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Overview of System Setup

The Easy Stuff is Over

So far, this is what I've done:

• Unboxed all the pieces and connected them together.
• Plugged the assembled NAS into my network and assigned it a static IP address.
• Logged in to the NAS built-in software using the IP address.
• Loaded the most up-to-date version of the QTS operating system.
• Given the NAS a name and created a new administrator login account.
• Set the date and time and configured an NTP time server.
• Confirmed the network configuration (static IP address, etc.)
• Allowed the system to initialize the disks (erasing any data on them).

Now Comes the Difficult Part

The above was all obvious and inevitable. I was guided through by the system and pretty much just did as I was told. From here on, things were different. The software still tried to guide me, but began asking questions about things I didn't really understand. Increasingly, I lost track of exactly what I was accomplishing, which steps were necessary, rather than optional, and to what extent I'd be able to backtrack and correct things I'd getting wrong. My confidence in the QNAP documentation also began to fade. I'd got through the TS-x33 User Guide and was now referring to the 535 page QTS 5.0.x User Guide. But, this read as a reference document, not a guide at all. It assumed I knew exactly what I was doing (which I didn't) and just told me in excruciating and repetitive detail how to do it. My progress slowed to a crawl, I constantly made mistakes and had to backtrack and repeat steps. Frustration set in.

In the following pages, I'll describe first what I did that got me where I wanted to be. I'll try to explain my choices and where I found useful information. After that, I may mention the mistakes I made and how I recovered from them. I'll finish this page with the overview promised in the title.

• First, I created a 'storage pool', which combined the two disks installed in the system into a single storage area. I selected a RAID 1 configuration so that my data would survive the total failure of one of the disks. I had to figure out 'SED', 'over-provisioning' and 'alert threshold', but I punted on 'snapshots'.
• Next, I created some 'volumes'. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this is to divide up the storage into areas that will be used for different purposes. I had to figure out volume 'types' and 'Bytes per inode'. I slipped up at this step by failing to notice a five-sentence section on page 220 of the User Guide that stressed the importance of creating the 'system volume' before any other. (Note the absence of anything identified as a system volume in the diagram shown at right.)
• After that, I created 'shared folders'. It turns out that it's shares folders that can be mapped to drive letters on a Windows network, not Volumes. This is different from my old D-Link NAS.
• To backup the NAS to an external drive that I could take to the safe deposit box, I installed the 'Hybrid Backup Sync' app.
• To make the backup process easy (as I would be doing it often), I configured 'One Touch Copy'.
• I have not yet got to 'snapshots?'.
• I have not yet got to 'notifications?'.
• I have started looking at 'ownCloud and WebDAV'.

But First, A Little Housekeeping

At the end of setting up the QTS operating system, after disk drive initialization, I was given the prompt ‘Go to NAS Management’. On the way, before the Desktop appeared, I was instructed to read QNAP's Data Privacy Notice. I don't see much point in this. They're all the same and there's not much I can do if I object except take it all apart and return it. Then I wouldn't have a new NAS. So, I ignored this and will just continue to try to prevent QNAP from harvesting my data in the first place.

Finally, I was at the QTS Desktop. (To get the screenshot at right I shrank the browser window a lot; everything is much more spread out at a usable window size.) The 'Task Bar' (along the top) is described starting on page 23 of the User Guide. This is worth a read. It boasts that everything can be done in multiple ways, something that I don't like at all. Below the task bar, the screen was flooded with wizards, providing yet another way for me to do stuff I didn't yet understand.