In order to use this service that is not officially supported by QNAP, we have to use the WebDAV protocol to access from the NAS server itself. Once we register it with HybridMount, we will be able to access it through File Station in an easy and fast way, as if we had another folder on our NAS, but this “folder” is directly in the cloud.
Another very important feature is that we can use HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync to upload our backup copies to the cloud of this storage service, in this way, we could easily automate backups from our NAS to the cloud, to have another copy more following the 3-2-1 backup scheme.
Once we know what this service can offer us, we are going to show you how to configure it on your NAS from the manufacturer QNAP.
HybridMount configuration with pCloud WebDAV
The manufacturer QNAP has a software called HybridMount that allows us to connect to other NAS servers, any server via samba, FTP/FTPES, WebDAV and a large number of cloud storage services that are officially supported by the manufacturer QNAP. This software is not installed by default, we have to install it through the App Center in order to use it.
Once we have it installed, it will appear in the main menu:
Within this menu, click on the “Create remote mount” button and a small configuration wizard will open.
Now we have two options depending on the use you want to give this service:
- Create file cloud gateway: this option allows us to create a local cache to integrate the NAS with cloud storage, that is, we will have everything synchronized with the NAS server, and it will act as a cache so as not to have to continually download everything from the cloud and save a lot of time and bandwidth. This would also allow us to access locally via Samba or FTP to the folder configured with WebDAV.
- Create mount of network drives: This option allows us to create a folder in the cloud, where we can copy, move and delete files using File Station. With this option we will not be able to access this cloud through Samba or FTP, we can only access through File Station, but it is not a problem either because we have smartphone apps where this configuration will be reflected.
We have chosen the second option, to create a mount of network drives.
When we go to configure the WebDAV of this cloud storage service, we will have to indicate the following data:
- Server URL: https://ewebdav.pcloud.com (for EU datacenter).
- Protocol: WebDAV
- Account: the registration email address
- Password: the password for access to the account
- Connection name: whatever you want, we have chosen to put the name of the service.
Once completed, we can check or not the “Use system proxy settings”. And now we click on “Create”
After a few seconds, QNAP will verify that the WebDAV server is working properly, and we can start working with it and using File Station.
If we open File Station, at the bottom left we can see the new service that we have just created, if we get inside we can have access to all the folders and files that we have inside. Of course, we can copy what we want from the cloud to local and vice versa.
As you can see, we have exactly the same files and folders that if we access this service via the web, everything will be reflected on the official website.
If we want to copy a file from local to the cloud, just drag or select the “Copy” option. The file will be automatically copied to the cloud. A very important detail is that the speed reflected in File Station is not the real one, in fact, in the following screenshot you can see that we have a speed of 150MB/s when really our connection is symmetrical 1Gbps, so we should not trust it of the reflected speed nor of the time to finish.
Depending on the operator you have, you will get some speeds or others regarding the cloud storage service.
Once we have seen how to configure it with HybridMount and use it with File Station, we are going to show you how to configure HBS3 to automate backups.
HBS3 Configuration
HBS3 or also known as Hybrid Backup Sync, is a QNAP application that allows us to make local or remote backups of our NAS server folders and files. This program is very advanced since it has a large number of configuration options, and we even have rules, the possibility of making deduplicated backup copies and much more.
The only thing we have to do is create a new backup job, we select the local NAS as the source of this backup:
In the destination we will have to select «WebDAV» which is at the bottom, because we have it in alphabetical order.
Once selected, we put the same data that we indicated above to be able to register this service.
- Name: whatever you want
- Account: the registration email address
- Password: the password for access to the account
- Server URL: https://ewebdav.pcloud.com (for EU datacenter).
Once we have done it, click on “Create” and we will have it registered in the HBS3 of the QNAP server.
As you have seen, integrating pCloud into a QNAP NAS server is really easy using the WebDAV protocol and the connection data of the cloud storage service. If you are interested in try pCloud for free with 10GB of storage you can access from here, so you can test the service for yourself and see if it meets your needs.
