Should you wait for the next server generation? A 2026 buy-now-vs-hold framework (UK)
There is always a faster server coming, so the temptation to wait one more cycle never goes away. Sometimes holding for the next generation is the rig…
Redfish and firmware lifecycle: automating and hardening out-of-band management (UK 2026)
Most estates treat firmware as something you touch once at install and then forget until a vendor advisory forces a panic. That habit leaves a fleet r…
First boot with iDRAC and iLO: initial server setup the right way (UK 2026)
The baseboard management controller is the first thing you should configure on a new server and the one most people configure last - if at all. Dell i…
How to spec a server in 2026: a practitioner's walkthrough
Most server sizing mistakes happen at the spec stage — undersized RAM, overspecified CPU, wrong drive form factor, missed network throughput requireme…
Enabling Secure Boot and TPM on enterprise servers: a practical setup (UK 2026)
Secure Boot and a TPM are the cheapest hardening you will ever do - the silicon is already in the server, the licence is free, and the protection cove…
BIOS/UEFI power & performance profiles: tuning servers for throughput or efficiency (UK 2026)
Most servers ship on a balanced firmware profile that is nobody's optimum - it leaves latency on the table for performance workloads and burns watts y…
How much storage, and what tiers, does your server need? (UK 2026)
Internal server storage is where two opposite mistakes meet: buying a wall of capacity with no thought for how fast it needs to be, or buying expensiv…
Specifying a server for ERP workloads - SAP, Dynamics and Sage (UK 2026)
An ERP system is the server that runs the business, and it has a distinctive profile: it is memory-bound, intolerant of downtime, and almost never a s…
Rack vs tower vs blade vs composable vs HCI: choosing a server architecture (UK 2026)
Before you choose a model, you choose an architecture, and that decision shapes cost, operations and how the estate grows for years. Rack, tower, blad…
Proxmox VE and Hyper-V host hardware: what to buy when you leave VMware (UK)
Plenty has been written about whether to leave VMware after Broadcom's pricing changes. Far less has been written about the hardware question that fol…
Specifying a Veeam backup repository: hardware for a hardened, fast-restore target (UK 2026)
Plenty of guides tell you which backup software to buy. Far fewer tell you how to build the box the backups land on — and a badly-specified repository…
Specifying an Active Directory domain controller without over-building it (UK 2026)
The domain controller is the server people reflexively over-build. It sits at the centre of everything, so the instinct is to throw a big two-socket b…
How much storage (and what tiers) does your server need? (UK 2026)
Internal server storage is usually sized by guesswork: a capacity number plucked from the last server, a single drive type for everything, and no thou…
Single-socket vs dual-socket servers: which do you actually need? (UK 2026)
For two decades the default enterprise server was a dual-socket box, and most buyers still tick that option without thinking. That habit deserves a fr…
Specifying a SQL Server or Oracle database host: cores, licensing and NVMe (UK 2026)
A database host is the one server where buying the wrong CPU costs you twice — once for the silicon, and every year after in per-core database licence…
Spec'ing a VDI host in 2026: GPU, RAM density and users-per-host (UK)
A VDI host is not a general virtualisation host with desktops bolted on. The economics live and die on users-per-host, and that number is set by three…
Building a file and NAS server: capacity, ZFS or Storage Spaces and 10/25GbE (UK 2026)
A file server looks like the simplest box in the rack until you have to build one that stays fast for fifty people, never loses a byte and still has r…
Building a file and NAS server: capacity, ZFS or Storage Spaces, and 10/25GbE (UK 2026)
A file server is one of the easiest builds to get wrong, because it looks simple and is not. Buy too few spindles and rebuilds take days; pick the wro…
DIMM population rules: how to fill memory slots for full bandwidth (UK 2026)
Two servers with identical CPUs and the same total RAM can differ by a third in memory bandwidth, purely because of how the DIMMs were placed in the s…
How to spec a VMware vSphere host in 2026: a UK build guide
Most virtualisation hosts are bought wrong in one of two directions: over-specified on cores you'll never licence, or under-specified on memory and RA…
RAID 1 vs 5 vs 6 vs 10: choosing the right level for your server (UK 2026)
RAID is the one storage decision people copy from the last server without thinking, and it is also the one most likely to lose data when a drive fails…