VIA NSR7800 8-Bay Eco-Friendly 16TB Server

After playing with VIA's ARTiGO A2000 barebones NAS earlier in the month, and coming away impressed with the file-sharing and backup performance of its 1.5GHz C7 processor, we're interested to see VIA drop the same CPU into their altogether more serious 8-bay rack server.  The VIA NSR7800 is a 2U rack server with eight 3.5-inch SATA-II drive bays and dual gigabit LAN, which apparently consumes at least 50-percent less power than rival products.

Bays are accessed through individually-locked lever-opening doors, and there are two SATA controllers capable of handling up to 16TB of storage across eight separate drives with hot-swap hardware support.  The NSR7800 can take up to 1GB of DDR2 RAM and boot from an integrated Compact Flash slot, with VGA port for standalone on-device configuration.

There's also a Mini-PCI port for adding in hardware VPN or antivirus devices, and the whole thing is enclosed in a heavy duty steel casing.  The VIA NSR7800 is available now, and we're waiting to hear back from VIA on pricing.

Press Release:

VIA Announces Power-Efficient 8-Bay 2U Rackmount Server

The VIA NSR7800 expands VIA's family of storage and server solutions to include a radically more energy-efficient rackmount server product that uses at least 50% less energy

Taipei, Taiwan, February 11 2009 – VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA NSR7800 2U rackmount server for network storage solution providers. Powered by a 1.5GHz VIA C7 processor, the VIA NSR7800 offers system integrators the opportunity to provide unparalleled power and energy-efficient server solutions to today's energy-conscious small and medium sized business customers.

With eight 3.5" S-ATA II hard drive bays, the VIA NSR7800 is the perfect balance of power-efficiency, performance and capacity, an ideal starting point for a variety of rackmount server applications including email, file and web server products. The VIA NSR7800's drive bays are easily accessible through lockable front levers that allow hard drives to be securely installed in moments. Dual Gigabit LAN ensures fast data transfer speeds.

A Green Server Solution

Small and medium sized businesses and enterprises are increasingly seeking ways to minimize energy consumption and reduce fuel bills. The current economic climate has only increased the pressure on businesses to further reduce their carbon footprint. Cost effective, energy efficient-storage and network solutions are now a major element in today's transition to carbon-neutral business practices.

Several server applications like mail, file and web servers require far less computational power than

other more power hungry applications. The VIA NSR7800 is ideal suited to these kinds of applications while consuming a fraction of the energy, generating far less heat (again requiring less energy for elaborate cooling systems) and offering unrivalled stability over extended periods of uninterrupted usage.

"Business leaders are now ready to accept that a power hungry IT infrastructure is no longer acceptable," said Daniel Wu, Vice President, VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. "The VIA NSR7800 is an important step in the right direction, providing the right balance between performance and capacity while consuming at least 50% less energy."

About the VIA NSR7800

The VIA NSR7800 is powered by a 1.5GHz VIA C7 processor and supports up to a gigabyte of DDR2 system memory. Two separate S-ATA controllers allow up to 16TB* of potential storage capacity through eight S-ATA II ports. These ports are accessible through eight lockable front panel levers allowing simple, fast installation of the systems full-size 3.5" drives. These eight S-ATA ports also feature hot-swap hardware support. Users can expect fast file transfer speeds over a network with dual gigabit LAN ports over PCI and PCIe buses. A VGA port is included on the rear for easy on-screen device configuration.

Individual LEDs are provided to monitor both network ports as well as three-color LEDs for each drive bay, a power LED and an overall drive activity LED. The VIA NSR7800 includes on bootable Type I Compact Flash port for discrete OS installation and an optional Mini-PCI port for additional security related add-in cards such as hardware VPN or anti-virus modules.

The VIA NSR7800 uses heavy duty steel casing to provide an industrial class server product that complies with current rackmount device specifications. The VIA NSR7800 supports Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2007, Windows Home Server and Linux. System monitoring and management includes a TPM module, Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Alarm and Watch Dog Timer.

*based on 2TB current maximum drive capacity

For more details about VIA's family of storage and server systems please visit: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/systems.jsp