Thecus N2810 2-Bay 4K Capable SMB NAS Review

Setup – Users, Groups, Shares, and Services

Up until now we only made our drive setup and got our administrator user, and that is something we need to change. The logical next step would be to create users, but we’ll skip that once and instead create user groups first. All the settings for this can be found under the Privilege Settings in the Control Panel.

Local Accounts

ThecusOS 7.0 doesn’t have a separate menu point for users and groups anymore, it’s both available through the Local Accounts page. I really love this way of putting what belongs together, after all, they’re basically the same function. It also makes the whole creation process a lot easier and faster. Kudos to the team behind the OS, they really optimized the whole thing for user-friendliness.

The Local accounts page is divided into four tabs where the first is for users.

The second looks a lot like the first and this one if for our user groups.

Getting to the third and we find some of the additional settings such as user quota. Limiting the space a user is able to use can be a necessary thing to do. You can naturally set individual quotas for each user.

The last tab is for backup and restoring user and group data. This is an effective way to move user data between NAS devices as well as just creating a safe point for later use.

There isn’t much point in showing the user creation again, we already saw that during the initialization and it’s the exact same thing again. There is however an additional way to create users and that is by batch creation. This is done by creating a file containing all the information and then uploading it to the batch editor. It even offers you to download an example file to edit and modify to keep it easy and simple.

We haven’t seen what options are available for the groups yet, so we’ll take a look at that next and before we move on to our shared folders.

There’s only one real information that you need to provide to create a new user group and that is the name. You can also adjust the group id number if you wish to do so.

While you don’t have to add more information in order to create the user group, you can  do it. You can assign already created users to the new group right away.

You can also set the access permissions for the group when it comes to shared folders.

Shared Folders

Shared folders are the way you access your files over the network and organize them, as such this is a vital function in your NAS. It is however just as easy to configure as everything else and it isn’t divided up into a step-by-step method, but rather uses a smarter tab method to give you access to all the details while you easily switch forward and back.

Assign users and groups access rights for the folder before you create by simply ticking the boxes.

NFS sharing requires different privileges compared to Windows and Mac OS sharing, so they got their own individual page too.

Network Services

The Thecus N2810 is well equipped for any sort of network connectivity, starting with the basic Samba file protocol used for Windows and Mac OS users. You can also enable the network recycle bin for these features.

We also get the specific Apple File Service and Linux File Service settings with the ability to turn them on and off. No need to have something running that we don’t need, might it be Samba, AFP, or NFS.

Thecus also added a basic FTP server that includes bandwidth limitations and passive port settings.

The Trivial File Transfer Protocol might not be the newest on the block, but it is widely used and very simple – and so is the setup.

The final file service is for the WebDAV service that also is fully supported here.

You can enable or disable the web service and choose whether you want to run it on HTTP, HTTPS or both. You can also upload your own certificate file, certificate key, and CA certificate.

The SSH function allows a text based and secure connection to your NAS from everywhere. SFTP for file transfers is also supported.

Should you be an Apple user, then the iTunes Server will be one of the things you’ll want to enable.

SNMP Server is another useful feature to collect information from your network devices in a centralized place.

You also find both the VPN Server and the VPN Client settings under the services.

The final part of the services is for UPnP. Whether you want to use this or not is up to your own choice. It’s a large convenience as you don’t need to worry about router settings yourself, but it can also be a point of attack – that’s however only the case when they got physical access to your network so it isn’t something a home user needs to worry about. Enable it and make your life easier.

The feature instantly detected my router and all the information. Installed apps would automatically add the ports they require, but you can also add port forwards manually here.

Network Configuration

The network configuration is another thing you’ll want to take a look at. The N2810 NAS comes with two LAN ports, but which way you want to use them is up to you. You could connect the system to two different networks, only use one of them, or use both with fail-over or link-aggregation setups.

You can edit each of the two connections manually to set just the right configuration for your hardware setup.

Linking the connections is only a few clicks away and it is so easy that everyone can do it, even the most novice user.

We have now created a basic configuration and it is time to take a look at the monitoring features and add-ons.