Product Review: NAS Server

Qnap NAS server

Where do you keep your critical documents and files? What would happen if your computer crashed and you lost everything? Ever thought about using a NAS drive?
This week we had the opportunity to play around with a NAS Server drive and are actually use this for our company’s data storage. With the amount of video, images and documents, we decided it was time to invest in a NAS Server – very useful device for storing digital signage content.

What is a NAS Server?

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and is basically a network device which is used to store files over the network. There are quite a number of NAS storage devices on the market, but after reviewing well known brands we decided to purchase the QNAP product.

You probably never heard of this brand before but let me give you 10 reasons why we selected this device:

1. 3 USB ports – 1 at the front and 2 at the back. The one at the front has an auto copy feature, what this means is that there is a button that starts the copying/synching feature

2. Low power consumption (rather have this than a high end server or PC)

3. Professional and intuitive web administration interface using AJAX

Qnap Administration

Qnap home administration

4. Able to add 2 Hard Disks which will allow you to set up your storage server as with raid 0 or 1 (we’ve set this up as raid 1 mirroring)

5. Support a built-in iSCSI target service – basically means the system allows you to connect to the an IP based storage device using SCSI commands

6. Has a 1Gbps network port, however we don’t have a 1Gbps switch to take advantage of this high speed

7. Supports Virtual Disk Drive – allows you to stack 8 iSCSI drives to form a virtual drive

8. Supports 3rd party vendors for backup – Acronis True Image, CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup, EMC Retrospect, Symantec Backup Exec, and LaCie Silverkeeper

9.Scheduled power on and off – you can basically setup the server to turn itself off and on at specific times of the day

10. MOST IMPRESSED are the functionalities: It’s not just a NAS server, its actually an all-in-one server. It’s a storage server, a print server, a website server (using joomla, wordpress etc), a php server, an email server, voip server (astericks) and the list goes on. You can basically install any php application, so you can turn this device into anything you want (sorry the only thing it can’t be is a coffee machine). It can be a bit torrent server, an iTunes server, surveillance station which is able to support a number of vendors such as  AXIS, D-Link, IPUX, LevelOne, Linksys, Panasonic and Vivotek

So if you’re looking for a NAS server talk to us as we are able to supply you with this device at a competitive price. To request a quote fill the below form:

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About Us: Advertise Me

Advertise Me is a privately owned Australian company specialising in all aspects of digital signage solutions.

Our team of highly skilled professionals is able to introduce innovative ways for businesses to communicate with their intended audiences for a variety of purposes including informing, educating, entertaining and selling.

You can expect us to:

• offer the most affordable and cost effective solutions tailored to your specific business needs.
• provide you with concise and accurate information and will ensure that you understand and are comfortable with our proposals.
• strive to make our clients happy and successful.

We have partnered with a number of key reputable organisations and will continue to build further partnerships to deliver the most effective solutions for our customers.

Visit our website at www.advertiseme.com.au for more information.