Owner: Infrastructure Engineering · Review Cycle: Annual
This page defines the standards for physical server procurement, rack design, firmware management, and lifecycle within enterprise data centres. All server purchases and deployments must conform to these standards unless a formal exception has been granted.
| Vendor | Model | Form Factor | Use Case | Generation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dell | PowerEdge R750 | 2U | General Purpose / Virtualisation | Current |
| Dell | PowerEdge R650xs | 1U | Edge / Remote Sites | Current |
| Dell | PowerEdge R7525 | 2U | GPU / AI Workloads | Current |
| HPE | ProLiant DL380 Gen11 | 2U | Alternate Standard | Current |
Servers reaching End of Service Life (EOSL) must be replaced within 12 months of vendor announcement. Exceptions require VP Infrastructure approval.
| Vendor | Platform | Chassis | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dell | PowerEdge MX | MX7000 | High-density virtualisation |
All servers must be configured with the following BIOS settings at deployment:
Firmware is managed through Dell OpenManage Enterprise (OME) or HPE iLO Amplifier. Updates follow a quarterly cadence:
┌──────────────────┐
│ Patch Panel │ U1-2 (1G copper)
│ Patch Panel │ U3-4 (10G fibre)
│ ToR Switch A │ U5 (primary)
│ ToR Switch B │ U6 (redundant)
├──────────────────┤
│ KVM over IP │ U7
│ PDU A (rear) │ —
│ PDU B (rear) │ —
├──────────────────┤
│ Server 1 │ U8-9
│ Server 2 │ U10-11
│ Server 3 │ U12-13
│ Server 4 │ U14-15
│ ... │
└──────────────────┘
| Port | Connection | Speed | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| NIC 1 Port 1 | ToR Switch A | 25GbE | Production traffic |
| NIC 1 Port 2 | ToR Switch B | 25GbE | Production traffic (bond) |
| NIC 2 Port 1 | ToR Switch A | 10GbE | vMotion / storage |
| NIC 2 Port 2 | ToR Switch B | 10GbE | vMotion / storage (bond) |
| iDRAC/iLO | OOB Switch | 1GbE | Out-of-band management |
| Phase | Action | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Procurement | Hardware ordered, CMDB pre-staged | Capacity forecast |
| Deployment | Rack, cable, firmware, OS baseline | Provisioning ticket |
| Active | Monitoring, patching, capacity review | Ongoing |
| Refresh | Hardware replaced | 5-year mark or EOSL |
| Decommission | Data wiped (NIST 800-88), asset disposed | End of life |
Data sanitisation must be certified using Blancco or physical destruction via an approved vendor with a certificate of destruction provided to the Security team.
All servers are monitored via Datadog with the Infrastructure Agent. Alerts are routed to PagerDuty based on tier:
| Metric | Warning | Critical |
|---|---|---|
| CPU Utilisation (sustained 5 min) | 80% | 95% |
| Memory Utilisation | 85% | 95% |
| Disk I/O latency | 20ms | 50ms |
| Hardware fault (PSU, fan, disk) | — | Immediate P1 |