Storage for Virtualization

Storage for Virtualization

Flexible deployment and management in virtualization environments

Virtualization increases the efficiency of IT management and the availability of IT applications and resources. QNAP NAS provides high-performance, reliable, and affordable storage solutions for virtualization applications such as VMware® vSphere™, Microsoft® Hyper-V®, and Citrix® XenServer™.

Providing storage to meet the requirements of virtualized environments

With the explosion of virtualized environments within recent years, a growing challenge for administrators has been to accommodate the storage requirements for a sprawling number of virtual machines. As enterprise QNAP NAS is designed for virtualized and clustered environments, they provide cost-effective and high-performance storage solutions for meeting the needs of virtualization.

Virtualization applications supported by QNAP NAS

QNAP NAS supports a wide range of mainstream virtualization applications in order to help IT administrators increase the efficiency of virtualized environments in their organizations.

VMware vSphere
VMware® vSphere is the industry’s first cloud operating system that offers one way to reduce IT costs and increase responsiveness. QNAP VMware® Ready products have been certified as compatible with the VMware® vSphere virtualization platform. IT administrators of small businesses and workgroups can now use a QNAP VMware® Ready NAS as an affordable and powerful storage solution in VMware® virtualized environments.

VAAI

VMware vSphere® Storage APIs – Array Integration (VAAI) offloads specific storage operations for improved performance and efficiency. With a QNAP NAS and VAAI, standard virtual machine management operations and deployment can be performed faster, using less ESXi CPU, memory, and bandwidth.

QNAP NAS supports VAAI for iSCSI and VAAI for NAS. VAAI for iSCSI supports Full Copy (hardware-assisted copy), Block Zeroing (hardware-assisted zeroing), Hardware-assisted Locking, and Thin Provisioning with Space Reclamation. VAAI for NAS supports Full File Clone, Extended Statistics, and Reserve Space.

Microsoft Hyper-V

Windows Server® 2012 R2 Hyper-V® (the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology) is available as integral feature of Windows Server® and allows administrators to easily implement server virtualization. All of the QNAP Windows Server® 2012 R2 certified products and Hyper-V® compatible products have built-in iSCSI service and are compliant with SPC-3 persistent reservation for Windows Failover Cluster and Cluster Shared Volume. You can enjoy the interoperability between the Hyper-V® and QNAP NAS.

Microsoft Offloaded Data Transfer

Offloaded data transfer (ODX) in Windows Server® 2012 R2 allows users to accomplish more with a NAS by letting them quickly move large files and virtual machines directly between iSCSI disks, reducing host CPU and network resource usage. When used with QNAP NAS, ODX lets a storage device perform a file copy operation without the main processor of the host actually reading the content from one storage place and writing it to another.

With the support of Windows 2012® R2 Hyper-V® thin provisioning automatic space reclamation, when files in a VM are deleted, the space reclamation process is done automatically. It maximizes the storage usage efficiency and eliminates the time of administrative tasks.

Citrix XenServer

Citrix® XenServer is the only enterprise-class, cloud-proven server virtualization platform that delivers critical features such as live migration and centralized multi-server management at no cost. QNAP Citrix® Ready products have passed the Citrix® verification.

QNAP’s Enterprise ZFS NAS Certified for Windows Server 2016

The dual-controller Enterprise ZFS NAS ES1640dc v2 has earned certification for Windows Server® 2016, and is also supported in Hyper-V® environments. This certification ensures that the Enterprise ZFS NAS is compatible with Windows Server 2016, making it dependable storage for Hyper-V VMs and a parallel enterprise-grade file server.

QNAP Turbo NAS is a virtualization-ready storage solution
Virtualization solutions VMware vSphere Microsoft Hyper-V Citrix XenServer
Certifications VMware Ready Certified for Windows 2012 R2 Citrix Ready
Virtualization application VAAI for iSCSI

  • Full Copy
  • Block Zeroing
  • Hardware-assisted locking
  • Thin provisioning
  • Space Reclamation
Microsoft ODX (Offload Data Transfer) iSCSI and NFS Storage Repository
VAAI for NAS

  • Full file clone
  • Extended statistics
  • Reserve space
Management tool QNAP vSphere Client plug-in
  • QNAP SMI-S provider for SCVMM
  • QNAP Snapshot Agent


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