Thecus Technology Corporation, the creator in NAS and NVR storage solutions, announces firmware updates to its business class NAS models, adding support for the BTRFS file system as well as ESXi VAAI. The new features enhance Thecus OS5, adding snapshot backup functionality as well as allowing ESXi virtualization storage tasks to be offloaded to the NAS. In addition, USB backup functionality has been improved with bi-directional copying now available.

As BTRFS becomes increasingly popular, Thecus NAS owners can now enjoy support for this full featured file system. With BTRFS, advanced storage features such as snapshot backups are native to the file system rather than requiring external drivers or software. This means enhanced storage functionality while simplifying storage management. With BTRFS support, Thecus NAS users can enjoy the simplicity of snapshot backups. Through BTRFS subvolumes, snapshots of data at various time points can be manually or automatically made and just as easily later restored to rollback files or folders to previous states.

ESXi VAAI
Users of the popular virtualization hypervisor, ESXi, can now appreciate full support for VAAI. vSphere storage APIs for Array Integration allows storage operations in the virtualization platform to be offloaded to networked storage, improving overall performance of the Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

USB Backup
With the ubiquity of USB storage, the ability to easily back up USB and external hard drives to Thecus NAS has been a well-appreciated feature. Now, users will also be able to back up the other way around. The newest updates from Thecus allow data from the NAS to be backed up onto USB attached storage, helping users conveniently keep their multiple backups up-to-date.

How to
For users of Thecus NAS, upgrading their units to the latest software is as simple as going to the Download Center and following the instructions for the appropriate model here.