Why London server + storage work has its own rules
London's data-centre cluster is the densest in Europe and the workloads running in it are some of the most latency-sensitive on the planet. Spec sheets that work in Reading or Manchester don't survive a Square Mile trading-floor benchmark — London infrastructure design starts from a different set of assumptions.
Sub-millisecond storage for City trading
Pure FlashArray //XL and HPE Alletra MP X with NVMe-oF over 100/400G fabric for the very low-latency profiles trading floors and market-data systems demand — designed against the actual workload, not a vendor brochure.
25 / 100 / 400 GbE fabric for City racks
Arista 7060X / 7050X, Cisco Nexus 9300 / 9500, NVIDIA Spectrum, Mellanox / NVIDIA InfiniBand NDR for AI clusters — fabric design that handles east-west traffic at City scale without micro-bursts hurting tail latency.
HCI for City regulated estates
Nutanix Cloud Platform (AHV or ESXi) and VMware vSAN ESA for FCA-regulated firms — pre-validated, supported, with per-node hardware refresh paths that align to the firm's change cycle.
AI / GPU clusters for Tech City + London research
NVIDIA DGX B200 / GB200 NVL72, Supermicro HGX H100 / H200, Dell PowerEdge XE9680 / XE9640 builds for Shoreditch fintechs, ML scale-ups and London university research IT (UCL, KCL, Imperial, LSE).
What Servnet builds in London
Server design + supply (Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro)
PowerEdge R260, R360, R660, R760, R960; ProLiant DL360, DL380, DL560, DL580 Gen11; ThinkSystem SR250, SR630, SR650, SR860, SR950 — sized against the application workload, costed in like-for-like comparison.
Storage — Pure, NetApp, HPE Alletra, Dell PowerStore
All-flash block, scale-out NAS, hybrid file/object, NVMe-oF, ransomware-immutable snapshots — designed for the workload mix the customer actually runs and sized against IOPS / GB / throughput / latency targets.
HCI — Nutanix, vSAN ESA, Azure Stack HCI
Nutanix AOS on AHV or ESXi for regulated estates, vSAN ESA for VMware-loyal customers, Azure Stack HCI / Azure Local for Microsoft-centric public sector. Sized per workload, hardened to vendor and customer standards.
AI / GPU infrastructure
NVIDIA DGX B200 / B300 / GB200, Supermicro HGX H100 SXM5 / H200 SXM5, Dell PowerEdge XE9680 / XE9640, plus PCIe builds with H100 / H200 / L40S / A100 — for Tech City and London research IT.
Data-centre racking + cabling in City DCs
Engineer attendance for racking, cabling, PDU work and front-end connectivity in Telehouse, Equinix, VIRTUS, Global Switch and Pulsant. We handle the DC paperwork, the structured cabling and the labelling.
Lifecycle support + warranty consolidation
Multi-vendor warranty consolidated into one Servnet support contract, EOSL / post-warranty cover when vendor TPS ends, scheduled firmware + microcode windows aligned to change board.
London infrastructure customers
- ▸Trading firms + investment banksSquare Mile and Canary Wharf trading firms — Pure //XL or Alletra MP X for trade store, Arista 7060X for fabric, dedicated time-sync infrastructure, MiFID II-compliant capture.
- ▸Asset managers + insurersEC2/EC3 / Canary Wharf asset managers — Nutanix or vSAN for the virtualised estate, NetApp ONTAP for unstructured file, ransomware-immutable backup against the platform.
- ▸Broadcasters + post-productionBBC, ITV and West End post-production — high-throughput SAN/NAS for Avid, DaVinci, Premiere workflows, plus dedicated colour-managed workstations and shared editorial storage.
- ▸Tech City fintechShoreditch Series B–D scale-ups — Nutanix Cloud Platform for pre-cloud production, GPU servers for the ML team, fabric design that can graduate to AWS or Azure on schedule.
- ▸NHS London ICBs + trustsLondon ICB-affiliated trusts — Nutanix or HPE SimpliVity HCI for the trust estate, DSP-Toolkit-aligned controls, clinical workstation hardware, integration with HSCN.
- ▸Higher education + researchUCL, KCL, Imperial, LSE, City — research compute clusters, GPU nodes for ML / scientific workloads, lab storage for genomics / imaging / chemistry data.
How a London server / storage project actually runs
Design workshop + sizing in week 1
Workload review with the application owners — IOPS, throughput, latency, capacity, growth rate — turned into a sized design (server qty, storage controller pair, fabric BoM) with a like-for-like comparison across 2–3 vendor options.
Procurement → delivery → DC racking
PO raised, factory build lead time tracked, delivery direct into the City DC of choice. Engineer attends for rack-in, cabling, power-up, baseline firmware and initial config. DC access paperwork held with Telehouse, Equinix, VIRTUS pre-arranged.
Configuration + handover
Cluster config, storage provisioning, fabric configuration, integration with customer DNS / NTP / monitoring / backup. Acceptance test signed off jointly; documentation pack handed over (configs, runbooks, contacts).
Support contract activates day one
From the moment the platform is in production, the Servnet support contract is live — 4-hour engineer + parts on M25 SLA, smart-hands available, named technical account contact for the customer's ops team.
London servers + storage — common questions
Can you rack into Telehouse / Equinix / VIRTUS?
Yes — we hold standing access at the major London DCs (Telehouse North/East/West, Equinix LD1–LD8, VIRTUS LONDON1–4, Global Switch, Pulsant) and our engineers know the DC-specific protocols, security routines and smart-hands processes. We handle the DC paperwork; customer signs the lease and we coordinate everything else.
What do you typically spec for a City trading floor storage refresh?
For most City trading customers we land on Pure FlashArray //XL or HPE Alletra MP X — NVMe end-to-end, sub-100µs latency profile, NVMe-oF over 100G or 400G to the compute layer, ransomware-immutable snapshots, replication to a second London DC for active/active. Sized against the actual trade-store IOPS profile, not a generic benchmark.
Do you do AI / GPU clusters for Tech City fintechs?
Yes — NVIDIA DGX B200 / B300 / GB200 NVL72 and Supermicro HGX H100 / H200 builds, plus PCIe builds with H100 / H200 / L40S / A100 for smaller footprints. Including the 400G InfiniBand fabric, the GPUDirect storage path and the power / cooling sanity check against the DC suite specification.
Can you do a Nutanix design for an FCA-regulated firm?
Yes — Nutanix on AHV is a frequent design choice for FCA-regulated City firms, particularly post-Broadcom. We size cluster against the workload, design replication / DR, document against the firm's Operational Resilience Important Business Services, and produce the audit-pack at handover.
Who supports the kit after install?
Servnet does — under a Servnet support contract that runs alongside the vendor warranty for in-warranty cover, and replaces vendor TPS at end-of-life. 4-hour engineer + parts on M25 SLA, smart-hands available, named technical account contact, scheduled firmware + microcode windows.
How do you price against bigger London integrators (Computacenter, Softcat, CDW)?
On hardware and licence we're typically 4–9% cheaper on like-for-like specifications. On services we're typically faster (smaller bid teams, fewer hand-offs), more technically specific in proposals, and won't pad the engineer-days line. Trade-off is we don't have the brand recognition or the volume-discount pull on the very largest deals (£1m+ multi-year managed services).
Other services we deliver in London
Sizing a London server, storage or HCI project?
Tell us the workload, the DC and the timeline. We'll come back with a sized design and a like-for-like comparison across 2–3 vendor options.
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