Setup - more

Like installation of most software, one of the first screens to appear was a License Agreement. So, with only a quick glance, I clicked the Accept button and started to hit "Next" when something caught my eye. As shown in Figure 3, the license was a bit unusual. Oops. Interestingly enough, this same "license" screen is shown in the installation manual.

Figure 3: SmartStor "License"

It looks like someone at Promise forgot to complete the install utility, and it wasn't even caught when the manual was written. As I read the manual, I also realized that the installation utility was a bit unusual. Normally the installation software for a NAS device does nothing much more than spawn a web browser that connects to a web server on the device for configuration. But the configuration software for the SmartStor appeared to do the entire job itself. Unfortunately, when I tried to run it, I ended up with the screen shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Login failure

For whatever reason, the configuration utility was failing to log into the device. It was also clear from the manual that all configuration could be done from a web browser and this is what Linux and Macintosh users would use to set up the device. So using the IP address of the SmartStor (discovered by the utility) I turned back to my preferred system, a MacBook Pro.

I connected to the SmartStor, logged in using the default username and password and started configuring the device. I'll note here that the configuration is documented to be done using the default port 80, and there was no way to change this.

I'll also note that the configuration could also be done using an encrypted HTTPS connection although this did not appear to be documented. Figure 5 shows the basic configuration web page on the SmartStor. From my perspective, it was a bit ugly with predominant colors of orange and blue and a number of instances of fractured English.

Figure 5: Configuration web page

However, its appearance aside, the setup using the web interface was straightforward. Figure 6 shows the network setup screen. Other features available in the standard setup include definition of users, changing the admin password, initial share setup and services setup.

Figure 6: Network configuration

Figure 7 shows the screen where various services such as FTP, NFS and AFP can be enabled.

Figure 7: Services setup

I appreciated seeing support for all these protocols.

Tags: BYOD, NAS, Promise, RAID,

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