QNAP TS-251A 2-Bay SOHO NAS Review

GUI – System Settings: General, Network, Security, Power, and Firmware

Time to take a closer look at some of all the different settings you have available in QTS.

General Settings

First we have the general settings for the NAS itself, such as the name and system port that it runs on as well as the connection type we wish, whether it should always run on a secure connection or not when we access the web interface.

There are several time-setting features too, from time zone over time format and whether we want to time and date to be updated automatically via NTP servers. We can also freely chose whether it should adjust daylight saving.

We can also set rules when it comes to the strength of password usage and that’s particularly useful if you chose to let users change their own passwords. You wouldn’t want such a great feature and freedom for your users affect your overall security.

Network

The network settings itself are found in the Virtual Switch app now and we’ll look at that on the next page – we can however find a link to it where we used to have it, in the system network settings.

With several network ports available, we might want to bind specific services to a single port in order to limit its availability. The TS-251A has two LAN ports and the virtual network through the QuickAccess port and we can select all for all here.

Should you need proxy settings for your NAS, then this is the place you’ll find them. It’s all pretty straight forward and not much to say to this. If you need it, you’ll know what to enter here.

The last feature in the network settings is for Dynamic DNS settings such as DynDNS, no-ip, and similar services that are useful when you got a variable external IP address. It is a lot easier to remember such an address anyway and the NAS can automatically take care of the IP update with this feature.

Security

There aren’t many settings under the security point, but they are useful. You allow all connections, block specific one, or allow just the ones you enter.

The network access protection is a simple brute force protection that blocks access on X amount of false login attempts within a given time. You can set this individually for the vital services such as SSH/Telnet, SMB, AFP, and FTP.

The last page here allows you to load custom security certificates or restore the original ones.

Hardware

There are quite a few settings in regard to the hardware itself too. For example, you can disable the physical reset switch and change the hard disk standby time. The warning light for when you run out of storage space is another great feature for headless units.

I also love the ability to dim the LED brightness so it doesn’t annoy you depending on the position. You can also limit the setting for specific times, for example when you’re asleep and don’t want any blinking lights to disturb your rest.

Sound alerts are also possible and you know that since you heard them the first time you powered it on. But you can turn these off too. For example, if you use the automatic shutdown/startup features based on time, then you might not want it to beep around. While you can turn these off, you can still keep the ones for errors and warnings turned on.

The internal fan in the TS-251A can also be adjusted here, whether you want the speed to be adjusted automatically depending on the internal temperature – or you can set it manually with self-defined temperature settings.

Power

The EuP Mode Configuration (also Energy-using Products) is a European Union (EU) directive designed to improve the energy efficiency of electrical devices, reduce the use of hazardous substances, increase ease of product recycling, and to improve environment-friendliness of products. If you turn this on, you can’t configure the other aspects here manually. So if you want to do that, turn it off.

The Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is a great feature when needed. It allows you to send a signal over the network to turn the NAS on remotely. It can only be configured globally tho, so you can’t just turn it on or off for a single port.

The power recovery settings determine what the NAS should do when it regains power after a power failure.

And last but not least, as previously mentioned, you can set power on and off as well as hibernation and reboot schedules.

Firmware

When it comes to firmware updating you can either check that manually or let QTS check regularly for new updates. You can also opt into the beta program if you want to be among the first to get the latest features.

You can also update the firmware manually with downloaded files from QNAPs website, should you not want to do it all manually.

Backup and Restore

Backup jobs aren’t just for your files, you might also wish to backup the settings files, including user accounts, server name, and network configuration – and naturally also restore them again should the have become corrupted.

External Devices

The last thing to show you from the settings is for the external devices. One thing is storage, but that’s not all you can connect to the USB ports. You can also connect USB printers and turn them into network printers this way or control connect UPS devices.