SMB Servers Limited

16/12/2024

We have just updated our website bringing better controls and customer features for viewing and maintaining past orders, AfterPay purchasing options, and a cleaner, more user friendly layout.

Check it out!

JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser.

11/02/2024

Just an interesting article that popped up today, and we aren't in the slightest bit shocked. A sensible approach is to use every tool available, and the Cloud is but one tool in your arsenal.

Hybrid solutions are the best solutions, the Cloud is either VERY cheap (low access storage like Google Coldline for backups) or VERY expensive (hot access or high availability at any cost), everything in between should be kept on-prem where it's cost effective, but too many companies are doing full cloud migrations, dumping everything onsite and regretting it later.

Cloud is a good fit for modern applications, but most enterprise workloads aren’t exactly modern. Security problems and unmet expectations are sending companies packing.

14/11/2023

Its been a while, but a new server article is up, covering the basics of buying and using a domain name (like smbservers.co.nz).

I've got my own streaming service working at home, which is very cool, and was going to write an article on how to make your own, but realised many people don't know how to hook up a domain in the first place, or even where to start learning about how to do that.

Keep an eye out for future articles that cover cool services you can host at home like web, streaming, files, chat and others.

This is a basic primer on Domain Names such as “smbservers.co.nz” and how to use them over the internet. AKA using your domain for email ([email protected]) or forwarding them to your website. Not to be Read more…

21/09/2023

Cloud Services are an amazing tool in a hybrid environment to cost effectively offer services that are difficult to replicate at smaller scales, but you shouldn't have everything up there.

The biggest expenses in Cloud are for hot data such as realtime storage, egress and processing. For customer facing services the Cloud is a great albeit expensive solution to maintain uptime, but for anything that doesn't need realtime responses the Cloud is just the place to ramp up cost for no return.

At SMB Servers we use some Cloud services ourselves but keep our bulk workers physical and on-prem which not only saves a lot but allows us to have handy mountains of extra cores, memory and storage for occasional bursty needs.

This was a great read that confirms a lot of our findings about full Cloud moves.

Getting our applications out of the cloud provided the main celebration for our exit, but seeing the actual spend tumble is the prize. See, the only way to get pricing in the cloud down from obscene to merely offensive is through reserved instances. This is where you sign up for a year or more in ad...

23/07/2023

Out of Band Management, you don't need it, but you should want it.

Probably better known as iDRAC, ILO or IMM, out of band management isn't something you need, but should be a feature you want if you value your time.

11/07/2023

If you've heard of virtualisation but never tried it, it's the next step in getting the most out of hardware.

If you're relatively new to servers and/or coming from a home built server you may have heard the term virtualisation before but never had a need or the core count to test it out.

02/07/2023

Short primer on the common SAS cables and connectors you'll see in enterprise servers.

Short primer on the common SAS connectors used in server environments and what to expect.

01/07/2023

Have a browse of our first primer around server storage for people looking into enterprise hardware for the first time.

We're going to try to make this a series dealing with different aspects, and in the future write posts around
- different types of SAS cabling and expanders
- tests across brands and models for things like whether their RAID cards natively have HBA modes and how to activate them
- out of band management (like HP ILO)
- whether Linux is right for you
- virtualisation

And anything else we can think of. The blog section for the website will be activated soon for easy access.

This is just a basic primer on server storage intended to get you up to speed on what technologies exist, how and when they’re seen in servers, and for you to make not only an Read more…

04/10/2022

When people think of servers they usually think of just rack mount machines, but we actually sell a good number of tower machines too. Towers are great for those who don't have a server rack setup, or those who do, but where sound is a factor. Generally speaking, the larger the fans, the slower they can spin to move the same volume of air, and the quieter they'll be.

Check out one of our recent builds. A Lenovo X3500, packed with 2 of our most core dense E5-2683v4 CPUs for the generation.

30/09/2022

With our focus on some of the highest performing servers we often get to enjoy putting beasts like these two Dell R730s together. Each packed with 512GB of DDR4 ECC RAM and dual E5-2683v4 CPUs, there's nothing else around that can beat performance like this at a price point even close to ours! Flick us a message if you've got a build we can help with.