When I lived in Wisconsin, I had my Synology connected to my home LAN via Ethernet cables. But, the house I bought in Vermont doesn’t have distributed Ethernet in the rooms, only wireless. So I directly connected by Synology to my Mac via an Ethernet cable.
All is good - I can mount the Synology, connect to it to see all my files, Plex works great. BUT, I don’t know how to connect to Synology DSM so that I can administer and change settings on the Synology itself. All the google machine tells me is how to access my saved files, but not how to get to the DSM.
It has to be something simple, right? What do I need to do?
Unless there’s something I’m missing, instead of being a NAS device on your Local network, the same as every other device on that network. It sounds like by directly connecting the NAS to your Mac, something (probably the NAS) has created a network between the Mac and the NAS which your other devices are not party to.
If you run the software or web page from the Mac, you should be able to connect to the Synology, authenticate and then see the DSM (what every that is)
You’ll need to find out what the IP address of the Synology is (this may be in the settings which mount the NAS.) e.g. if the Mac Ethernet interface IP address is 192.168.1.1, the NAS may be 192.168.1.2
If the Synology knows how to create a network, then there should be documentation from Synology.
As @geoffaire has indicated, you will need to figure out the IP address that your Synology has assigned. You would connect the same way as you did previously, eg http://:port. I forget the port used by DSM, I think 5000, but it will be listed on the Synology web site.
As a question, however: since in your previous setup you had the Synology and your Mac on a LAN, I assume you had a switch somewhere in the mix, as well as something on your LAN that was assigning IP addresses. Why not connect both the Mac and the Synology to that switch, where it is located? That would allow any other device on your network to also access the Synology?
Perhaps it is the case that you have a wireless router located someone other than the room where your Mac and Synology are located, and there is no Ethernet between the two rooms, and that is what is preventing you from setting up a LAN? If so, you could certainly solve that problem with a mesh networking system (there are many good ones; I use eero but there are number of them with good reviews) with one serving as your router and the other located in the same room as the Mac and Synology with your switch plugged into that mesh location. You might find the convenience worth the upfront cost.
You should be able to connect on the same computer name as the Synology displays when mounting drives, then add port 5000 to the URL in a browser. You shouldn’t need the IP if your Mac already can find it with an alias (probably broadcast over Bonjour).
http://synologyName:5000/ should open your management interface (port 5001 if you have HTTPS enabled on the Synology.)
I did try Synology assistant, but it could not find the Synology even though it was connected by Ethernet to the back of my Mac…. Which seems weird. I ended up plugging it into the back of one of my Eero’s with an Ethernet cable.
DSM is the panel of applications for the Synology - file system, shared folder creation, and a host of others. Think of it like the settings app on a Mac.
As far as I can tell, the Synology doesn’t automatically set up a network, but there is a place to allow outside connections in the DSM.
Thus, no IP address on my router for it when it is connected to the Mac because it looks like the Mac to the router.
In an answer below, I ended up plugging it via Ethernet to the back of my Eero and then I could see the IP address on my router. It doesn’t appear my Synology (DS920plus) can connect wirelessly to the network although Synology docs look like they support it.
It’s the last paragraph that resolved this for me - plugging an Ethernet cable from the Synology into the back of my Eero mesh network. I had totally forgotten about that ability as it then looks to the router like another connection to the network and it assigns an IP address. Back in WIsconsin, my house was wired for Ethernet and my switch plugged both into that network, and the Eero’s were also backend plugged into the network as well.
In Vermont, I don’t have the Ethernet backbone.
And, the Eero is in my office along with the Mac and the Synology, all my static IP addresses and all that are now all back in play and I successfully connected to the Synology.
I tried this one first - http://DS900plus:5000 and got a ‘Server Not Found message. Ditto with the https port 5001.
The answer was to plug the Synology via Ethernet into the back of my Eero so the router saw it as a new device and assigned the static IP addresses that I had back in Wisconsin.
To be honest, my first thought was, that it seems to be weird, to connect the NAS with your Mac directly by an Ethernetcable.
Normally (I haven’t done that for a very long time, so maybe that changed in between!?) you would need to take a specialised cable (Crossover- or 2-Pair-Cable) for a connection like this, without a router or switch in between.
But as you wrote that you had access to your files, it seems to be something different.