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 …
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-b…
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 hardw…
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, …
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 you…
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, wr…
How to pick a UK MSSP: 12 procurement questions
Most UK mid-market organisations trying to pick an MSSP — a Managed Security Services Provider for SOC + MDR + incident response — struggle to compare apples-to-apples. Vendor decks all promise "24/7 …
DDR6 and MRDIMM: the server memory roadmap UK buyers should plan around
Memory bandwidth, not core count, is the quiet limiter on a growing share of server workloads - and the roadmap to fix it is now visible. DDR5 is mature, MRDIMM is shipping on the latest platforms as …
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 means and how RAID level changes the odds. See the UR…
UK MAT IT procurement through DfE frameworks
UK Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) procure IT through specific frameworks — CCS, NEUPC, NWUPC, ESPO, KCS — plus direct purchase routes. Each has trade-offs on price, supplier breadth, and procurement effo…
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