Western Digital My Cloud EX4 Personal Cloud Storage System

 Using the WD My Cloud EX4

The main menu is broken down into 8 smaller categories that are easy to understand and convenient to access.

Clicking on any of the main menu icons at the top will bring up a new page for the settings associated with the icon. The main menu categories are:

• Home
• Users
• Shares
• Cloud Access
• Backups
• Storage
• Apps
• Settings

Unlike many other NAS and storage devices that are accessible from the web you dont have to guess at its IP address or how to get to the configuration page. The EX4 has a nice blue backlit LCD on its front panel that gives you instant access to its network address along with handy information on the status of several aspects of the device like network connectivity, drive health, and device name.

The LCD is worth its weight in gold to the casual consumer who will get immediate access to the information they need to setup the device quickly. Each of the sub menus contains a plethora of information but contrary to what we expected each and every sub menu is laid out very cleanly and easy to understand. Everyone from the novice consumer to a network admin will find something to love about the EX4. While your home users will love the fact that the EX4 comes with licenses  that allow their files to be synced to Drop Box for up to 10 devices Network Admins will adore the EX4’s ability to back itself up to a remote site with another EX4. Likewise the EX4 also gives you the option to perform backups to another externally connected device via one of  two USB 3.0 ports.

Western Digital knows that backups are the essence of the EX4 and as such a full suite of backup options are available to you. Incremental as well as full backups are supported both from external sources like your PC or Mac as well as internally. This gives you the option of potentially looking through several iterations of backups for the one that contains what you are looking for.

Features:

While it would be impossible to cover all of the features of the EX4 we will highlight some that are noteworthy.

From a networking perspective the EX4 supports Link Aggregation. In uncomplicated terms this is the ability for the EX4 to use both of its build in Ethernet ports as one or separately. In a networking environment you would be surprised how often an Ethernet port goes bad. For your average NAS and storage devices with one Ethernet port this means total loss of function. The EX4 by virtue of its dual port design is capable of using both and allowing each to be used as fail over in cases where one dies. Additionally the EX4 is capable of configuring these ports in several different ways as described below.

• Round-robin (balance-rr)
  Transmit network packets in sequential order from the first available network interface (NIC) slave through the last. This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
  Storage manufacturers like NetApp (uses a proprietary BSD OS) have deprecated the use of Round Robin on their products as it tends to cause issues related to packet loss. In such cases use of LACP (link aggregation control protocol) is favored.
• Active-backup (active-backup)
  Only one NIC slave in the bond is active. A different slave becomes active if, and only if, the active slave fails. The single logical bonded interface’s MAC address is externally visible on only one NIC (port) to avoid distortion in the network switch. This mode provides fault tolerance.
• XOR (balance-xor)
  Transmit network packets based on [(source MAC address XOR’d with destination MAC address) modulo NIC slave count]. This selects the same NIC slave for each destination MAC address. This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
• Broadcast (broadcast)
  Transmit network packets on all slave network interfaces. This mode provides fault tolerance.
• 802.3ad 
  Creates aggregation groups that share the same speed and duplex settings. Utilizes all slave network interfaces in the active aggregator group according to the 802.3ad specification.
• Adaptive transmit load balancing (balance-tlb)
  Linux bonding driver mode that does not require any special network switch support. The outgoing network packet traffic is distributed according to the current load (computed relative to the speed) on each network interface slave. Incoming traffic is received by one currently designated slave network interface. If this receiving slave fails, another slave takes over the MAC address of the failed receiving slave.
• Adaptive load balancing (balance-alb)
  Includes balance-tlb plus receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and does not require any special network switch support. The receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation. The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by the local system on their way out and overwrites the source hardware address with the unique hardware address of one of the NIC slaves in the single logical bonded interface such that different network-peers use different MAC addresses for their network packet traffic.

Coming back to redundancy the EX4 also has redundancy in terms of power. At the back of the unit you will find two power ports. Though a single external power adapter is included the consumer can optionally purchase an additional adapter, plug it in, and the EX4 will automatically use the new power adapter as a redundant unit in case one dies.

The EX4 Comes with a build in wizard/utility to assist you in syncing your mobile devices (tablet, smartphone, laptop, idevice) with the WDMyCloud.com. The utility shows you connection status to the service as well as assisting you with the generation of a activation code for your device. In this control panel you can send the activation code via email, assign a new email to a user, and manage users and devices.

To round out the EX4 User experience and usefulness it comes with 4 built in applications/services. Those being:

• HTTP Download Manager
• FTP Download Manager
• P2P Download Manager
• Web File Viewer

While each of these services are disabled by default they offer enhanced usability of your EX4. Additionally WD will make the SDK available to developers and plans to offer more applications in the future for this device. Although not located in the Apps section the EX4 also has a built in DLNA Media Server and iTunes capability.  For the true enthusiasts the EX4 will also let you mount ISO’s stored on the device so you can browse their contents. This could allow you to use the EX4 as a quick centralized installation device for applications and programs copied to its drives in ISO format from a network resource.

For those that are really concerned with the status of their backups and data integrity the EX4 can also do advanced notifications via SMS and Alert E-Mails.  The E-Mail notifications work flawlessly and notified us on all alerts and status changes.

Finally we consider the home screen layout to be a unique feature of the EX4. Once logged in you are presented with an AT A Glance view of all the critical information you need to know about your EX4. This includes health status, applications running, firmware information, remaining capacity, users, devices, and Network/CPU/RAM status. We at TechwareLabs have not seen so much information in an easy to view and manage layout in a storage device until now. We really love the ability to click on your storage usage and see a pie chart of your data use by type.

  Previous Page         1. Western Digital My Cloud EX4 Personal Cloud Storage System2. Important Specifications3. Using the WD My Cloud EX44. Testing and Conclusion5. View All         Next Page