Synology today introduced DiskStation DS1515+ and DS1815+, 5-bay and 8-bay NAS servers designed for small and medium-sized businesses to facilitate intensive data exchange, collaboration, and backup among large groups of employees.

"SMBs nowadays need a storage solution that is versatile and powerful at the same time; something that can fulfil diverse tasks with utmost reliability," said Rosiel Lee, senior sales and marketing manager at Synology. "DS1515+ and DS1815+ are built for exactly such purposes."

Synology today announced the new DiskStation DS415+, a powerful 4-bay NAS server designed to centralize data storage, backup, and file sharing for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as enthusiast home users. DS415+ features an Intel Atom 2.4Ghz quad-core processor with an AES-NI hardware encryption engine, a floating-point unit, as well as 2GB DDR3 RAM. The four drive bays accommodate huge amounts of storage capacity, while the USB 3.0, USB 2.0, and eSATA ports allow users to connect and access various external storage devices. Dual LAN ports support failover and link aggregation, thus improving resiliency and potential throughput.

"Thanks to its best-in-class combination of hardware specs and DSM software integration, DS415+ handles data transfer and encryption at blazingly fast speeds, bringing peace of mind to businesses or individuals who wish to safeguard their data while maintaining excellent performance," said Michael Wang, product manager at Synology Inc. As the first desktop DiskStation model to include a quad-core processor and AES-NI hardware encryption engine, DS415+ delivers performance and accelerated data encryption that is on par with more expensive high-end servers. With link aggregation enabled, DS415+ provides average reading and writing speeds that exceed 228 MB/s and 233 MB/s respectively, while encrypted file transfers retain an astoundingly similar level of performance, exceeding 232 MB/s reading and 206 MB/s writing.

Today at VMworld 2014, VMware, NVIDIA and Google announced a collaborative effort to deliver high-performance virtual desktops and workstation-class graphics to Google Chromebooks. Showcased as a technology preview, the solution demonstrates the next generation of VMware Blast Performance and NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology to satisfy customers' most demanding visual computing needs. The joint effort is expected to expand the hardware options for high-performance virtual desktops, enabling customers to select their system of choice without compromise.

"We are breaking down traditional barriers to adopting virtual desktops and offering new economics for the delivery of graphics-intensive applications through the power of the cloud," said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. "Organizations of all industries and requirements will soon be able to embrace the mobile-cloud using a solution that offers a new way to work from three proven industry leaders."

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the availability of Virtualization Station: an industry-leading integrated virtualization operating platform that empowers the Turbo NAS to host multiple virtual machines (VMs). With a simple & centralized management interface, it is easy for anyone to create and run multiple VMs on a single Turbo NAS.

Virtualization technology allows users to create isolated VMs on a single server and install different operating systems and applications. Each VM can be viewed as an independent PC that consumes dedicated CPU, memory, disk space and network resources without interrupting each other. Users can flexibly install Windows, UNIX, Linux, or even server-grade operating systems to centralize various services, applications and server management. Virtualization Station is a powerful and hands-on NAS-based virtualization platform that centralizes virtualization management to enhance IT efficiency.

Thecus Technology Corporation today announces firmware enhancements on all consumer and enterprise NAS models. Updates to ThecusOS 5 and 6 mean enhanced capability and security across the entire Thecus NAS lineup.

Updates available for Thecus consumer and SOHO NAS will enhance their capabilities, giving them features found usually on business class storage. For the N2310, ThecusOS 6 is upgraded to offer multiple RAID volumes and RAID Encryption. Updates for the 2-bay N2520 and N2560 as well as the 4-bay N4520 and N4560 models offer enhanced UPS support and multiple RAID volumes. In addition, OpenSSL updates and bug fixes enhance security and reliability of these consumer and SOHO Thecus NAS models.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solution products, launches the SC-Z56, a quad video output zero client for the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) market. With the fastest performance and widest selection of discrete and integrated VDI products, ViewSonic expands its line-up with the SC-Z56, an affordable and feature-rich solution to drive multiple displays in a virtualized environment. The SC-Z56 Quad Output Zero Client was developed for users needing higher resolution performance and multiple display support.

The SC-Z56 features Teradici Tera 2 architecture, making it one of the fastest performing zero clients in the market. It is VMware Horizon View certified, delivering a secure, manageable and reliable solution for VMware-based networks. With four DisplayPort outputs and six USB ports, the SC-Z56 provides the connectivity options to drive multiple displays and peripherals for optimal productivity. ViewSonic's SC-Z56 zero client supports up to four WUXGA (1920x1200) displays or two WQXGA (2560x1600) displays simultaneously, making it ideal for high-end workstations in the government, corporate, healthcare and security industries.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the IS-400 Pro Turbo NAS - a robust all-in-one industrial, 2.5" SSD/hard drive compatible four-bay NAS designed for reliable operation. Reacting to the growing demand for networked storage in factories, warehouses, vehicles, shop floors and other non-office settings, QNAP's new IS-400 Pro - built with a rock-solid fanless design - represents the ideal choice for organizations looking for a dependable NAS and surveillance solution with high performance, durability with persistent throughput.

Non-office settings require a NAS designed to operate perfectly across varying temperatures, environments and conditions. "The IS-400 Pro is fanless and built with high-quality aluminum materials to maximize heat dissipation, ensuring reliable operations between -25°C and 50°C (-13°F to 120°F) when used with industrial-grade SSDs," said Jason Hsu, product manager of QNAP.

For the sixth year running, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has clinched a Best Choice Award at Computex, picking up the honor for NVIDIA GRID technology, as well as a coveted "Golden Award" for the NVIDIA Tegra K1 mobile processor. NVIDIA's honors mark the longest Best Choice Award win-streak of any international Computex exhibitor. More than 475 technology products from nearly 200 vendors competed for this year's recognition.

Tegra K1 is a 192-core super chip, built on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture -- the world's most advanced and energy-efficient GPU. Tegra K1's 192 fully programmable CUDA cores deliver the most advanced mobile graphics and performance, and its compute capabilities open up many new applications and experiences in fields such as computer vision, advanced imaging, speech recognition and video editing.

OCZ Storage Solutions - a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that it has initiated a beta test program for the next release of ZD-XL SQL Accelerator and invites enterprise SSD customers and SQL Server database administrators (DBAs) to participate. DBAs looking to accelerate SQL Server workloads via SSD flash or flash caching, and have production SQL Server data to run on the new ZD-XL SQL Accelerator platform are especially sought for this beta testing program. Those interested in becoming a ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5 beta tester are invited to complete the online application form here.

The next generation ZD-XL continues to provide optimized and efficient flash acceleration for SQL Server environments through its tight integration of innovative hardware and software elements. It supports SQL Server 2008 R2 and 2012 versions, as well as the new 2014 version released April 1st by Microsoft that builds on the key features delivered in previous SQL Server versions, improving storage performance, availability and manageability. ZD-XL 1.5 enables DBAs to unleash the full power of SQL Server 2014 features, such as flash Buffer Pool Extension (BPE) support, that enables database pages to be accessed faster by loading them directly from flash.

Thecus is pleased to announce the expansion on the company's SMB and Enterprise NAS line with the 10GbE Ready N7710 and N8810U. These new models offer identical hardware and performance to the recently released N7710-G and N8810U-G, differing only in stock support for 10GbE connectivity. These models offer excellent value for companies who do not currently have the need or infrastructure for 10GbE speeds, and are looking for powerful performance and an attractive architecture. Both units are fully upgradable if a company decides to make the jump to 10GbE down the line.

Unlocking the full potential of desktop virtualization for enterprises, NVIDIA and VMware today announced that NVIDIA GRID technology is available on the VMware Horizon DaaS Platform to deliver 3D graphics on virtualized desktops and applications delivered through the cloud. The combination offers the industry's only multi-tenant desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) platform for service providers to deliver graphics-rich desktops and applications to customers requiring visual computing, such as engineering firms, automakers, movie studios and retail designers.

DaaS can improve productivity by enabling mobile access and remote collaboration for project teams or contractors in multiple locations by delivering graphics-intensive 3D applications to users anywhere, at any time, on any connected device served. Multi-tenancy is a software architecture that enables a single instance of a software application to serve multiple customers -- increasing agility and lowering costs.

Network attached storage expert Thecus is pleased to announce its newest NAS units, the N7710-G and N8810U-G, which combine performance with a tried and trusted platform for SMB and enterprise users. Powerful hardware, an efficient design, and great software support mean these NAS products offer multiple functions to multiple users, rapidly and flawlessly. These latest additions to the Thecus line offer significant improvements in performance thanks to powerful Intel Pentium G850 dual-core CPUs, and 10 GbE technology. 10 GbE networking delivers speeds up to 10x faster than regular gigabit connections, ensuring these NAS units will be ready for whatever the future can throw at them.

Eurocom is shipping the world's first 12 core / 24 thread Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 based Panther 5SE Mobile Server with VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 for enterprise level virtualization.

The EUROCOM Panther 5SE significantly reduces the cost and time of deploying LAN based solutions, it also extends the usage of existing business applications to users wherever required. The Panther 5SE Mobile Server is perfect for organizations relocating operations and require a fast network setup to eliminate staff downtime and reduce the overhead associated with traditional Server Rooms.

Lenovo today announced, at the EDUCAUSE annual conference here, two new performance-optimized rack servers, the ThinkServer RD540 and ThinkServer RD640. Armed with the latest Intel Xeon E5 processors, these highly efficient and flexible servers are designed for easy integration into existing IT infrastructures that handle demanding virtualization, cloud and compute-intensive workloads.

Lenovo's ThinkServer RD540 and RD640 are an ideal choice for educational institutions seeking affordable options that pack a punch. The RD540 and RD640 provide the performance, security and reliability needed to support large university workloads and operations. When optionally equipped with Stoneware's webNetwork software, school administrators, students and staff can access data, applications and services from a multitude of devices and platforms using just a browser. With low price points, built-in redundancy, high reliability components and sophisticated cooling technology, the RD540 and RD640 deliver outstanding value for higher education.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today officially launched five business-class, SAS-enabled Turbo NAS models, including TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP and TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP which support both SAS and SATA 6Gbps hard drives, and the 2.5" high-density SS-EC2479U-SAS-RP, SS-EC1879U-SAS-RP and SS-EC1279U-SAS-RP. The support of SAS hard drives increases disk input/output performance and offers high reliability for data transmission and storage. The new models offer storage expansion port(s) allowing seamless capacity expansion with QNAP RAID expansion enclosures to easily fulfill mission-critical storage needs of small and medium businesses, with persistent throughput to balance resource-demanding applications.

The new SAS-enabled models are equipped with a Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3.4GHz processor with 8GB DDR3 ECC RAM, feature 10GbE-ready network connectivity, and support SSD caching to greatly boost IOPS performance, perfect for improving overall workflow of IOPS-demanding applications such as virtualization and data center deployment. "The new SAS-enabled Turbo NAS models support enterprise-level SAS hard drives that will greatly satisfy performance-demanding businesses," said David Tsao, product manager of QNAP. "The new models also support lower cost high-capacity SATA hard drives for large data archiving and high-speed, high stability SSDs for I/O-intensive operations. With the new SAS-enabled Turbo NAS, businesses can enjoy great flexibility in hard drive selection."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that Samsung's SM1625 SSD, a high-performing solid state drive with high density and low power consumption has been certified by VMware as an optimized solution for VMware Virtual SAN. The SM1625 SSD, Samsung's first dual-ported SAS SSD with densities of up to 800 gigabytes (GBs), has been certified for VMware Virtual SAN for use in data centers and other enterprise applications. VMware Virtual SAN is a new offering that allows customers to pool server disks and flash resources to create a resilient, high-performance and dynamic shared storage solution for virtual machines.

"VMware Virtual SAN provides customers a simpler and more flexible tier of storage for their virtual machines," said John Gilmartin, vice president, Cloud Infrastructure Products, VMware. "By clustering flash and direct-attached storage, VMware Virtual SAN provides a shared storage solution that is high-performing, cost-effective, and seamlessly integrated into VMware vCenter Server. We are pleased to have Samsung's SM1625 SSD as a high-performance storage option for our joint customers."

QNAP Systems, Inc. today updated QTS 4.0, Turbo NAS operating system, for its business-class Turbo NAS models, featuring advanced functions for SMB users, including 400TB scale-up solution, intelligent Storage Manager, flexible volume management with thin-provisioned volume supported, SSD cache, SMART data migration, VMware VAAI and Microsoft ODX support and more, and greatly enhancing the efficiency in storage management, expansion, data process, and management in virtualization environments.

"Our previous release of QTS 4.0 for home-class Turbo NAS models has been a great success with tremendous positive feedback from our users," said Tony Lu, product manager of QNAP. "Now we are pleased to bring forth the QTS 4.0 for QNAP's business-class Turbo NAS models that we believe will greatly benefit business applications of the Turbo NAS," added Lu.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. is exhibiting its latest virtualization products and solutions at VMworld 2013, an annual conference for IT professionals focusing on virtualization and cloud computing. Samsung will be showcasing a number of virtualization products for the first time in the U.S. at VMworld, booth #1729, from August 25-29. These include the new NB-NH Cloud Stand, the all-new 21.5" NC221 and the rest of Samsung's 2013 NC Series zero client lineup of cloud displays, equipped with the new 2nd generation Teradici chipset (Tera2) processor for lower energy costs and greater power efficiency.

"Samsung is dedicated to supporting enterprise customers with products that offer businesses across vertical markets such as education, federal government, corporate, banking/financial and healthcare with secure and efficient ways to embrace cloud computing," said Tod Pike, senior vice president at Samsung's Enterprise Business Division. "Samsung continues to drive technology leadership in virtualization and cloud display by providing solutions like the NB-NH Cloud Stand that enable businesses to more easily deploy, maintain and manage user environments that are less vulnerable to security risks, while also freeing up valuable desktop real estate."

August 26, 2013 - OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, and Mellanox Technologies, a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center and storage systems, have collaborated together to deliver flash I/O storage performance and complete fault tolerance (FT) to VMware clusters on top of on-host server flash and hard disk drives (HDDs). These SAN-less, fault tolerant capabilities will be presented in OCZ's booth (#711) at VMworld 2013, Moscone Convention Center, today through August 29th.

The combination of the Mellanox ConnectX-3 EN 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network interface card (NIC) with OCZ's VXL Software replicates VMware datastores in virtualized SAN-less clusters. The combined solutions deliver industry-leading Ethernet connectivity, intelligent and efficient cache and flash volume distribution of PCI Express (PCIe) flash resources while enabling High Availability (HA) and Fault Tolerance (FT) services of VMware clusters.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solution products, is showcasing its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products today at VMworld, including the just launched SD-Z245 all-in-one zero client. "Virtualization technology is quickly being adopted by organizations of all sizes," said Jeff Volpe, president, ViewSonic Americas. "IT departments are embracing VDI solutions due to the myriad of benefits including improved user experience, increased security and dramatically lower total-cost-of-ownership."

ViewSonic VDI devices offer an IT-friendly way to simplify virtual desktop management in any virtualization environment. Easy scalability, increased security, up to 80 percent reduced energy consumption and world-class three-year standard warranties are just some of the benefits organizations enjoy when implementing a VDI solution with ViewSonic zero clients.

LaCie today announced an update to its NAS OS 3 software, increasing RAID 5 write speeds by 25 percent, expanding hybrid cloud capabilities, and adding more professional features. NAS OS 3 powers the LaCie 5big NAS Pro and 2big NAS professional storage solutions. These improvements advance LaCie's commitment to providing its customers with innovative and user-friendly NAS.

With this update, the LaCie 5big NAS Pro now features RAID 5 write speeds up to 100MB/s on a single LAN, a 25 percent increase from the previous NAS OS version. This speed boost enables admins to easily back up several computers at the same time. Alternatively, content creators can edit 1080p content directly from the NAS.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced a significant upgrade to its enterprise software portfolio with a new version of its FlashSoft software for Windows Server and Linux operating systems. FlashSoft 3.2 server-side solid state caching software complements and enhances the performance of existing applications, and server and storage systems.

"Solid state storage strategies are changing the economics of data management. The challenge, however, is adding enterprise flash technology without major disruptions to ongoing IT operations," said Jeff Boles, senior analyst and director of Lab Validation Services, The Taneja Group. "SanDisk's FlashSoft software efficiently integrates solid state cache into servers without changing where data is stored or the features and capabilities of a consolidated storage approach. This 'disruptionless' approach dramatically simplifies the introduction of solid state, and allows SanDisk customers to immediately address performance challenges without changing existing storage strategies."

Synology America Corp. is proud to announce the release of the DS1513+, the latest in Synology's versatile business-class product line. The DS1513+ features increased throughput, more redundancy, and ease of use for businesses. The DS1513+ offers what small to medium sized businesses need: High Availability to minimize downtime, increased network load balancing and redundancy, plus the ability to scale out to 60TB of raw storage. The DS1513+ brings high-end enterprise functionality, down to desktop dimensions.

With link aggregation enabled, using all of the four 1Gbps NICs, the DS1513+ can reach speeds of over 200 MB/Sec writing, 350 MB/Sec reading. Additionally, link aggregation provides redundancy for SMB's in the event that a network node breaks down.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today officially launched its latest business-class 12-drive rackmount Turbo NAS TS-1269U-RP. Featuring blazingly fast performance and well-rounded designs to ensure system reliability and rich business applications, the TS-1269U-RP is designed to fulfill mission-critical storage needs of small and medium businesses with maximum system uptime.

The TS-1269U-RP is equipped with a Dual-core Intel Atom 2.13 GHz processor, dual Gigabit LAN ports, and 2GB DDR3 RAM, delivering excellent performance to match up with the needs of running performance-driven applications concurrently in nowadays business environments. With 4TB hard drives installed, the TS-1269U-RP can hold up to 48TB of raw storage capacity. "QNAP's internal testing shows that both writing and reading speeds in typical Windows environments can achieve up to 220 MB/sec in network trunking mode," said Jason Hsu, product manager of QNAP.

ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, today announced the release of four new enterprise-level 1U and 2U rackmount NAS devices. These new devices consist of the four drive bay AS-604RS and AS-604RD models and the nine drive bay AS-609RS and AS-609RD models. All devices come equipped with the Intel Atom 2.13 GHz dual-core processor which combines supercharged performance with low power consumption. Furthermore, all devices are verified as VMware, Citrix and Hyper-V ready, providing businesses with a flexible and cost-efficient virtual storage solution.

"Our new rackmount NAS models include the type of hardware specifications required by the most demanding business environments such as dual gigabit Ethernet ports, eSATA and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interfaces and support for hard drive hot swapping." said Johnny Chen, Product Manager at ASUSTOR. "The AS-604RD and AS-609RD models also feature redundant power supplies meaning that should the primary power supply fail, a second one will automatically start running to keep the NAS powered on. This undoubtedly gives businesses the type of 24/7, round-the-clock, uninterrupted access that they need."