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 capacity and rebuild trade-offs in the RAID calculator.…
Lenovo ThinkSystem SD and SE series: dense multi-node and edge servers (UK 2026)
Mainstream buyer guides focus on the 1U and 2U rack servers most organisations buy, but Lenovo's ThinkSystem range has two specialist families that solve very different problems: the SD series, which packs multiple serve…
Dell PowerEdge R670 buyer's guide: a single-socket 1U for edge and core roles (UK 2026)
The default server purchase is a dual-socket box, and for a great many workloads that default now costs more than it should. The Dell PowerEdge R670 is a single-socket 1U built on Xeon 6, and modern single sockets carry …
How many CPU cores does your server actually need? (UK 2026)
More cores is the default instinct when speccing a server, and it is frequently wrong. Core count is one variable - and on its own it tells you very little about whether a server will be fast for your workload, or whethe…
What is a DPU or SmartNIC? Offloading explained for UK server buyers
DPU and SmartNIC appear on more server quotes every year, often without much explanation of what they do or whether you need one. At heart the idea is simple: take work the main CPU used to do for the network, storage an…
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 level in the RAID calculator.…
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 enormous files, it needs to stream many of them, at once, to multiple edito…
DORA Article 30: what UK financial services firms need in their ICT third-party contracts
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) came into force across the EU in January 2025. UK-headquartered firms with EU subsidiaries, EU-licensed entities or EU client-facing services are in scope — and the UK regula…
HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen11 buyer's guide: four-socket 2U for in-memory and consolidation (UK 2026)
There is a specific moment when scaling out stops making sense: when one workload, or one dense consolidation target, would rather live on a single large host than be spread across a cluster. The ProLiant DL560 Gen11 is …
Lenovo ThinkSystem ST650 tower buyer's guide: datacentre-grade power for the office (UK 2026)
Not every organisation has a rack, but plenty still need serious server capability. The ThinkSystem ST650 is Lenovo's senior tower: a dual-socket, expandable server that delivers rack-class compute, memory and storage in…
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