Creating users and
groups on the QNAP TS-209 Pro II
is pretty straightforward and intuitive using Server
Administration and navigating to the User
Management page. Unlike the FrontView
administrator used by
Netgear’s ReadyNAS NV+
which allows you to create up to five users
at once and assign them to a group—a very handy
feature when you’ve got a lot of users to
set-up—QNAP’s Server Administration only allows one
user to be created at a time. With the default “Continue
to set the user groups to which this user belongs
box” checked, you’ll automatically be taken to
the User Groups screen for group assignment. In
addition to deleting users and changing their
password, you can create a private share for a user
or group that only they can access. Rules of
engagement for user and group creation on the
TS-209 Pro II are as follows:
●
User
name is case-insensitive and must not
exceed 32 characters. The following
characters are prohibited:
Passwords cannot exceed 16 characters
and the password should be at least 6
characters.
Under Microsoft
Networking (non-domain and Active Directory), the
TS-209 Pro II has two default groups that cannot
be modified or deleted: Everyone and
Administrators. By default—all users including
the NAS admin account, are assigned to the Everyone
group when created. Users cannot be removed from the
Everyone group—unless that user account is
deleted. Conversely, the admin account is
assigned to the Administrators group and cannot be
removed from there—though other users that you
create can be placed or removed from Administrators.
Smart Playlists aren't as flexible in
their naming conventions as they could be,
and I'll be doggone if I can figure out why
album art displays without issue for some
songs and not for others. But by and large,
the iTunes
Service on QNAP's NAS units is the least
problematic I've personally worked with so
far. Not only does the TS-209 Pro II
get a memory upgrade over the standard
TS-209, but it also gets amped-up BitTorrent
performance as well via Download Station.
It's also Dynamic DNS (DDNS),
Joomla!
and MySQL-ready,
and can be used as the heart of QNAP's
VioStor-201A Surveillance System.
Finally, the System Port page allows
you to change the default system port for
the NAS if necessary, while View Network
Settings gives you a nice "birds-eye
view" of the TS-209 Pro II's network
configuration.
Quotas
are a great tool for keeping excessive disk usage
under control. Unlike the ReadyNAS NV+, you cannot
assign disk quotas individually to users and groups.
The QNAP TS-209 Pro IIsupports
quotas for user accounts only. To do so, you must
first designate the amount of disk space you wish to
reserve as the “disk quota pool.” This is achieved
by selecting Quota under User Management and
ticking the “Enable quota for all users” box.
Next, in the box labeled “MB” you need to type a
disk quota limit, which will be interpreted in
megabytes. This value must be greater than 0
and cannot exceed 2,000,000. Once you’ve done
that, then you can assign individual disk quotas to
users.
Shares can be
created, deleted and modified just as easily under
the Network Management section of QNAP’s
Server Administration for the TS-209 Pro II.
You can elect to hide a share from My Network
Places, though the share can still be shown if you
enter it manually. By default, “Specify path
automatically, “ “Grant full access right for
everyone” and “Continue to set access rights
for this network share,” are checked, while
“Grant read access right for this network share”
is unchecked.
Device Configuration is the
place to manage the disks installed in the
TS-209 Pro II, as well as external USB
storage devices and USB printers.
The only one of
these defaults I personally would change, would be
to remove the check next to the “Grant full access
right for everyone” box. From a security standpoint,
it’s usually not such a good idea to give a
“catch-all” group like Everyone much (if any) leeway
on a network—especially in a non-domain network
where the only access rights are Deny, Read only and
Full access. It’s a different story on a Windows
Domain or Active Directory network, where
administrators have much more granular control over
assigning user and group permissions on shares. When
creating shares, the name is case-insensitive and
must not exceed 32 characters. The name cannot
contain the following:
" + = / \ : | * ? <
> ; [ ] % , `
When you configure
your TS-209 Pro II, six special system shares
are created:
●
Network
Recycle Bin 1
●
Public
●
Qdownload
●
Qmultimedia
●
Qusb
●
Qweb
These shares are
required by some of the TS-209 Pro II’s
services. You are free to create, delete and modify
folders within them, and assign users to them as you
see fit—but you cannot rename or delete them. In the
event that you do somehow manage to trash these
shares, they can be re-created by clicking the
Restore option under network Share Management. Be
warned that when these special shares are
re-created, they will be empty—so don’t
inadvertently click the Restore button with live
data inside these shares. Otherwise, you’ll have a
very unpleasant surprise waiting for you when
they’ve been restored.
Managing user accounts and network shares
for all the computers on your network is
easy with Server Administration's User
and Network Share Management. You'll
find Disk Quotas
a valuable ally in keeping disk space usage
in check. Need alert notifications via
E-Mail if something goes wrong on the
TS-209 Pro II? Perform S.M.A.R.T.
hard disk management or schedule diagnostic
tests after-hours to keep you informed on
the condition of the hard drives? Everything
from IP Filtering, Remote Logins and
Replication, to installing QPKG Packages for
additional functionality, can be performed
under System Tools.
From System Tools,
you can perform the following:
Alert
Notification
The TS-209
Pro II can automatically sent alert E-Mails
to several E-Mail accounts when a system event
occurs. Three alert levels are available. A test
E-Mail can be sent to insure that E-Mail
addresses entered are valid. A link is also
provided that takes you to System Settings
and Configure SMTP Server if you haven’t
done so.
Restart/Shutdown
Presents you
with two buttons that allow you to either
restart or shut down the TS-209 Pro II.
Hardware
Settings
Enable
or disable the configuration reset button on
back of the TS-209 Pro II, adjust hard
disk standby mode and have the hard drive
activity LEDs blink when space on the drive
volumes reach a user defined level in megabytes.
You can also set the TS-209 Pro II to
automatically power itself back on if power is
lost; enable or disable the alarm buzzer, enable
the Smart Fan feature or set the fan
rotation speeds manually based on a user-defined
temperature range.
UPS
Like any server,
it’s a good idea to provide battery backup power
for the TS-209 Pro II with a UPS
(Uninterrupted Power Supply). The TS-209 Pro
II supports just about any
APC UPSwith a
USB or
SNMP
interface, as well as the MGE Ellipse Premium
line of UPS units.
Hard Disk
SMART
Provides health
and status information on S.M.A.R.T. compliant
hard drives installed in the TS-209 Pro II
and allows you to perform a quick or complete
diagnostic manual or scheduled tests the
selected disk drive, as well as enable a
temperature alarm when the drive reaches a
user-defined temperature threshold.
System Update
From this
screen, you can browse to the folder where
you’ve downloaded the latest firmware revision
for the TS-209 Pro II, and apply it to
the NAS. Unless your TS-209 Pro II is
suffering from an issue that the firmware update
was written to fix, or it adds additional
functionality that you simply must have, you
should pay attention to QNAP’s “If it ain’t
broke don’t push your luck and fix it till it
is” warning at the top of the page. Having
said that, if you decide to forge ahead with the
firmware update, make sure you back up all of
your data from the TS-209 Pro II before
proceeding. Firmware upgrades that inadvertently
break something that they shouldn’t have or
break more than they fix unfortunately, are not
uncommon. Many NAS user forums have their share
of horror stories about the “Firmware Update
from Hell.” Make sure you’re not the latest
contributor to the saga…
USB One Touch
Copy Backup
Configures how
the One-Touch Copy Backup button functions with
the USB port on front of the TS-209 Pro II.
Copies and synchronizes folders and files to and
from the connected USB storage device to the
share you specify beneath date-stamped folders
that are also numbered sequentially.
Change Logo
Lets you upload
and rotate between four 100x100 pixel images to
display on the Login page. You can choose which
images to overwrite when uploading new ones.
Backup to an
External Storage Device
Even with the
redundancy of a RAID 1 mirrored volume, the one
thing you can never have too much of as far as
your data is concerned, is backups. This
needs to be your first stop before you even
think about updating the firmware on the
TS-209 Pro II. With the ridiculously low
price of
terabyte hard drives
and
external drive enclosures,
there’s no excuse—not when your data is at
stake. Copy and synchronization backups of all
your shares on the TS-209 Pro II can be
performed manually or scheduled regularly from
this page. Just remember that the external drive
must be formatted with either the FAT or EXT 3
file system for the TS-209 Pro II to
write to it (NTFS partitions are treated as
Read-Only).
Tired of having to boot up your PC when
all you need to do is just copy some files
from your USB flash drive down to a network
share for safe keeping. With QNAP's USB One Touch Copy Backup,
you don't have to. Simply set One Touch Copy
to either Add Directory, Copy or Synchronize
folders and files to or from the TS-209
Pro II as needed. Pop your flash drive
into the port on front of the NAS, press the
One Touch Copy button, and you're all set!
Remote
Replication
Allows you to
replicate folders and files from one QNAP NAS to
another, either on or off site. Replication can
be initiated manually or scheduled. The folders
and files are compressed on the master NAS
device before the replication process uploads
them to the target NAS device.
Backup/Restore/Reset Settings
This allows you
to backup all of your settings—user accounts,
server name, network configuration, etc. to a
special file in the event of a catastrophic NAS
failure, for recovery on a replacement NAS,
saving you the time in manually recreating all
the settings again. Clicking Reset restores the
TS-209 Pro II to its default,
out-of-the-box settings—including blanking
any installed hard drives. Needless to say,
you don’t want to click the Reset button unless
you’ve got a backup of all your data and other
important stuff from the TS-209 Pro II.
IP Filter
Allows you to
block a single IP address or an entire network
from accessing the QNAP TS-209 Pro II.
Or allow only a specified list of addresses,
access.
Network
Recycle Bin
When you delete
files on a conventional server, unless you have
some type of network recycle bin or undelete
program installed on both server and client
workstation, those delete files are gone for
good. On QNAP’s TS-209 Pro II, if you
check the “Enable Network Recycle Bin” box, the
deleted file and/or folders go into the Network
Recycle Bin 1 share, where it can be recovered.
There is a corresponding network recycle bin for
each disk or disk volume. QNAP’s Network Recycle
Bin is not without its faults. You cannot set a
size limit on the Network Recycle Bin. There’s
no feature that automatically purges the oldest
files first to make room for the newest ones.
And there’s no way to quickly and conveniently
configure the recycle bin so that users only see
the files they’ve deleted and not someone
else’s. By default, the Everyone group
has Read Only rights on the Network
Recycle Bin folder. If you’re concerned about
security and users seeing someone else’s
information which may be confidential, this is
one option that you’ll want to leave unchecked.
RAID 1 mirroring notwithstanding, you
should alwaysbe prepared for a
worse-case scenario with any NAS device.
And nothing says prepared better than
a backup of all your critical data from your
TS-209 to an external storage device
than can be taken of-site for safe keeping.
Good thing QNAP makes it easy
to perform on-the-fly or scheduled backups to an external
USB drive. You can even synchronize the data
being backed up so that you'll have the most
current versions of your data available in
the event that disaster strikes—certainly
not a bad idea. The TS-209 Pro II
supports FAT and EXT3 partitions as readable
and writeable. NTFS partitions typically
used under the Windows operating system are treated as
read-only.
Remote Login
Permits
TELNET
(which is disabled by default) and
SSH
connections to the TS-209 Pro II. Note
that only the TS-209 Pro II’sadmin
account is permitted remote logins.
QPKG
QPKG (Quick
Package) allows you to add additional
features to the QNAP TS-209 Pro II
via downloadable plug-ins. The following are
currently available:
WordPress
A free,
open-source personal publishing system
that allows you to easily create a
complex blog, or web log, on your site.
Written in PHP and supported by a MySQL
database, WordPress offers intuitive
administrative tools and sophisticated
design features that make it easy to
develop and integrate a personal or
professional blog on your site.
Joomla!
Joomla!
is a free, open source content
management system for publishing content
on the world wide web and intranets. The
system includes features such as page
caching to improve performance, RSS
feeds, printable versions of pages, news
flashes, blogs, polls, website
searching, and language
internationalization. This is handy in
case something has happened to your
existing Joomla! installation and you
need to reinstall it on the TS-209
Pro II.
phpMyAdmin
Description: phpMyAdmin is an open
source tool written in PHP intended to
handle the administration of MySQL over
the Internet. Currently it can create
and drop databases, create/drop/alter
tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute
any SQL statement, and manage keys on
fields.
MLDonkey
A door
to the 'donkey' world, a multi-network,
multi-platform open source P2P
application used to exchange big files
on the Internet and present most
features of the basic Windows donkey
client and additionally supports
overnet, fasttrack, bittorrent and
gnutella protocols (and more)! The core
works best with Sancho – the premier
graphical user interface for MLDonkey.
SlimServer on TurboStation (Now with
Squeeze Center 7!)
Squeeze
Center is the server software from Slim
Device that manages common digital audio
formats (.mp3, .flac, .ogg, etc.) and
streams them to its players. Slim Server
On Turbo Station (SSOTS) developed by
flipflip is an add-on to the Turbo
Station's firmware which provides the
environment to run SqueezeCenter on it
Optware IPKG (Itsy Package Management
System)
Ipkg, or
the Itsy Package Management System, is a
lightweight package management system
designed for embedded devices. It is
used in the Unslung operating system for
the Linksys NSLU2, in OpenWRT, OpenMoko,
Gumstix, iPAQ and now on QNAP NAS too
QPKG can be
enabled or disabled like a network service. Its
plug-ins are installed through Server
Administration’s System Update screen the
same way you would perform a firmware upgrade on
the NAS. QPKG plug-ins can also be enabled,
disabled or removed.
System Logs
keeps
your finger on the pulse of the TS-209 Pro
II, which is important part of its
preventive maintenance regimen. Aside from
obvious audible alarms, viewing the System
Event and System Connection logs for
any potential trouble, is a good way to do just
that. You can display up to 100 entries per page
for both logs. Though there is no automatic
overwrite feature that replaces the oldest
events with the newest events to keep the log
sizes under control, both logs can be cleared
manually with a click of the “Clear” button. They can also be saved to a Microsoft
Excel spreadsheet in .CSV format. System
Connection Logs record all user connection
activity on the QNAP TS-209 Pro II.
You'll see the actual user connections and when
someone accesses a share and performs file
operations on the TS-209 Pro II. You
won't be able to tell at a glance how much disk
space the connected user is using, though that
would be a nice enhancement for QNAP to
implement in future firmware revisions though,
if it's possible. It doesn't take long for the
number of entries to mushroom over a relatively
short period of time, especially if you have a
good number of users hitting the NAS daily. If
you can do without it, you can probably save
yourself server resources and disable the System
Connection Logging by clicking the Stop
Logging button. You can probably save some
system resources on the TS-209 Pro II by
turning off the System Connection logging, if
you can do without it. On-line Users only
records connections to the TS-209 Pro II via Server Administration.
NetBak Replicator is QNAP's
client-based backup solution that allows
quick and easy backups to, and restores from
the TS-209 of all the PCs on your network.
NetBak can even be configured to monitor and
back-up any file and folder changes on a
client workstation. If you prefer a simple,
Windows based method of performing unattended
downloads via HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent,
you'll really appreciate the QGet
utility (which also synchronizes downloads
through Download Manager at the same
time).
