Netgear releases ReadyNAS NVX

Netgear's ReadyNAS products are really nice home/office shared network resources. The NV+ has been around for a while, then the PRO came out which increased the bay count to 6 (from 4) offered dual network interfaces and faster processors based on Intel chips.

Netgear have now introduced the NVX which is a four bay design but (I guess) also Intel processors. As well as NFS, CIFS, AFS, FTP, http and other network sharing protocols the NVX now supports iSCSI as well.

Mac users have recently had improvements and a ReadyNAS can act as a Time Machine server for network back-ups and restore directly integrating with the Apple Time Machine client which is integrated into MacOS 10.5.

NetVault is a new service introduced by Netgear where ReadyNAS users can back-up their NAS's over the Internet and pay a monthly fee. The pricing seems to be based on whether the back-up is performed by a home user or business.

Currently in beta is Remote, a client which will allow remote users to natively access a ReadyNAS even if it's behind a firewall etc. It sits on Windows or MacOS and the ReadyNAS appears as a local disk.

Retail pricing is about $1,500 for a ReadyNAS NVX including 2TB of disk.

Netgear acquire Infrant

Infrant are a great little company based in the Bay Area of California. They make network attached servers, supporting Windows, Macs and Linux.

They've just been acquired by Netgear and it looks like some of the Infrant people will be looking after the storage side of the Netgear business.

Hopefully this should be a great match as Netgear's storage products haven't been that great, but they do make interesting things like their media streaming boxes - which will be a great marriage. Infrant gets the worldwide distribution it's badly needed.