Basic User and Group Concepts
Users are the people to whom you grant access to your storage system. If your company uses Windows
Active Directory, you can use that to manage ReadyNAS users. Otherwise, when you want to allow
someone to access your ReadyNAS system, you create a user account for that person.The ReadyNAS
storage system administrator sets up user accounts and decides which folders and LUNs each user is
permitted to access.
If your ReadyNAS storage system is used at home, you might create a user account for each member of
the family, but allow only the parents to access financial data stored on your system.You might decide
that all user accounts can access photos and music stored on the system.You can set the appropriate
permissions for each user.
The ReadyNAS system administrator can set up groups to make it easier to manage large numbers of
users. For example, if your ReadyNAS storage system is being used in a business, y ou might decide that
every employee should have a user account. Howe ver, you might decide that only users in the accounting
department can access information in the accounting shared folder, but that all users can access data
stored in the company benefits shared folder.You can create a group for each department and place all
users in the appropriate group or groups.
Home Folders
Home folders allow each user to have a private folder matching his or her account name. Home folders
are always available over SMB and AFP protocols and are available optionally o ver NFS and FTP protocols.
To enable home folders:
1. Select System > Settings > Home Folders.
2. Set the On-Off slider so the slider shows the On position to enable Home Folders.
3. Select the check boxes of the optional protocols to enable home folders over those protocols.
User and Group Account Limitations
You can create up to 8,192 user accounts and up to 8,192 group accounts on your ReadyNAS storage
system. However, creating many accounts on your system can degrade its performance, so NETGEAR
recommends that you create and maintain only those accounts you need, preferably fewer than 250.
When you add a user, a private home folder is created for that user.This private home folder is visible
only to the user and the system administrator.
User and Group Management Modes
You can choose between two modes to manage user and group accounts on your ReadyNAS: Local
Users mode and Active Directory mode.You configure either one or the other:
•Local Users mode.This mode lets you manually manage user and group accounts on your ReadyNAS
storage system using its local database.
•Active Directory mode.This mode requires an Active Directory database. If you use Active Directory
mode, you do not use your ReadyNAS system to manage your users and groups. Instead, you manage
Users and Groups
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ReadyNAS OS 6.2