Acer America announced a new server targeted at small- to mid-sized businesses today. The Acer AC100 micro-server is boxed in a micro-tower designed for easy access to allow quick upgrades to memory, storage and processor power.
Servers for small businesses are similar to powerful desktop computers, but their main function is to allow employees to share and collaborate on files. It can be used to backup important files from employee PCs, host applications that are used by multiple employees, and hosting a company intranet.
The hardware can be used with Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 Essentials or several other operating systems, and offers Acer Dashboard and Acer ITSmart utilities to help monitor the server’s operation. The server is designed to be energy efficient with a Energy Star-certified 200W 80 PLUS power supply, and a Client PC Power Saving feature.
Acer’s AC100 is available starting at $999 at Canadian resellers. The base model is outfitted with a Intel Xeon E3-1260L processor, and upgrades are available to Intel Core i3 or Pentium series processors. It can house up to 8 TB of RAID storage and 16 GB of memory. There are four 3.5-inch hard drive bays that support hot swapping, six USB ports, one PCIe x8 slot, and video and eSATA ports.
The server supports automatic back-up and allows for remote Web access. It guards against data corruption with automatic detection and correcting of single bits in real time, and offers Gigabit Ethernet speeds.
Some SMBs are opting to rely on cloud-computing services instead of investing in server hardware recently. Cloud vendors typically deliver computing services in real time over the Internet for a subscription fee, managing the hardware and infrastructure components for SMBs.