Page 4 - Configuration and User Interface, Part II
There are six options under the Disk Management expanded menu. The screen shown above is the Volume Management screen. Seven icons are placed at the top with a brief description on each disk option: Single Disk, RAID 1 Mirroring Disk, RAID 0 Striping Disk, RAID 10 Disk Volume, Linear Disk (JBOD), RAID 5 Disk Volume, and RAID 6 Disk Volume. Beneath it is a table containing physical information on installed hard drives, as seen in the image above. The Logical Volumes section displays how the disks are configured, along with three options: Format Now, Check Now, and Remove Now. The QNAP TS-419P II features native support for the EXT4 file system, which we have configured our disk to run on. For the purpose of testing, I have installed a Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB. Obviously, most people will not be using SSDs in their NAS, so those who are using newer HDDs will be happy to know the TS-419P II will have no problems handing Advance Format drives.
Under RAID Management, you will have options to play around with your RAID array -- such as expanding capacity, adding a hard drive, migrate, as well as configuring a spare drive. Although we did not use a RAID configuration for testing, let me just answer a few issues regarding the use of consumer grade drives. In the past, I have used a trio of Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB hard disks with my QNAP network attached storages. Because they are not TLER enabled, it may be dropped out of a RAID array unexpectedly down the road. TLER stands for 'Time Limited Error Recovery', which is Western Digital's name for a feature that limits a hard drive's error recovery time to seven seconds (Seagate calls it ERC; Hitachi calls it CCTL). According to Western Digital, consumer hard drives may enter deep recovery mode, and could take up to two minutes to deal with a bad sector. During this time, the hard drive will not respond. Because of this, RAID controllers may mark the drive as unreliable, because it has failed to respond within a set period of time. Older Western Digital consumer drives can have TLER enabled using the WDTLER.EXE utility; unfortunately it no longer works on the latest models and revisions.
If you need hard disks that are guaranteed to play well in a RAID environment, enterprise grade or RAID edition drives are available from each respective drive manufacturer. This is where the problem comes in: Such products are usually two to three times the price of comparable consumer drives with the same capacity! Can the huge price difference be justified just for the home or SOHO user to get some data redundancy working with their small network file server?
For most users, the answer is 'no'. TLER and related RAID array configuration problems as aforementioned are more crucial with demanding business environments than a home or SOHO NAS setup. As far as your QNAP file server is concerned, the way RAID is implemented differs from dedicated hardware RAID controllers; Linux software RAID is much more lenient with consumer drives. Seagate and Western Digital lists possible usage of their consumer drives in consumer RAID environments on their website -- as in, software RAID -- and this is no different. QNAP claims that products contained in their hard drive compatibility list found on their website include RAID testing; Western Digital's Caviar Blue EALS drives are found on there (With a footnote), and I have experienced no problems with either running in RAID 5 in my TS-559 Pro+ and TS-559 Pro II for nearly two years non-stop. No dropouts. Nothing. Everything is as perfect as it could possibly get, and I don't see how it can be anything different in the TS-419P II. Additionally, many other users have reported running non-TLER enabled drives in software RAID environments for extended periods of time with no problems at all. And to be honest, if your drive spends so much time dealing with bad sectors, chances are that you should put one through RMA anyway, haha. This is not to say that enterprise or RAID edition drives are completely unjustified, but unless you are in a more mission critical environment dependent on higher quality drives with longer warranties than their consumer counterpart, consumer drives offer significantly better bang for your buck. Do keep in mind this is a consumer NAS though. It would still be excellent if QNAP would offer user configurable drive timeout limit for the NAS, however.
In the HDD SMART screen are five tabs for the user to easily work with their HDD SMART diagnostic data. Under the Summary tab displays the state of the drive (A big, green "Good" is all you need to see haha), along with information such as hard disk model, capacity, temperature, test time, and test result on the side. The Hard Disk Information tab displays more detailed data, such as your drive's serial number and firmware version. The SMART Information tab provides a summary table on diagnostic results. The Test tab gives the user an option to run a Complete or Rapid test immediately; while the final tab, Settings, can activate or deactivate a temperature alarm, as well as automatic scheduling automatic SMART tests.
The Encrypted File System function is an encryption key management screen for volumes with 256-bit AES encryption enabled. The iSCSI section has options for configuring iSCSI targets and LUN snapshots.
Under the Access Right Management folder tree are five options: Domain Security, Users, User Groups, Share Folders, and Quota. The Domain Security section provides different authentication options, including local user, active directory, and LDAP authentication. In the Users screen, a table lists all users in the system, as well as their respective independent disk quota and account options. You will also have the option to search, create, multiple create, and delete accounts here. Four icons represent four different account functions; of which they are Change Password, Edit Account, User Groups, and Private Network Share. The screen above is the Share Folders screen, listing an array of folders on the system, similar to the table displayed for the Users screen. It also shows each folder's size, folders within, number of files, and if it is hidden in their respective column. Again, there are four management options for each folder: Properties, Access Control, NFS Access Control, WebDAV Access Control, Microsoft Networking Host Access Control, and Refresh. Pulling up the Properties menu gives you the option to set the folder's path (If you have multiple single disks installed, you can also set which drive it belongs to), hide or show the folder, as well as locking the file. You can also enable write-only accesses over FTP.
The Quota screen allows you to configure universal disk quotas. Individual disk quotas can be set in the Users section.
Next up on QNAP's TS-419P II web configuration menu tree is Network Services. Each item should be self explanatory -- most of them are just enable or disable the service, and configure a couple settings such as default port number. Particulars that are more interesting under Microsoft Networking, which you can configure it to be a standalone server, Microsoft AD Domain member, or LDAP Domain Authentication. Here you can configure its server description, workgroup, AD server name, domain name, domain username, and password. You can also enable WINS server, use specified WINS server, and enable it as a domain master.
Shown in the screenshot above is the Web Server configuration screen. You can enable or disable its HTTP server, set its default public port, enable/disable WebDAV, and turn on php.ini maintenance. In the Network Service Discovery function, there are two tabs: Enable/disable UPnP discovery service, and broadcasting services through Bonjour. These services include Web Administration, SAMBA, AFP, SSH, FTP, HTTPS, UPnP, and QMobile.
Again, the Applications submenu is quite straightforward as well. Most of the listed sections, as you can see in our image above, are simply used to enable or disable their respective services. Features such as Download Station lets you torrent things through the QNAP TS-419P II, and Surveillance Station works in conjunction with compatible camera models. One to note in particular is the MySQL server -- the QNAP TS-419P II has built in PHP and MySQL support, as well as an option to install phpMyAdmin. This is covered in its subsequent section -- QPKG Plugins -- which lets you install packages premodified for you by QNAP to install on your NAS. This includes a few worthwhile mentions such as phpMyAdmin as aforementioned, as well as WordPress and Joomla. You can even get stuff like PS3 Media Serve and Twonkymedia 4 to handle all your media streaming needs.
Other applications of interest include Syslog, RADIUS, and TFTP servers; along with a built in antivirus for an extra touch on security. The RADIUS server is an integrated version of the open source FreeRADIUS software; while its antivirus feature runs off ClamAV. Our screenshot above shows the VPN service configuration screen on our NAS.
Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. Configuration and User Interface, Part I
4. Configuration and User Interface, Part II
5. Configuration and User Interface, Part III
6. Performance and Power Consumption
7. Final Thoughts and Conclusion
