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, you might decide that every employee should have a user account. However, 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.