If your business backup plan starts and ends with cloud storage, hurricane season is going to test that decision. Cloud backup is fine for offsite copies, but recovering 200GB of files over a slow connection while your office is dark and your team is sitting around isnt a fun place to be. Thats where a local NAS earns its keep.
The Synology DS224+ has been the small business default for a few years now and the latest version doesnt disappoint. I set one up for a Fort Myers client back in February and its quietly chugging along through the daily backup cycle without a hiccup. Heres what makes it the right pick for most Southwest Florida small businesses, and where it falls short.
What the DS224+ Actually Is
It’s a 2-bay network attached storage device. Two hard drives go inside, network cable goes out the back, power cable into the wall. From there it lives on your office network as a shared drive that every workstation can read and write to. Combined with a UPS battery backup it survives short outages cleanly, and the redundant drive setup means a single drive failure wont take your data with it.
The hardware itself runs an Intel Celeron J4125 with 2GB of RAM (expandable to 6GB), gigabit ethernet ports, and DSM 7.2 as the operating system. DSM is the part that matters more than the chip, because Synology has spent years making it the most painless NAS OS to actually run. You dont need a Linux background to set up scheduled backups, encryption, or remote access.
Why Local Backup Matters in Fort Myers
Hurricane season starts June 1 and most cloud-only backup setups have a recovery story that doesnt account for what happens when half of Lee County is competing for bandwidth on a backup cellular link. A local NAS sitting on your office network can restore a full workstation in minutes over gigabit ethernet, which is the difference between being back to work the same morning versus losing two days waiting for downloads.
The other piece thats become a bigger deal in 2026 is immutable backup. Cyber insurance carriers in Florida have started requiring it on renewal for SMBs because of the ransomware double extortion problem (attackers steal first, encrypt second, threaten to publish if you dont pay). The DS224+ supports immutable snapshots through the Snapshot Replication app, which means even if ransomware hits a workstation, your backups on the NAS cant be encrypted by the attacker. Thats a checkbox the cloud-only crowd cant easily tick.
What Fort Myers businesses can do: Pair the DS224+ with a UPS and a cloud sync app for a proper 3-2-1 backup setup. Three copies of your data, two storage types, one offsite. Done.
Setup and Daily Use
Installation is honestly faster than most people expect. Pop two drives into the bays (no tools, just slide and lock), plug it into your switch, hit the power button. Then you visit find.synology.com from any computer on the network and the wizard walks you through DSM setup. Total elapsed time from box-open to working shared folder is about 45 minutes, most of which is waiting for the drives to format.
For backup specifically, Synologys Active Backup for Business is free and handles Windows PCs, Macs, file servers, and Microsoft 365 mailboxes all from a single console. Set the schedule, point it at the workstations, and it just works. I have it running nightly at 2am on my client setup and the deduplication keeps the storage footprint reasonable even with 8 endpoints backing up.
The remote access piece is also baked in via Synologys QuickConnect, so you can pull a file from your office NAS while youre at a job site without messing with VPN configs. Convenient, and as long as you turn on 2FA at the admin level its safe.
Pricing and What to Buy With It
The bare unit is around $300. You’ll need drives. for a small business backup setup I’d grab two 8TB NAS-rated drives (either Seagate IronWolf or WD Red Plus, both fine). That brings you to about $600 to $700 all in for around 8TB of usable redundant storage, which is plenty for most offices under 25 staff.
For the drives, I lean Seagate IronWolf for most builds. The 8TB model has been rock solid for me across a few different deployments. WD Red Plus is also a fine pick if you find a better price.
Where the DS224+ Falls Short
Honest take: this thing isnt fast enough for video editing or high-throughput database work. The Celeron chip and 1GbE ceiling mean its better suited to backup and file sharing than serving as your primary storage for big media projects. If thats your use case, look at the DS923+ or DS1522+ instead.
The other gripe is the included drive bay key. Tiny plastic thing thats easy to lose. Doesnt affect performance but its annoying.
Who Its For
Pretty much any Fort Myers small business under about 25 employees that wants reliable local backup, file sharing, and a defensible disaster recovery story for hurricane season. Law firms, accounting practices, medical offices, contractors. all of these benefit from having an actual local backup target instead of relying entirely on the cloud.
If youre a one-person shop with mostly cloud-native workflows you probably dont need it. If you have a server room and a real IT budget, you want something bigger. But for the SMB sweet spot, this is the box.
Need Help Setting One Up in Fort Myers?
HenkTek handles network and backup setup for small businesses across Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, and Naples. We can spec the right NAS, configure the backup schedule, set up immutable snapshots for ransomware protection, and integrate it with your existing cloud backup so you have a real 3-2-1 setup. Get in touch for a free consultation or call us at (239) 234-2334.
For more on hurricane prep for Fort Myers offices, see our hurricane IT prep guide and our roundup of the best UPS battery backups for small business.