ANTenna Blog -- How-To

HP's enhanced home server should interest the SOHO/SMB market as well.

HP came out with its MediaSmart Server about a year ago. It can store files, and serve them both locally and over the Internet. It can back up files from PCs automatically. It has a footprint that's only 5.5 by 9.2 inches.

What's new is that it can now back up files from Macs using the Time Machine auto-backup feature in the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system. The new ex485 and ex487 models let users set Time Machine backups from the server console.

That'll be interesting to SMB and especially SOHO users, since a lot of small businesses involve graphic arts—and the Mac is heavily favored by graphics artists. (In this case, incidentally, SOHO means Small Office/Home Office, not the West London district or New York City neighborhood that's South of Houston.)

Of wider interest (i.e., PC as well as Mac) is another new feature on the MediaSmart Server—it can back up to the cloud, specifically Amazon's S3 storage service, providing an additional layer of backup.

What distinguishes the units from business-class servers is that they use an Intel Celeron processor, such as you would expect on a budget desktop, rather than the Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processor often seen in x86 servers. But since the target application is file sharing and backup, rather than application support, speed is not essential—and is not provided. The Celeron runs at 2 gigahertz and the units come with 2 gigabytes of RAM.

The ex485 includes 750 gigabytes of disk space and lists for $599, while the ex487 includes 1.5 terabytes and lists for $749. Both will be available for pre-order next week, on January 5, 2009.

Until then, Happy New Year!

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