Headlining these announcements is ReadyNAS Replicate, a cloud based technology designed to simplify multi-site data protection management and certification of the ReadyNAS products as being fully compliant with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 requirements, including interoperability between ReadyNAS and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Building on the proud heritage of the ReadyNAS platform as class leading products, NETGEAR also introduces the NETGEAR ReadyNAS Pro family of business storage products, designed specifically for businesses seeking Smart IT solutions without a price premium and four new additions to its ReadyNAS Ultra family of home media servers.

“The ReadyNAS platform is a great example of how NETGEAR maximises the performance of technology for the benefits of the business and home users,” says NETGEAR Australia and New Zealand managing director Ryan Parker.

“It doesn’t matter if you are a business or a personal user, NETGEAR’s comprehensive range of Business and Prosumer NAS solutions will provide the perfect solution to ensure a centralised, easily accessible storage space for your digital data. Business and consumer data requirements generally grow at 50% per year and NETGEAR’s ReadyNAS platform makes it easy to grow storage capacity as needs increase.”

Reducing the complexity of multi-site backup solutions

ReadyNAS Replicate from NETGEAR provides a single cloud based interface that enables customers to schedule multi-site backup jobs and to restore files across locations, slashing management time and improving investment return. This means that Smart IT departments looking for a reliable data management method across multiple sites can use ReadyNAS Replicate to reduce operational costs and standardise disaster recovery.

Automatic best practices, such as integrated snapshot management and embedded VPN connections improve reliability over typical do-it-yourself arrangements while a single management console simplifies backup and restore between company headquarters and even the smallest remote offices. Resellers may use ReadyNAS Replicate to deliver managed backup and recovery services to individual end user locations.

Extending virtualisation for Smart IT departments

The “Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2” logo will now be included on all business-class NETGEAR ReadyNAS products. This means that Smart IT departments of all sizes can now use NETGEAR and Microsoft virtualisation solutions to increase application reliability, consolidate servers, and lower costs without compatibility or support concerns.

Microsoft has certified NETGEAR’s ReadyNAS in the Windows Server catalogue after the product passed the comprehensive WinQual testing suite. Listing in the catalogue specifically ensures compatibility between ReadyNAS network storage and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V when using the iSCSI protocol.

High performance, high reliability and ease of use without the premium price point

Introducing a new type of business-class storage designed specifically for businesses seeking Smart IT solutions without the price premium, the NETGEAR ReadyNAS Pro family is here. This new range delivers higher performance and reliability than comparable consumer storage products, enabling VMware, Microsoft, hybrid cloud and disk-based backup and recovery solutions.

The new ReadyNAS Pro family includes 2-bay, 4-bay, and 6-bay desktop products that deliver the right throughput, five year warranty and disk drive specifications for business applications, as well as a complete range of 3rd party certifications. The family also supports a range of disk-based backup applications including the only officially supported Symantec Backup Exec agent in this product class, Veeam and Vizioncore backup software compatibility for virtual environments and Acronis and StorageCraft backup software compatibility for mixed physical/virtual environments.

The new releases also come with some exciting value added features for hybrid cloud services, including a free 12 month, 100GB ReadyNAS Vault cloud archive subscription for online file archive and disaster recovery, multi-site file backup, restore and disaster recovery with the ReadyNAS Replicate option and ReadyNAS Remote, an automatic VPN service for secure remote access.

World’s fastest home media servers

Extending the popularity of the NETGEAR ReadyNAS Ultra range, the new ReadyNAS Ultra Plus series delivers approximately 30% more performance over the ReadyNAS Ultra series, offering the world’s best streaming media experience for music, movies, photos and files. In addition, the two bay model of the ReadyNAS Ultra family will soon be available worldwide.

The ReadyNAS Ultra Plus series transforms home media networks, delivering media content to local or remote hand-helds, desktops and game consoles. NETGEAR’s industry-leading partnerships also benefit ReadyNAS Ultra Plus users by giving them expanded media experiences at home and away. TiVo users can use the ReadyNAS Ultra Plus to exponentially upgrade their DVR capacity while Orb transcoding support puts the right media formats on the right screens, making the process of streaming movies to hand-held devices far more intuitive. Skifta shifts movies and music onto any DLNA networked screen and remote file access is now available for iPhone users with the new ReadyNAS Remote iPhone App.