QNAP Unveils QuTS hero h6.0 Beta ZFS-based NAS OS

QNAP Systems, Inc. released QuTS hero h6.0 Beta, the latest ZFS-based NAS OS which offers a new level of enterprise resilience and intelligence.

“As data volumes soar and AI transforms business operations, enterprises need storage that’s secure, intelligent, and future-ready,” said Tim Lin, product manager, QNAP. “QuTS hero h6.0 demonstrates why QNAP remains the most comprehensive NAS solution for the AI era – combining resilience, cybersecurity, and intelligent data management in one unified platform.”

Key New Features in QuTS hero h6.0 Beta: ^(*)

Dual-NAS High Availability (HA)

Two NAS devices form an Active-Passive HA cluster using High Availability Manager. h6.0 supports even more models and applications – with over 90% of services are now HA-ready – providing cost-effective redundancy for business continuity.

Immutable Snapshots

Available on all QuTS hero models, Immutable Snapshots lock data from modification or deletion during a protection period, ensuring data integrity and rapid recovery even after ransomware attacks.

KMIP Key Management

As a KMIP client, QNAP NAS integrates with company internal centralized Key Management Servers (KMS) for unified encryption key control. Keys are stored remotely and applied automatically, reducing manual risk and ensuring FIPS 140-3 compliance for enterprise-grade security.

Enhanced System Security
QuTS hero h6.0 adds multiple layers of protection to safeguard system integrity and prevent intrusion.

FIDO2 Passkeys enable password-free and phishing-resistant authentication for stronger account protection.

Secure Boot uses hardware-level protection to verify firmware integrity at startup, blocking unverified code and ensuring every boot begins from a trusted state.

Ransomware Guard (coming soon) adds behavioral detection and isolation to Malware Remover, identifying anomalies, logging suspicious activities, and neutralizing threats in real time.

Secure IP Access (coming soon) introduces granular IP-level controls to reduce network exposure and enforces contextual access policies.

Qtier for QuTS hero

QNAP’s popular Qtier storage tiering technology is now supported on QuTS hero NAS. With flexible manual tiering control, users can place data on ultra-fast SSDs or high-capacity HDDs according to workload needs – achieving the ideal balance of performance, capacity, and cost efficiency. Ideal for businesses handling large, mixed workloads – such as file servers, virtual machines, or video production.

Kernel-Mode SMB Daemon with Encryption
By running SMB services in kernel mode, QuTS hero achieves significant throughput and IOs improvements while supporting SMB encryption for secure file transfers.

Simplified Management and Access Control

QNAP ID SSO streamlines login across NAS and cloud services with single sign-on.

Fibre Channel NPIV allows multiple virtual WWPNs on a single FC port for better multi-tenant management.

ACL 2.0 introduces a redesigned permission-handling engine that delivers significantly faster operations, smoother administration, and more reliable performance for large directories.

AMIZcloud Monitoring provides centralized cloud management for HA groups, displaying cluster health, latency, and alerts.

AI and Automation

On-Prem LLM on Qsirch introduces RAG Search powered by locally deployed open-source large language models (such as DeepSeek, Gemma, Phi, and Mistral) on GPU-ready NAS. It enables fast, private document summarization and semantic search with full data sovereignty.

MCP Assistant allows administrators to manage NAS with natural language commands via tools like Claude Desktop, VS Code, Telegram, or n8n – simplifying daily operations through AI-powered automation.

Availability:
QuTS hero h6.0 Beta is available from the QNAP Download Center.

Resource:
QuTS hero h6.0.0 Release Notes

^(*)Notes and Limitations:

Dual-NAS HA: Real-time SnapSync, Q’center, 3rd-party apps, and VJBOD are not yet supported in h6.0 Beta.
Secure Boot: Currently supported only on the TVS-AIh1688ATX (others to follow).
Ransomware Guard: Not available on ARM-based models.
Qtier for QuTS hero: Feature availability may vary by model.
ACL 2.0: Applied per shared folder; once enabled, cannot revert to 1.0.
AMIZcloud Monitoring: Currently adds HA groups only; more functions coming soon.
On-Prem LLM on Qsirch: Supported on GPU-ready NAS (QAI-h1290FX, TS-h1290FX, TS-h1277AFX with RTX 6000 Ada series GPUs).