This is a tutorial on how to set up a WD My Cloud EX2 NAS with a NordVPN connection.
You need to make the following changes in the web settings of your Western Digital My Cloud NAS. Just enter the device's local IP address in your browser to access the web interface. The default IP, username, and password info can be found in the device's user manual.
To connect your WD My Cloud device to NordVPN, enable SSH on your device and perform the steps below while connected via SSH.
The instructions were made using WD My Cloud EX2 FW Version 2.30.165
1. Connect to the device by typing its IP address in your browser.
2. Navigate to Settings, click Network in the left sidebar, and enable SSH under Network Services:
3. A new SSH window will pop up. Select I accept, click OK, and enter your SSH password. Once done, SSH should be enabled:
4. Use an SSH application such as Bitvise SSH Client if you are on Windows. Specify your WD IP address in the Host field under the Server section. Under Authentication, fill in your device’s SSH credentials in the Username and Password fields. Click Login:
5. Once you have connected to your device, two new windows will open: the SFTP window where you can upload files to your device and the terminal.
6. Download desired NordVPN server’s OpenVPN configuration files. For this example, we used UK files.
Follow the steps below to find the manual connection configuration files:
-
Log into your Nord Account, and click NordVPN.
- Scroll down to Advanced Settings and click Set up NordVPN manually.
- Select the OpenVPN configuration files tab.
- Find the server you wish to connect to by using the Search bar or by scrolling down and download it by clicking Download UDP or Download TCP.
- When connecting to OpenVPN & IKEv2 manually, you're going to need to use the Username and Password from the Service credential tab.
Once you have downloaded the files, go back to the control panel of your NAS and click Browse.
Drag and drop the OpenVPN configuration files into the SFTP window. In the terminal, type openvpn.bin filename. In case the openvpn.bin command doesn’t work, use the openvpn filename command. For example:
openvpn.bin uk180.nordvpn.com.udp1194.ovpn
or
openvpn uk180.nordvpn.com.udp1194.ovpn
7. Press Enter in the terminal. You will be asked to enter your NordVPN service username and password.
You can find your NordVPN service credentials (service username and service password) in the Nord Account dashboard:
Follow the steps below to find the service credentials for manual connection setup:
-
Log into your Nord Account, and click NordVPN.
- Scroll down to Advanced Settings and click Set up NordVPN manually.
- Select the Service credentials tab, where you'll find the Username and Password needed to connect manually.
Once you see Initialization Sequence Completed, your device is connected to NordVPN.