QNAP announces firmware update with full VMware VAAI support.

Yesterday at the VMworld 2012 Europe event in Barcelona I spoke with an engineer from QNAP at their booth. He told us that QNAP will be introducing a new firmware release for their Pro line. The version number will probably be 3.8 (current version is 3.7.3) and it will contain full VMware VAAI support for vSphere 4 and 5. Also, QNAP will introduce a plugin for the vSphere Client software so users can manage the QNAP from within the client.

For those of you who don’t quite remember what VAAI is, VAAI stands for VStorage API for Array Integration. It is a hardware acceleration functionality that can dramatically improve the storage performance with VMware vSphere. More info on VAAI can be found here. This makes a QNAP Pro NAS even more suitable for SMB and Lab environments.

The exact release date is not known yet, but it is expected to be in Q4 2012. So, if you own a QNAP Pro NAS, keep your eye on the QNAP Website.