SAN vs NAS vs DAS: how to choose the right storage architecture (UK 2026)
Three letters decide how your servers see their storage: DAS, NAS or SAN. Choose wrong and you either overspend on a shared array a single server neve…
iSCSI vs Fibre Channel: choosing a block-storage SAN fabric (UK 2026)
Once you have decided you need a SAN, the next question is how the servers reach it: iSCSI over ordinary Ethernet, Fibre Channel over a dedicated stor…
RAID levels explained: the complete guide (2026)
RAID combines several drives into one array for capacity, speed or redundancy — but every level trades those three against each other differently. Thi…
Best RAID for a small business server (2026)
A small business server runs a mix of jobs on a modest budget, so the best RAID balances resilience, performance and capacity without over-spending. H…
Best RAID for a backup target (2026)
A backup repository is capacity-led, sequential and resilience-first — so the best RAID maximises usable space and survives failures during long reten…
MinIO vs Ceph vs Scality: matching host hardware to each SDS platform (UK 2026)
MinIO, Ceph and Scality are three of the software-defined storage platforms UK teams reach for when they want to own their storage, and choosing betwe…
Best RAID for video surveillance / NVR (2026)
Surveillance storage is a constant, sequential write from many cameras with long retention — so the best RAID is capacity-led, resilient and built on …
Best RAID for databases (SQL, Oracle, Postgres)
Databases are write-heavy and latency-sensitive, so the best RAID minimises the write penalty and keeps latency predictable — which almost always mean…
JBOD expansion shelves explained: adding capacity without adding servers (UK 2026)
When a storage server fills up, the instinct is to buy another server. Often that is the wrong, expensive answer. A JBOD, a just-a-bunch-of-disks expa…
Best RAID for virtualization (VMware/Proxmox/Hyper-V)
Virtualisation hammers storage with mixed, random I/O from many VMs at once — so the best RAID prioritises IOPS and low latency. Here's how to choose …
Object storage server hardware: speccing nodes for S3-compatible workloads (UK 2026)
On-prem S3-compatible object storage has gone from niche to mainstream, driven by backup targets, data lakes, application object stores and the simple…
Best RAID for a home media server (Plex/NAS)
A home media server (Plex, Jellyfin, a NAS film/photo library) is capacity-led and read-heavy — so the best RAID maximises usable space while survivin…
Best RAID for a NAS: how to choose (2026)
The best RAID for a NAS depends on how many bays it has and how big the drives are. As a rule: mirror for two bays, RAID 6 or RAIDZ2 for four or more …
Hardware RAID vs software RAID vs HBA passthrough: the 2026 decision (UK)
The storage controller is one of the quietest decisions in a server build and one of the easiest to get wrong, because the right answer flipped in the…
Is RAID 5 dead? URE risk on rebuild, explained
“RAID 5 is dead” is a headline about a real failure mode: an unrecoverable read error during a rebuild. It is not dead everywhere — but on large drive…
ZFS RAIDZ vs hardware RAID: which to use?
ZFS RAIDZ and a hardware RAID controller solve the same problem two very different ways. Here's how they compare on integrity, performance, flexibilit…
Cold archive and compliance retention storage: building a low-cost WORM tier on-prem (UK 2026)
Every organisation accumulates data it must keep but rarely touches: records held for years to meet regulation, finished projects, logs and evidence t…
RAIDZ1 vs RAIDZ2 vs RAIDZ3: choosing ZFS parity
ZFS offers single, double and triple parity per vdev — RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3. The right one depends on vdev width and drive size. Size any of them…
RAID 10 vs 50 vs 60: choosing nested RAID
The three nested RAID levels trade write performance, capacity and resilience differently. Here's how to choose between RAID 10, 50 and 60 — and size …
Designing a one-petabyte storage server in 2026: a UK reference architecture
A petabyte used to be a data-centre's worth of storage; in 2026 it is a design exercise that fits in a few rack units if you get the architecture righ…
RAID 6 vs RAID 10: capacity vs write performance
RAID 6 maximises capacity and survives any two failures; RAID 10 maximises write performance and rebuilds fastest. The right choice depends on your wo…
Data lake and lakehouse storage nodes: on-prem hardware for analytics at scale (UK 2026)
The modern data lake is built on object storage, and a lakehouse layers table formats and query engines on top so analytics can run directly against t…
RAID 5 vs RAID 10: capacity vs performance
RAID 5 maximises usable capacity with single parity; RAID 10 maximises write performance and rebuild speed with mirrors. Compare them on your drives i…
Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray vs NetApp AFF 2026: UK all-flash storage buyer's guide
Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, and NetApp AFF dominate UK enterprise all-flash storage RFPs. All three deliver end-to-end NVMe, mature data…
RAID 5 vs RAID 6: which should you use in 2026?
RAID 5 and RAID 6 both use distributed parity, but RAID 6 adds a second parity block — and on modern high-capacity drives that difference is decisive.…
RAID 0 vs RAID 1: speed vs safety
RAID 0 and RAID 1 are opposites: RAID 0 is all speed and capacity with zero safety, RAID 1 is a safe mirror at half the capacity. Size both in the RAI…
HPE Apollo as a Ceph and scale-out SDS node: a hardware selection guide (UK 2026)
Ceph and other scale-out software-defined storage platforms turn ordinary servers into a single, resilient pool, but the cluster is only ever as good …
RAID is not a backup: what RAID does and doesn't protect
RAID keeps your data online through a drive failure — but it will happily mirror a deletion, a corruption or a ransomware encryption to every disk ins…
HPC scratch storage: designing a fast parallel tier for compute clusters (UK 2026)
An HPC cluster is only as fast as the storage that feeds it, and the storage that feeds it is not the same storage that keeps it. Scratch is the fast,…
RAID reliability: AFR, MTBF, MTTDL & URE explained
How likely is a RAID array to actually lose data? Four numbers decide it — AFR, MTBF, URE and rebuild time — combined into MTTDL. Here's what each mea…
ZFS vdevs, ashift & recordsize explained
Three ZFS settings make or break a pool's capacity and performance: how you lay out vdevs, ashift (sector size) and recordsize. Get them wrong and you…
RAID rebuild & ZFS resilver explained (times & risk)
A rebuild (or ZFS resilver) is when the array reconstructs a failed drive — and it's the riskiest moment in an array's life. Here's how long it takes,…
RAID write penalty explained (and IOPS impact)
The RAID write penalty is the hidden tax that makes parity RAID slow for writes: each host write costs several back-end disk operations. Here's the ma…
CCTV and VMS surveillance storage: sizing servers for continuous-write video retention (UK 2026)
Surveillance storage breaks the rules other storage lives by. A video management system never stops writing: every camera streams continuously, all da…
What is ZFS RAIDZ? A beginner's guide (2026)
RAIDZ is ZFS's software parity — like RAID 5/6 but with checksums, self-healing and no write hole. Here's what makes it different, then size a pool in…
Nested RAID explained: RAID 10, 50 and 60
Nested RAID stripes data across several smaller arrays to combine their strengths — RAID 10, 50 and 60 are the common ones. Size each in the RAID calc…
What is a hot spare in RAID? (2026 guide)
A hot spare is a standby drive that automatically takes over when a member fails, so the rebuild starts immediately instead of waiting for a human. Si…
How RAID parity works (RAID 5 & 6 explained)
Parity is the clever maths that lets RAID 5 and RAID 6 rebuild a failed drive without keeping a whole second copy. Here's how it works — then see the …
What is RAID? A plain-English guide (2026)
RAID combines several disks into one array so they go faster, survive a drive failure, or both. Here is what it means in plain English — then size any…
Storage servers for media and entertainment: spec'ing for 4K and 8K video editing (UK 2026)
Post-production storage is a bandwidth problem wearing a capacity problem's clothing. A 4K or 8K edit suite does not just need somewhere to keep enorm…
vSAN ready nodes in 2026: certified hardware, disk groups and sizing after Broadcom (UK)
A vSAN cluster is only as supportable as the hardware underneath it, and vSAN is unusually fussy about that hardware. Buy a server that merely looks a…
HDD vs QLC vs TLC: choosing and tiering storage media in 2026 (UK)
Storage media is not a single choice any more, it is a portfolio. Spinning disk, QLC flash and TLC flash each occupy a different point on the cost, sp…
Add a JBOD or buy another server? A decision framework for storage growth (UK 2026)
You are out of disk. The instinct is to buy another server, but that is often the expensive answer to the wrong question. If the existing host still h…
JBOF and NVMe flash enclosures: when all-flash disaggregation makes sense (UK 2026)
A JBOF, a just-a-bunch-of-flash enclosure, is the all-NVMe answer to a question that storage architects have asked for years: why should fast drives b…
NVMe-oF in the data centre: disaggregating flash from compute (UK 2026)
For years the fastest storage in a server lived inside that server, bolted to its PCIe bus, stranded the moment the box was busy or idle. NVMe over Fa…
Scale-out vs scale-up storage: choosing an architecture before you buy hardware (UK 2026)
Before you compare arrays or price drives, there is a more fundamental fork in the road: do you grow storage by making one system bigger, or by adding…