Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
The TS-669 PRO includes iSCSI support. With iSCSI you can redistribute free space on your NAS volume to iSCSI for server virtualization or virtual disk drives on other Servers in your environment. QNAP’s implementation does not require that you destroy and rebuild your RAID array to migrate, change, delete, or reallocate your iSCSI preferences in the same ways that some other NAS manufacturers do.
To keep you abreast of all things NAS, the firmware has the ability to notify should anything go awry with your array. The TS-669 PRO can also notify you via SMS, Windows Live Messenger, or email that something is wrong. The system can be monitored via SNMP, it supports S.M.A.R.T. and advanced hard drive health scanning, it features extensive logging (including banning IP addresses after failed login attempts) and more.
Administering your QNAP NAS is a familiar task. Each QNAP NAS features the same unified firmware and it is laid out quite well. Configuring your NAS couldn’t be easier; items like Remote Replication are logically found under Backup, RAID configuration can be found under disk management, and Users / Groups can be found under Access Right Management.
If you are worried about complexity, don’t be. Creating shares and users on your NAS is a simple task. You can have your NAS configured and ready to serve up files in a matter of minutes. With this, the 4th QNAP NAS in the lab for testing, it is easy for me to say that with a little training, my 10-year-old can create a share and assign permissions to it. Granular permissions can be given to a Folder Share by using the Advanced Folder Permissions. This allows you to grant users access to some sub folders and deny access to others.
QNAP also maintains a repository of expansion modules called QPKGs. These packages give you the ability to add features to the NAS that don’t ship in the stock firmware. Some of these include the likes of SABnzbdplus, Headphones, Sickbeard, Subsonic, Squid, Google Drive Sync, XBMC, and much much more. You can find a more detailed list at: http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=899
