SaaS vs IaaS vs PaaS for UK workloads: choosing the right cloud model
The cloud "as-a-service" stack — SaaS, PaaS, IaaS — gets thrown around in UK IT discussions without much rigour. The right choice for each workload depends on operational responsibility, customisation needs, and where th…
How to get an enterprise server quote in the UK (and what to send us)
The fastest way to get an accurate enterprise server quote is to send the right information up front - and the slowest is a one-line email asking for a price on a server. A good quote depends on a handful of specifics ab…
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 RAID calculator (0 vs 1).…
Dell PowerEdge 16G to 17G: the generation jump UK buyers should understand (2026)
Dell PowerEdge generations move in steps, and the jump from 16G to 17G is a meaningful one: a new processor platform, faster memory and interconnect, updated cooling for denser and accelerated builds, and a newer managem…
HPE Synergy in 2026: is composable infrastructure still the right bet?
Composable infrastructure was pitched as the answer to rigid hardware: pools of compute, storage and fabric that software carves into whatever a workload needs, then reclaims. HPE Synergy is the most complete expression …
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 running mixed BIOS and BMC revisions, with out-of-band controllers reac…
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 as the nodes underneath it. Get the per-node hardware recipe wrong and…
Supermicro vs tier-1: when open standard servers beat Dell, HPE and Lenovo (UK 2026)
Most UK buyers reach for Dell, HPE or Lenovo by default, and for good reason: tier-1 vendors bundle support, lifecycle tooling and a known quantity. But there is a credible alternative in Supermicro, whose open standard …
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 instantly. RAID is availability, not backup. Size your array in the RAID …
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, ephemeral working tier where jobs read inputs, write intermediate sta…
Monthly IT briefing
New product launches, security alerts, vendor pricing changes — straight to your inbox once a month. No spam, no sales calls — you can unsubscribe with one click.
You can unsubscribe at any time. We never share email addresses with third parties.