ASUSTOR Data Master Operating System

The ASUSTOR Data Master Operating System or ADM is a linux-based operating system that has been developed by Asustor for nothing but their NAS servers. According to Asustor, it was designed around the use of applications, and its unique web-based graphical user interface allows the user to handily organize applications by page, like in Android or iOS devices. ADM supports multi-tasking and comes with some basic applications that have been pre-installed. App Central allows you to install any additional apps that you may require in order to customize the NAS device around your needs. We liked the general feel of the ADM system very much since it - to a degree - combines the windowed interface of Synology's operating system with the many options of QNAP's operating system, and we found it to be stable enough, although it is still in an early version. It never crashed or stalled on us throughout our demanding test sessions that lasted for many days, and it was constantly being put through a heavy load. There are still, of course, some improvements/updates that Asustor should take care of. We will mention some of these throughout the rest of the review.

You can try a live ADM demo here.

Administration Interface Walk-through

The first time we logged into the NAS, a message window informed us that there is new version of the ADM operating system available, which it prompted us to download, so we performed the update before starting the evaluation procedure.


Once the update was finished and we logged into the administrative panel again, we got this welcome message mentioning a guide that offered us a tour of the web interface through which we could easily configure the NAS. It is wise to follow this guide at least once. It will show you all the basic steps you need to follow to correctly set up the NAS. We will, since we followed the whole procedure, show it to you:


Firstly, you have to access the storage manager and check or configure the volume(s) on the NAS. The storage manager allows you to migrate the volume from the current RAID level to a higher one, or to expand currently installed HDDs with higher capacity ones. You can also check the disks and create an iSCSI target and LUN. Briefly: using iSCSI will make the disks you have on your NAS appear as local disks on any of the client PCs; however, all data will be transferred to/from them over the network. LUN stands for Logical Unit Number: numbered disk drives that the operating system of the client PC sees as volumes. Before we finish this paragraph, we have some comments to make about the storage manager. Throughout our test sessions, where we frequently had to erase the main volume and create a new one with a different RAID level, we noticed that the option for removing these volume wasn't available, and the only way to remove the main (or first) volume was to apply factory settings to the NAS, which also meant losing all the settings we had already made. This is, of course, not all that convenient and Asustor has, after talking this problem over with them, informed us that they will fix this issue with an upcoming update. For now, make sure to export all of your settings in a file you can import again once you set up the new volume before erasing the volume by defaulting the NAS - saving yourself the trouble of manually re-applying all of your settings, one by one.


The access control option allows you to configure user and group accounts, set domain users and groups, manage shared folders, and set application privileges - administrators will surely spend much time here.


This step allows you to enable some of the extra services that the ADM includes: Windows file service, Mac file service, NFS, FTP server, terminal service, etc. You should, if you want to connect to the NAS through SSH and have the power of the console at your hands, enable the terminal service.


Some apps are already pre-installed on the AS-606T, but Asustor didn't want to overload it with apps that may be of no use to the future user/administrator and gave the latter the option to browse through available apps in order to download the ones that are of interest. Asustor has, to our surprise, although new to this field, managed to provide a huge selection of optional apps, and they will cover the needs of most users. We will take a look at the most interesting apps soon.


This option allows you to set up the two-way backup and restore feature of the ADM OS. You can remote sync the NAS with another server, back up to an FTP, an external device, or the cloud. Here, you can also configure the action of the USB button located at the front of the NAS.


The last step guides you through the necessary network settings for remote and mobile access to the NAS server. Your cloud ID and Asustor's mobile apps gives you to access the NAS from everywhere in the world: that is, if you have access to the net.