QNAP Systems has unveiled the TS-x77XU rackmount NAS series. This series features the 8-bay TS-877XU-RP, 12-bay TS-1277XU-RP, and 16-bay TS-1677XU-RP. Utilizing the AMD Ryzen processor family with high core/thread counts, the TS-x77XU series has been significantly boosted to meet the most-demanding virtualization needs of enterprises, according to David Tsao, director of product management of QNAP.

The TS-x77XU series is available with Ryzen 3 1200, Ryzen 5 2600, and Ryzen 7 2700 processors. Four PCI Express (PCIe) slots are available in all models, allowing users to expand NAS functionality with network adapters (40GbE, 10GBASE-T/NBASE-T), USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) cards, M.2 SSD cards, and graphics cards. The TS-1677XU comes with a 500 W power supply unit (PSU) to support a graphics card that requires additional power. Models with redundant power supplies are also available.

The multi-threading advantages of the TS-x77XU series are especially suited for virtualization, according to Tsao. The series is virtualization-ready for VMware, Citrix, and Windows Server 2016 environments with the support of iSER (iSCSI Extension for RDMA) thanks to built-in Mellanox ConnectX-4 SmartNICs. 

The TS-x77XU series can also host virtual machines and containers, acting as an efficient all-in-one server, and supports snapshots and virtual machine backups for complete virtualization management. The series also supports Virtual QTS, allowing users to run multiple virtual QTS operating systems on a single NAS, providing benefits of resource segregation (CPU, memory, networking), flexible application deployment, and providing energy, cost, and space savings.

The TS-x77XU series supports RAID 50/60. The latest Qtier 2.0 adds IO Aware capabilities for SSD tiered storage to keep a cache-like reserved space to handle burst I/O in real time. The TS-x77XU series also features a redundant power supply to ensure that mission-critical applications can maintain 24/7 business operations. A single power supply model is also available.