VIA M'SERV S2100 Home Mini Server Arrives

One of the reasons we have a soft-spot for VIA is that they eat their own dogfood: not only do they produce processors, mainboards and other chipsets, they also put out a range of products (often to OEMs rather than end-users) that actually use them.  Latest is the VIA M'SERV S2100, a boxy little server intended for home and small business users that's powered by the VIA Nano CPU.

The M'SERV S2100 measures in at 10.2-inches long and 4.7-inches high, yet can be stuffed with up to 4TB of storage space.  There's also a 1.3+GHz VIA Nano CPU, two memory slots, two SATA bays and an internal Compact Flash socket which the S2100 can boot from.  As for ports, you're looking at dual gigabit ethernet, three USB 2.0 and a VGA output.

Rather than simply position the S2100 as yet another NAS, VIA reckon it'll be sufficient for backup, "cloud-intermediary storage roles", network video recording and – thanks to VT virtualization support – virtual server applications.  No word on exactly what sort of price the system will go for; we'll have to wait until the first retailers and OEMs move to pick it up.

Press Release:

Big on the Inside, Small on the Outside: VIA M'SERV S2100 Addresses SOHO and SMB Server Needs

VIA M'SERV S2100 is a compact, versatile server system suitable for a range of essential applications geared towards the needs of modern small business and home office users

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA M'SERV S2100: a compact and versatile server system suitable for a range of applications for SOHO and SMB customers. Available to OEM customers, the VIA M'SERV S2100 is a mere 10.2" long by 4.7" high and provides up to four terabytes of storage in a stylish, compact, low power and low noise system.

The VIA M'SERV S2100 is the first product of its kind to offer the unique advantages of the high-performance, 64-bit VIA Nano processor. This makes the VIA M'SERV S2100 capable of addressing many traditional and next-generation server applications including sophisticated backup, cloud-intermediary service roles along with other storage oriented server applications such as NVR (Network Video Recorder) systems and Log servers.

By selecting the VIA Nano processor, the VIA M'SERV S2100 brings a novel set of features to the compact server market. These include VT virtualization support for the latest virtual server applications and the VIA AES encryption engine that can be employed to offer an advanced and non intrusive on-the-fly data encryption service through hardware.

"The VIA M'SERV S2100 is uniquely positioned to offer a wide range of essential server applications for small business and home office users," said Jerry Yuan, VIA Embedded Business Development Manager. "The VIA Nano processor brings with it an advanced set of features that makes the VIA M'SERV S2100 an exceptionally compelling mini-server product".

VIA M'SERV S2100 Compact Server System

Measuring just 13.5cm by 12cm by 26cm (5.3"x4.7"x10.2"), the VIA M'SERV S2100 is powered by a 1.3+GHz VIA Nano processor and supports 2 slots of DDR2 SO-DIMM 667/533MHz memory. Two SATA bays with integrated power ports are mounted within the case, and a type I Compact Flash socket can be used as a bootable SSD for embedded OS/AP to improve the system reliability and enhance boot speed.

Connectivity includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports while two USB 2.0 ports at the back are supplemented by one port at the front allowing easy accessibility for USB peripherals such as flash drives or memory card readers.

The VIA M'SERV S2100 supports Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (x86 & x64), and Windows Server 2008 Foundation, as well a range of major Linux distributions including Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (Service Pack 2) and FreeBSD.

For more details about the VIA M'SERV S2100 compact server system, please visit:

VIA M'SERV S2100 Availability

The VIA M'SERV S2100 system is available now for system integrators and OEMs. For pricing and availability, please send an email to: embedded@via.com.tw