Cloud vs on-prem TCO 2026: the honest UK mid-market analysis
Cloud is not always cheaper than on-prem. This is now widely acknowledged — yet most UK mid-market organisations still under-model on-prem TCO + over-model cloud TCO when comparing. This is the honest…
PCIe 6.0 and CXL memory pooling: what UK infrastructure teams should plan for
For thirty years a server's memory has been welded to its CPU sockets: every host carries its own DRAM, most of it sits idle most of the time, and you cannot lend a spare gigabyte from one machine to …
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, why it's risky, and how to shrink both. Estimate …
How to buy refurbished enterprise hardware in the UK safely
Refurbished enterprise hardware — servers, storage, switches, firewalls — is a legitimate procurement option that most UK IT buyers under-consider. Typical savings are 50-75% vs new equivalent. Done w…
EOL and EOSL planning: when to refresh, extend or re-support your servers (UK 2026)
Every server reaches a point where the vendor stops selling it, then a later point where the vendor stops supporting it, and the gap between those two dates is where a lot of UK IT budgets are quietly…
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 maths — and see it in your IOPS in the RAID calculat…
How much server RAM do you need? Right-sizing memory in 2026 (UK)
Memory is the dimension a server most often runs out of first - and the one most often guessed at. How much RAM you need is a methodology question, not a number you can copy from someone else's build,…
NVIDIA H200 vs H100 vs B100 vs B200: UK AI GPU buyer's guide 2026
NVIDIA H100, H200, B100, B200, and GB200 NVL72 are the GPUs UK enterprise AI buyers shortlist in 2026. H100 + H200 (Hopper architecture) are mainstream + available; B100 / B200 (Blackwell) are the lat…
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 day, every day, and the server has to absorb that re…
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 the ZFS calculator.…
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