Installation

Once the harddrives are in place, the unit has power, and the Ethernet cable is connected you can start the software installation.


The TS-409 pro comes with the same installer as previous models. First the unit is detected and configuration starts by double clicking it in the list of detected devices.

Configuring the device is very straight forward. The installer will ask a series of questions and you just keep clicking next, or change the settings if required. After a few simple questions of which only the harddrive configuration is really important (device name and such can be changed via the webinterface) the TS-409 Pro is ready for use.
Even if you manage to configure your harddrives wrong you can still change it, in some cases even with data on it! (via RAID migration or online expansion)

Services

To stand apart from the competition QNAP offers plenty of options in the firmware on their devices.

Filesharing

Most services are aimed at sharing data one way of another. All basic ways are covered and some more exotic things like iTunes and picture galleries are present as well.


Access to data is done on a user level. Different users have different rights. Rights can be set to read only access, full and can be set on a per share basis. The whole family/company could use the TS-409 pro without being in each other's way this way. Of course public shares are supported as well.

The basics

All files are stored on predetermined shares. These can be freely added next to the default shares. The default shares contain shares for media, downloads, the webserver, a public folder and a folder to copy data from USB devices. Any USB device connected will automatically appear as a share as well.

Fileserver

Many Internet and LAN fileservers are FTP servers. The FTP server on the TS-409 Pro requires little configuration. Once users are set and have access to shares, the FTP server makes use of these users. From there on everyone with access to the device can access data.

Filesharing on home networks is most user friendly via Windows Filesharing. The TS-409 Pro has a built in Samba server to support these shares. Simply browse to the IP of your unit and you can access all your shares. Access control is done via the central user system. Besides enabling or disabling the service there is nothing to configure.

Both FTP and Samba share all directories on the device.

Webserver

To host your own website the TS-409 pro support the three basics in webserving: Apache, PHP and MySQL. Considering it is all run on Linux it is basically a LAMP-server.
Unless you're running huge sites or require things like ASP the TS-409 Pro will suit your hosting requirements just fine. The webserver has its own default directory named Qweb.

Multimedia

With the huge amount of data that fits on the TS-409 pro it is likely that there are multimedia files to be found. For this reason there are several services to share your photos, videos and music.


There is a special web interface with a photo album. All photos put in the Qmultimedia folder are automatically shown here. By using directories you can organize this. As you can see I drew a nice picture and placed a TPU logo in the directory. Whenever there are new files thumbnails are generated. When you open a file you can read out all kinds of details.


All music put in the Qmultimedia directory is automatically put in the iTunes library. When you boot up your iTunes player, the shared library is automatically detected. In addition basic playlists are also supported.