entropy, or intensive encryption attempts, preemptively blocking potential ransomware attacks and quarantining compromised files.
Moreover, before proceeding with any restoration in a production environment, the AI scans the copies with external antivirus software hosted on Windows or Linux servers (with native support for solutions like Bitdefender, ESET, and Windows Defender) to certify their cleanliness. If a threat is detected, the system tracks back the digital fingerprints of the files to trace and recommend the last version that is certainly clean and free of vulnerabilities, avoiding the risk of reinfecting servers after hours of manual cleanup. The integration of isolated protection via the air-gap function on Active Protect devices constitutes the last impenetrable line of defense for the company.
On the compatibility front, APM 2.0 (expected for release in Q3 2026 alongside the new enterprise hardware device DP5200) extends protection to environments such as AWS EC2, Azure VM, Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV, and Google Workspace, alongside backups for Microsoft 365.
Flagship Hardware at the Booth: PAS7700 and Rackstation with GPU for Local LLMs
Exploring the booth, we closely examined the flagship hardware solutions designed by Synology to manage these workloads. The flagship storage system of the new all-flash line is the PAS7700, a dual-controller active-active solution based on the AMD EPYC platform. This hardware, designed for mission-critical workloads, can deliver over 2 million IOPS in random 4K reads, supporting up to 1.6 PB of raw storage on U.3 NVMe SSDs, with extensive high-speed connectivity options and native support for Fiber Channel to swiftly move enormous amounts of data with extremely low latencies. Starting from DSM 7.4, storage efficiency is maximized through inline data deduplication and data compression applicable to both proprietary SSD and HDD volumes.
This optimization also extends to intelligent tiering management: data deemed "cold" that is moved to the lower tier benefits from the automatic application of data reduction, allowing companies to save valuable space on high-performance tiers in a manner advantageous for the entire infrastructure.
Regarding the notable Rackstation series (the NAS systems based on DSM software), the introduction of the series 26 version with integrated GPU stands out, which we mentioned earlier regarding the execution of local language models up to 26 billion parameters. However, as corporate infrastructure grows, adding storage risks encountering the issue of so-called "storage silos," where different appliances manage groups of isolated loads (up to real situations with over 70 distinct appliances), turning expansion into a complex ordeal of data migration.
To resolve this operational bottleneck, Synology presented the Cluster Manager, a centralized portal that unifies multiple physical resources under a single logical cluster to monitor the status of services, performance, overall utilization, and protection plans. The true innovation lies in transitioning to a containerized storage architecture: workloads (whether NAS services, SAN, or application packages) are isolated within logical containers disconnected from the underlying hardware. During the demos at the booth, we observed the smooth and real-time migration of a CPU and memory-saturated workload, automatically transferred by the system to the PAS7700 high-performance host recommended by the Cluster Manager itself, eliminating the typical complexities of traditional migration.
Enterprise Surveillance and Synology Office Suite
The fair was also an opportunity to discover the expansion of the professional surveillance sector, enriched by the AC100 door controller, the AR series readers, and the new DC series dome cameras. The new Deep Video Analytics (DVA) devices introduce semantic event search via AI and re-identification path tracking, while Surveillance365 offers a hybrid cloud VSaaS platform integrated with on-premise Surveillance Station for centralized remote monitoring across multiple sites.
On the enterprise productivity front, the Synology Office Suite welcomes two new enterprise communication tools: ChatPlus and Meet. Both applications integrate AI-based transcription and translation functionalities and keep all data strictly on-premise under the organization's control, promptly responding to the growing demands for data sovereignty. Furthermore, the future opening of the DSM environment to MCP (Model Context Protocol) standards and CLI interfaces will allow companies to securely connect their custom third-party AI agents to the NAS, confirming Synology hardware as a private, flexible, and natively integrated knowledge hub.
Bee Series: Private Cloud for Personal and Home Use
At Computex, a clear message emerged: Synology is no longer solely addressing the enterprise world but is also speaking directly to end users. This is even truer considering the Bee Series by Synology, which offers consumer solutions that starkly depart from the complexity of a traditional NAS.
We closely observed the BeeStation, an external storage unit that connects directly to the home router via an Ethernet connection. The device is easily manageable through dedicated applications such as BeeFiles and is also available in the BeeStation Plus version, offering up to 8 TB of space. A very interesting detail that emerged during our testing is the integration with services like Plex, which allows for managing home media streaming and large amounts of files without requiring the technical skills usually necessary to configure a classic NAS.
The new BeeCamera was also shown in action at the booth, a home surveillance app for the BeeStation Plus, which works with Synology cameras and is capable of tracking internal home events, recognizing pets, and sending real-time notifications to the user's smartphone. All recordings are stored directly on the BeeStation Plus, ensuring that the footage remains entirely under one’s control. Lastly, the introduction of Synology Deep Search offers AI-boosted local search on personal content both on macOS and Windows, allowing for quick tracing of any file while keeping privacy secure.
Further details about the manufacturer’s lineup can be explored on the official Synology website.