We’ve put together a few helpful tips to take on your buying journey to ensure your chosen hardware is fit for purpose today – and tomorrow.

Find fit-for-purpose hardware

So, how can you identify the hardware that will best suit your business? Let’s start with two simple things:

  1. Understand your requirements:
    Take an honest look at what isn’t working for you, and what your server will need to support your current and future workloads. Pick a server that will grow with you.
  2. Outline a budget
    Once you know what you need, you’ll find it easier to manage costs by only investing in the technology your business will use.

Get the best performance and capability

After assessing your business requirements and outlining a budget, you’ll need to consider the technology and capabilities that’ll make your server tick.

To help build your ideal server platform, be sure to follow this checklist:

1. Assess the nuts and bolts:

  • Processors, speed and number of cores and sockets
  • Memory availability – remember, the more memory, the better your workloads will perform, but you’ll also want to consider memory speed, quality and fault-tolerant capabilities
  • Storage availability – questions to ask yourself:
    • What will your server be hosting? A relational database? A web application?
    • If you’re buying server hardware, does it have solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs)? What about the drive speeds, capacities, endurance?
    • Does it support external storage and storage area networks (SANs)?
  • Connectivity – consider the peripherals, storage, number and speed of ethernet connectors and type of USB ports. Also think about the availability of management interfaces and protocols.

2. Flexibility and ease of management

Be sure to consider if your server of choice:

  • Has robust and remote management capabilities
  • Includes an intuitive UI
  • Lets you hot swap components without needing to shut down

Find the server that best protects your business

Last, but no less important – consider what your server of choice will need to protect your business.

1. Reduce risk

  • Does the server include:
    • Hardware authentication?
    • An Integrated Trusted Platform Module?
    • Encryption control?
    • SBM?
    • Secure Boot?
  • How does the server ensure continued operation in the event of component failure:
    • Is there any failover for hard drives, power supplies and fans?
    • What about redundant cooling components?
    • Are there any backup embedded hypervisors?

Ready to invest in the ideal server? Or need support to answer the questions above? Either way, at Tritech I.T. we can help, contact us today.

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