Servers

Servers for business networks — file and application servers, virtualisation hosts and backup targets — in tower and rack form, from HPE, Dell and Lenovo.

Tower or rack

Tower servers such as the HPE ProLiant ML and Dell PowerEdge T ranges stand on the floor of an office or a comms room. They are quieter, they need no rack, and they are the sensible first server for a smaller site. Rack servers — the ProLiant DL line and equivalents — fit a standard 19-inch cabinet in 1U or 2U and are the right choice once you have a rack, need several machines, or want structured cabling and cooling.

Xeon or EPYC

Intel Xeon remains the safe default for broad software compatibility and is what most vendor support matrices assume. AMD EPYC generally gives more cores and more memory bandwidth per pound, which tells in virtualisation density and in workloads that scale across cores. Both are represented here; if you are licensing software per core, work the licence cost out before choosing, because it can outweigh the hardware difference entirely.

Specify the whole configuration, not just the box

A server is bought as a configuration. Drive bay count and form factor decide your storage ceiling. Memory is populated in channels, so the DIMM layout matters as much as the total. Redundant power supplies are the difference between a failed PSU being an inconvenience and being an outage. And the support level you buy at the point of order is usually cheaper than adding it later.

Tell us the workload and the growth you are planning for and we will specify against it rather than quoting a part number back.

Trade pricing and business accounts are available for UK organisations, and bulk orders are welcome — request a quote.