As a part of its new "Just Right IT" initiative, HP is introducing a small server for companies of fewer than ten people. The ProLiant MicroServer is designed to fit the needs of growing businesses without the unnecessary features found on more expensive models.
With this new family of business systems, HP has tried to focus on what's important to small companies. The MicroServers are designed to provide a central hub to manage and share data between employees while making the most of the existing resources.
At the heart of the system is a single 15W dual-core AMD Athlon II NEO CPU with support for up to 8GB ECC DDR3. By avoiding a server-grade CPU, the company was able to keep costs low while offering more than enough performance for its target audience.
The motherboard has a single gigabit-Ethernet port, a four-port SATA RAID controller and PCIe 2.0 x16 and PCIe 2.0 x1 expansion-slots. However, the case can only support half-length, half-height cards. While there is room for up to four hard-drives, the controller lacks support for RAID 5, meaning that users will have to settle for RAID 0 or 1.
Not only is the MicroServer small, but the manufacturer claims that it is up to fifty per cent quieter and uses significantly less power than competing entry-level servers.
The newest member of the ProLiant family is currently available from retailers in the UK and costs around £250 for a base model with a 1.3GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and a single 160GB hard-drive.
