The Verdict
While this is more of what I call a “walk-through”, it still behooves me to make a few notations about the software
The v3.4.1 Management Software provides a very complete feature set, and includes some very useful and important new features as noted earlier. You can make use of as little or as much of the feature set that you may need for your application. As a SOHO device, you may make use of more than a Home user would. For myself, iSCSI is not really important as a home user. The same goes for Active Directory integration.
For my own personal use as Home device, I will be happy as long as I can backup client machines, serve data to various computers, access data remotely, and have a decent redundancy/duplication hard drive setup.
As use a SOHO or Enterprise device, the feature set is there to serve a network or integrate into an existing network. Of course, the more knowledgeable about servers and networking one must be to deal with a more business-oriented environment.
Moving over to the User Interface, I found the linearity of this interface (that is typical of NAS Management Software) could use a general overhaul and update. I make that statement for two reasons.
- A linear UI was replaced years ago by the non-linear *and* multitasking windowed UI of Windows.
- The recent Synology unit I reviewed with their version 3.0 management system used a windowed system similar to MS Windows and being that I have been using a MS Windows system for many years, the Synology software just seemed much more intuitive to use as a result. That is not to say that one cannot get the exact same things done with either system. If one is used to a Windows UI, a similar NAS interface will just seem more natural to use.
When looking at NAS devices and the associated management software, one of the features that may be scrutinized more closely is the client backup feature as an alternative to Windows Home Server 2011. The NetBak Replicator provided an adequate method of backing up a client machine, and the files are readily accessible.
Finally, the remote access features incorporated into the latest QNAP software are nice to have and puts it on a par with most of the features that you will find in a Windows Home Server.
Pros:
- very complete (and improved) feature set
- Designed to be as easy or advanced to meet the need of Home user to the Enterprise user
Cons:
- UI is in need of a more Windows-like UI
- no bare-metal restore feature
