Data Backup Digest

To put it simply, QNAP's QTS is a NAS operating system that offers a user-friendly GUI, a bevy of features and plenty of additional tools and utilities that let you tweak your NAS environment to meet your exact needs.

QNAP's latest release, QTS 4.3.4, only recently entered its initial beta testing phase at the end of 2017. Despite its brief availability thus far, it's already garnering significant attention from industry experts – particularly in the niche of data storage.

New Storage Management Functionality

One of the biggest and most substantial upgrades to the QTS framework revolves around the new storage management and snapshot protection protocols. The research and development team explored various solutions and innovations before deciding on their new, revamped interface. As such, maintaining control over your data is easier than ever before.

Storage Management: Among the new features in QTS 4.3.4 are the ability to monitor volume and storage pool statuses at a glance and easy identification of individual volumes.

Snapshot Management: The drive snapshot functionality of QTS has also been improved in 4.3.4. In the latest iteration, all of your past snapshots – complete with version information and accurate timestamps – are clearly visibility for your convenience.

Intelligent Device Tiering: On-demand tiering, made possible via QNAP's proprietary Qtier protocol, offers maximum flexibility, versatility and compatibility when introducing new devices to an existing storage pool. It doesn't make a difference if it's an SSD, an expansion unit or a QM2 PCIe card – they all work with QTS 4.3.4.
It's easy to see how data management has been made a priority in QTS 4.3.4, but it's not the only improvement seen in the latest OS update.

Enhanced Usability

Apart from enhancing the ability to store, maintain and manage data over the course of time, many of QTS' upgrades are meant to strengthen the overall user experience. The integrated "Storage & Snapshots Manager" lets you control your data from a single, centralized location. Other features, such as SSD cache acceleration, snapshot replication and snapshot archival, are also easily accessible via the new interface.

Tony Lu, product manager with QNAP, touted the enhancements to the user experience by saying: "Every aspect of QTS 4.3.4 was built on the foundation of comprehensive feedback and communication from business, individual and home users. We believe that our objective of developing QTS as ‘designed from user experience’ delivers a complete NAS operating system with the most professional storage services available. Whether you are an existing or new QNAP NAS user, we are confident that you will feel the remarkable additions and improvements throughout QTS 4.3.4."

Additional Features

Upgrades to the data storage architecture and the GUI are just the beginning of the improvements seen in QTS 4.3.4. Additional features include support for block-based snapshots to ward off the growing threat of ransomware, the ability to restore snapshots locally or remotely and improved recovery times for individual folders. Built-in RAID support rounds out the primary features of QTS 4.3.4. To find out more information about QNAP, including details on QTS 4.3.4 or any of their other products or services, please visit their official website at {{https://www.qnap.com|www.qnap.com}}.