SoftNAS, the #1 Best-Selling NAS in the Cloud, today announced upgrades to its SoftNAS Cloud for VMware product that enables organizations of all sizes to leverage their existing investment in VMware platforms and tools and deploy powerful software-defined storage capabilities. 

VMware customers can use SoftNAS Cloud for VMware to manage primary and secondary storage for private clouds and service providers, and for hybrid clouds with vCloud Hybrid Services (vCHS) for real-time backup, disaster recovery and business continuity.

Also, SoftNAS has certified VMware's vSphere Data Protection Advanced product (VDP), enabling VMware admins to perform data backups, deduplication and replication both locally and to the cloud faster and more efficiently.

SoftNAS Cloud for VMware supports all VMware-compatible storage media and network hardware and is compatible with all private, public and hybrid cloud platforms. This flexibility has driven customer interest from industries that often face limited IT capital resources -- ranging from small-to-medium businesses, educational institutions, government entities, media/publishing companies and service providers.

Specific features of SoftNAS Cloud for VMware include:

• VDP Backup Server support for high-performance on-site and off-site backup storage using any VMware server and storage combination, plus Amazon S3 for off-site cloud storage
• vCloud Hybrid Service Real-time Backup/DR -- near real-time block replication from VMware ESXi private cloud to vCHS with automatic failover using Hybrid HA and SnapReplicate
• Hybrid HA Technology for Non-stop Cloud HA across Datacenters, with block replication, automatic failover and seamless HA storage across routed data centers and routed networks using VMware vSwitch network virtualization
• VMware Cloud Gateway to Amazon S3 provides near limitless, highly-durable object storage access via NFS, CIFS and iSCSI for archival, off-site mass storage and secure backups
• VSAN-based NAS Filer for Private Clouds leverages VSAN as HA storage SAN, adding NAS filer features atop of VSAN for no-compromise software-defined storage and file sharing
• Large-scale Windows Filer with Active Directory supports billions of files for enterprise-scale file server, VDI user file storage via CIFS/SMB 3 protocol, including CIFS with durable S3 off-site mass storage
• Large-scale NFS Server supports billions of files, videos and other large-scale file server applications, including durable S3 off-site mass storage
• Simply Powerful NAS Filer protects mission-critical data, providing 99.999% availability for VMware hosts and HA clusters by turning VMware hosts into HA storage servers
• Powerful NAS Filer capabilities including RAM cache, SSD cache, scheduled storage snapshots, writable clones, SnapReplicate block replication, thin-provisioning, deduplication, compression, dynamic storage pool expansion and more
• Robust StorageCenter™ web-based administrator interface for IT and VMware administrators -- easy to learn and use without training or skills other than VMware
• Non-stop operation with high-availability and automatic failover; dual controllers on premise, dual controllers across premise and vCHS with Hybrid HA
• SnapReplicate block-replication to vCloud Hybrid Service, another VMware data center or Amazon AWS for real-time off-site backup and disaster recovery, scales to billions of files
• Unified NFS v3 and v4 with LDAP, CIFS with Active Directory integration and iSCSI support
• API and CLI for programmatic administration and DevOps agile cloud infrastructure

"In the cloud, ease of use and flexibility trump complexity. It doesn't have to be difficult or complicated to reap the benefits of powerful, enterprise-grade storage in the cloud or on premise," said Rick Braddy, CEO and founder of SoftNAS. "This latest offering puts the power of software-defined storage in the hands of VMware administrators everywhere, finally giving admins the freedom to leverage the richness of VMware's many platforms and tools and transform VMware itself into a powerful storage platform."

SoftNAS Cloud for VMware starts at $495 per month and $4,995 per year for up to 20 TB, and SoftNAS Cloud/Enterprise for VMware is $995 per month and $9,995 per year for up to 16 PB of usable storage.