Introduction
In conjunction with my review of the QNAP TS-412, I am taking a different approach on NAS reviews. For most NAS units that come from a particular company, the Management Software is the same basic software for each model. There will be some differences based upon specific hardware configurations. There will normally be additional features that one will find only in the higher-end models.
But the same basic feature set will apply to all. So, why regurgitate the same thing over and over again?
From this point on, I will review the hardware as hardware. I will produce a walk-through of the Management Software separately. When I do a new hardware review, I will refer to this Management Software article for information on the software side of a NAS device. A particular software walk-through will be updated/replaced as a new version comes out.
I do anticipate that this will be a positive change in the NAS review process, and hopefully I can do a better job for future product.
This version of the v3.4.1 Management Software is based upon it’s use with a QNAP TS-412 NAS device. Please note that I may update this review with additional features found in other NAS devices that are not found with the TS-412.
Features
To give one an idea of the capabilities of the QNAP software, what follows is impressive listing of the software feature set that one can make use of with QNAP Home and SOHO NAS units.
| Software Spec. | |
|---|---|
| Operating System | Embedded Linux |
| Supported Operating System | Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista (32/ 64 bit), Windows 7 (32/ 64 bit), Windows Server 2003/ 2008 |
| Apple Mac OS X | |
| Linux & Unix | |
| Supported Web Browsers | Internet Explorer 7 & 8 or later |
| Firefox 3 or later | |
| Safari 3 & 4 or later | |
| Google Chrome | |
| Multilingual Support | Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. |
| File System | Internal HDD: EXT3, EXT4 |
| External HDD: EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+ | |
| Networking | TCP/IP (IPv4 & IPv6: Dual Stack) |
| DHCP Client, DHCP Server | |
| Protocols: CIFS/SMB, AFP (3.1), NFS, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Telnet, SSH, iSCSI and SNMP. | |
| Network Service Discovery (UPnP, Bonjour) | |
| USB Wi-Fi 802.11n Adapter Support (Optional Purchase) | |
| Network File Sharing | CIFS/SMB (Plus DFS Support) |
| AFP | |
| NFS | |
| FTP | |
| WebDAV | |
| Backup Solution | USB One Touch Backup (Import/Export) |
| Apple Time Machine Support with Backup Management | |
| Block-level Remote Replication | |
| Work as Both Rsync Server & Client | |
| Supports Encrypted Replication between QNAP NAS Servers | |
| Back up to External Storage Device | |
| Back up to Cloud Storage (Amazon S3 & ElephantDrive) | |
| Security | IP Filter & Policy-based Automatic IP Blocking |
| Network Access Protection with Auto-blocking | |
| Encrypted Access: HTTPS, FTP with SSL/TLS (Explicit), SSH/ SFTP (admin only), Encrypted Remote Replication (Rysnc over SSH) | |
| CIFS Host Access Control for Shared Folders | |
| Importable SSL Certificate | |
| Instant Alert via E-mail, SMS | |
| Disk Management | Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 5+Hot Spare / 6 / 10 |
| Online RAID Capacity Expansion & Level Migration | |
| Bad Block Scan & HDD S.M.A.R.T | |
| RAID Recovery | |
| Bitmap Support | |
| Supports ISO Mounting (via Web File Manager) | |
| iSCSI (IP SAN) | iSCSI Target |
| Multi-LUNs per Target | |
| Up to 256 LUNs | |
| Supports LUN Mapping & Masking | |
| Supports SPC-3 Persistent Reservation | |
| Supports MPIO & MC/S | |
| Virtual Disk Drive (via iSCSI Initiator) | |
| Stack Chaining Master | |
| Max. Virtual Disk Drives: 8 | |
| Power Management | Scheduled Power on/off (Max 15 settings) |
| Automatic Power on after Power Recovery | |
| Access Right Management | Max User Accounts: 4,096 |
| Max Groups: 512 | |
| Max. Share Folder: 512 | |
| Batch Creating Users | |
| Import/ Export User | |
| User Quota Management | |
| Subfolder Permissions Support | |
| Windows AD Support | Domain Users Login via CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP and Web File Manager |
| Supports NTLMv2 Authentication | |
| Web Administration | AJAX-based User Interface |
| HTTP/HTTPS Connections | |
| Alert Notification (Email & SMS) | |
| Smart Fan Control | |
| DDNS & MyCloudNAS Remote Access | |
| SNMP (v2 & v3) | |
| UPS Support with SNMP Management (USB) | |
| Supports Network UPS | |
| Resource Monitor | |
| Network Recycle Bin for CIFS/SMB and AFP | |
| Comprehensive Logs (Events & Connection) | |
| Real-time Online User List | |
| Syslog Client | |
| Firmware Update with Live Update Notification | |
| Backup and Restore System Settings | |
| Restore to Factory Default | |
| Applications | Web File Manager |
| Multimedia Station | |
| Download Station | |
| Surveillance Station | |
| iTunes Server | |
| Apache Web Server | |
| MySQL Server | |
| Mobile App | QMobile for iPhone/ iPad/ Android |
| 3rd Party UPnP Media Player | |
| QPKG | Web Applications |
| Joomla! | |
| phpMyAdmin | |
| WordPress | |
| AjaXplorer | |
| vtigerCRM | |
| eyeOS | |
| Magento | |
| GLPI | |
| P2P Applications | |
| MLDonkey (eMule) | |
| SABnzbd+ | |
| NZBGet | |
| Server Applications | |
| Asterisk | |
| XDove (Mail Server) | |
| OpenLDAP | |
| Media Server | |
| Squeezebox Server | |
| IceStation | |
| Misc. | |
| Optware IPKG | |
| Python | |
| iStat | |
| ...and more |
| Powerful All-in-one server | |
|---|---|
| File Server | File Sharing Across Windows, Mac OS and Linux/ Unix Platforms |
| Protocols: CIFS/SMB, AFP(3.1), NFS, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS | |
| QNAP Web File Manager | |
| Supports ISO Mounting | |
| Direct File Viewing via Google Doc | |
| FTP Server | FTP over SSL/TLS (Explicit) |
| Max Concurrent Connections: 256 | |
| FXP Supported | |
| Passive FTP Port Range Control | |
| FTP Bandwidth & Connection Control | |
| Unicode Support | |
| Web Server | HTTP/ HTTPS Connections |
| Supports WebDAV Connection | |
| Supports Virtual Host | |
| Importable SSL Certificate | |
| Database Server | Built-in MySQL Server |
| Web-based Management via phpMyAdmin (QPKG) | |
| Backup Server | Remote Replication Server (over Rsync) |
| Apple Time Machine Support | |
| QNAP Client Backup Application-NetBak Replicator | |
| 3rd Party Backup Software Support: Acronis True Image, CA Brightstor, ARCserve Backup, EMC Retrospect, Symantec Backup Exec, LaCie Silverkeeper | |
| iTunes Server | Audio and Video Sharing |
| Smart Playlist for iTunes Client (Windows & Mac OS) | |
| UPnP Media Server | Built-in TwonkyMedia Server |
| Real-time & Background Photo Transcoding | |
| Supports UPnP Media Player | |
| Game Console: PlayStation 3, PSP and Xbox 360 | |
| Digital Media Adapter/Player | |
| Mobile Device (e.g. iPhone, iPod touch with UPnP Applications) | |
| Supported Formats: | |
| ASF - Windows Media Video (Codecs: WMV video and WMA audio) | |
| BMP - Bitmap Image | |
| FLV, F1V, F4V - Standard Quality YouTube Video (Codec: Flash, Video: Sorenson Spark H.263 Video Codec & MP3 Audio Codec) | |
| GIF - Graphics Interchange Format | |
| JPG, JPEG, JPE - Joint Photographic Experts Group Image | |
| MP3 - MPEG Audio Layer 3 (Codec: MPEG Audio) | |
| MP4 - High Quality YouTube Video (Codecs: MP4: H.264 Video & HE-AAC audio) | |
| MP4 - MPEG-4 Video (Codecs: Microsoft MPEG-4 v1, Microsoft MPEG-4 v2, Microsoft MPEG-4 v3 & ISO MPEG-4 v1) | |
| MPEG, .MPG, .MLV - MPEG-1 (Codecs: MPEG-1 Video & MP2 Audio) | |
| PNG - Portable Network Graphics | |
| WAV - Linear Audio (Codecs: Uncompressed PCM-encoded & ADPCM-encoded) | |
| Printer Server | Network Printer Sharing (USB) |
| Max Printers: 3 | |
| Supports Internet Printing Protocol | |
| Supports Apple Bonjour Printing | |
| Advanced Printer Management | |
| Displays and Manages the Print Jobs | |
| Access Right Control (IP & Domain Names) | |
| Multimedia Station | Supports Photo, Audio and Video |
| Image Slide Show and Rotation | |
| Automatic & Schedule Thumbnail Generation for Easy Browsing | |
| Display Photo Details from EXIF: Date, Exposure Time, Aperture, etc. | |
| Display Audio Details from ID3 Tag: Album Cover, Title, Artist, Album, etc. | |
| Access Authority Management | |
| Multimedia (Video & Audio) Streaming | |
| Supports Cooliris | |
| Supports Web Publishing (Facebook, MySpace, MSN Live, Twitter, Plurk, Blogger) | |
| Supports E-mail Publishing | |
| Supported Formats: | |
| Photo - JPG/JPEG, GIF, PNG | |
| Audio - MP3 | |
| Video | |
| Playback: FLV, MPEG-4 Video (H.264 + AAC) | |
| Transcode: AVI, M4V, MPG/MPEG, RM/RMVB, WMV | |
| QNAP Exclusive iPhone & iPad App - QMobile | |
| Download Station | PC-less BitTorrent/ FTP/ HTTP Download (up to 500 tasks) |
| BitTorrent Download | |
| Supports TCP/ UDP Tracker Protocol | |
| Schedule Download | |
| Configurable Port Range | |
| Bandwidth Control | |
| UPnP NAT Port Forwarding | |
| Subscribes to RSS Feeds | |
| RSS Download (Broadcatching) | |
| Selectable Download Files | |
| HTTP/ FTP Download | |
| Configurable Saving Directory | |
| Bulk Download with Wildcard Setting | |
| RapidShare Download Support | |
| QNAP Download Management Software: QGet | |
| For Both Windows & Mac OS | |
| Manage the Download Tasks of Multiple QNAP NAS Remotely over LAN or WAN | |
| Surveillance Station | Supports 4 IP Cameras (Optional Purchase) for Network Surveillance |
