QNAP TS-469L-US High-performance 4-bay NAS Server for SMBs

Comment:
The NAS (x69L series included) has a massive set of features, addons available. Many are seen in the product description. That being said, many of the plugins are not English, have very little support or documentation available. As well, many of the officially available modules are betas and most are out of date. At least they show compatibility with the QNAP, so you can reasonably trust if you download the newest version from the source, it will be installable - and might even still work with the qnap installed app plugin.This is an excellent device for those that wish to build, design and/or host a website. WordPress, Joomla and other CMS's can be installed easily, some are addon modules. Build a beta site before sending to your official hosting company. Ensure 100% stability before moving. Or run your own internal company server separate from the Internet, and hacking hands. mySQL is built into this device and they further recommend installing myPhpAdmin for controls. The QNAP has many security features and login schemes, including RADIUS. This helps for any SMB not wanting or needing a full RADIUS server implementation. LDAP server is also included, another great feature.Myself, I am using it primarily as a DNLA server for music and videos. However, also as a web server using virtual websites for web development testing. Quite nice as I can completely control the remote server, something more difficult with remote hosting companies.Let me explain my "con" above. I already had a QNAP 269L (upgraded to this one) which has been wonderful, passing that one along to a friend. During setup of the 469L after a necessary system restart, the media services all disappeared. I could not access the local services, nor reacivate them. Some were simply missing, and some were "disabled" but could not be enabled. I was forced to factory reset. I believe there is a software bug somewhere in there. Luckily the 2nd configuration has no issues, which I did very carefully, line by line so to speak. During this process, none of my data was lost, factory reset only of the configuration. Good thing as I has copied over a gig across already! I would suggest sticking with a configuration you are happy with and leave it be. Like many servers, they are likely mission-critical and 'playing' with them is asking for trouble. Change only what is necessary, and backup if you make a significant adjustment.Strangely, the QNAP has what they call "DNLA merdia server" as well as the "Twonky Media Server" which are both DNLA servers. You can mistakingly turn them both on which doesn't break anything, but creates two separate servers running on your NAS. Of course, you could congifure them differently to share different things. I found the native one to be a little less featureful, on my DNLA-TV, I could not skip ahead/back diring playback. With Twonky I could. The native one also seems more limited in configuration options, though even Twonky has very few options. Finally re DNLA, there is a newer version of Twonky that shows up in the addons, however is not directly compatible with the imbedded version. It will work, however accessing it will be in a different location (Apps vs DNLA).For the cost of a full server, this may be a better option for home use or SMBs depending on what you need. As an office file server it will work, but you need to know a little more to properly configure for user rights - a full server may be a smarter option for larger user bases.I would highly recommend this product for the purpose intended: Integrated web based hard drive server. In addition, using this as a centralized backup server is a good use of this device. Built in is a backup system using rSync (linux), Real-time resplication server, and Apple TimeMachine. Personally I have only used the rsync service so far. My Windows based backups use this drive as a shared destination folder. And there are online options like AmazonS3.As yet, I all all about praise for QNAP x46L series. No significant issues, no drive errors, no access problems, and most importantly, no operating failures of any kind. Knok on wood.

Comment:
It was fairly easy to set up. Upgraded from a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. Few things aren't working properly. I have attached an HP printer (HP 1200) to it and no problem printing from a PC but doesn't work properly with Mac. Also time machine works on the first backup but fails to recognize disk on the second and further backups.

Comment:
Have had this for about a week now. It was a very simple set up; basically a plug and play. RAID 0 on 4x3TB WD REDs was created in a matter of a few minutes. Copying files were a bit slow over the network with an average of about 35MB/s (I was only using 1 ethernet port). Have to look more into the configuration of the dual ethernet ports and see how to best manage transfer of large volumes of data.