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.Different from typical virtualization platforms, Virtualization Station is designed not only to be beneficial for businesses but also accessible for general users. The web-based management interface provides greater convenience for users to access and manage the Virtualization Station remotely with any device. "Implementing a virtualization platform on a NAS greatly extends applications and benefits for both business and personal use including reducing physical server maintenance, managing applications via web browsers, building a web server, and flexibly installing multiple operating systems," said Alfred Li, product manager of QNAP. "With the Virtualization Station, users can carry out more operations on a single NAS and complete tasks more efficiently, enjoy high performance for I/O-intensive data access, and secure backup management at the same time," added Li.
Virtualization Station offers major functions of virtualization applications, including, snapshot, VM import/export, providing VMs with dedicated bandwidth, user permission settings, and more. Users can conveniently operate VMs as remote desktops via web browsers for instant management or troubleshooting.

Virtualization Station also provides a flexible solution for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), creating multiple independent desktops for users to work on or access data on the NAS from anywhere. Virtualization Station's screen sharing technology also enables users to share the same desktop content to optimize VM utilization. Data on the Turbo NAS can be directly retrieved through the operating systems on the VMs, improving the level of security as no data used by a VM is transmitted externally.

Administrators can create users and set proper permissions for each VM, helping to efficiently manage and allocate VM resources for users with different needs. With these permissions, users can work independently on their VMs without worrying about their work being interrupted. In addition, the Virtualization Station supports numerous VM formats and is compatible with virtual appliances from providers such as VMware Marketplace and Bitnami.

Virtualization Station enables users to expand the applications and features of their Turbo NAS by leveraging the potential of VMs. Coupled with the excellent I/O performance, comprehensive backup solutions and high scalability of Turbo NAS, users can work with higher productivity, greater flexibility and benefit from the many advantages that an integrated virtualization solution can provide them with.

Availability
The Virtualization Station is now available in the App Center of the following Turbo NAS models: TS-ECx80 Pro, TS-ECx80U-RP, TS-ECx79U-RP, TS-x79U-RP, TS-ECx79U-SAS-RP, SS-ECx79U-SAS-RP, TS-x51, and TS/SS-x53 Pro series.

The availability of the TS-x53 Pro/SS-x53 Pro series Turbo NAS will be announced separately.

To learn more about Virtualization Station, please visit this page.