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PCSP News

Buying guides, comparisons, and expert tips on refurbished servers, workstations, and enterprise IT hardware from PC Server and Parts

OPNsense vs pfSense 2026: Licensing and Firewall Hardware

OPNsense vs pfSense 2026: Licensing and Firewall Hardware

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Oct 14th 2026

Most OPNsense vs pfSense comparisons argue about the web interface. The two decisions that cost money are elsewhere: what the license allows on hardware you bought yourself, and which network chip sits behind each port. Both firewalls run on FreeBSD, so a card FreeBSD drives ba … read more

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TrueNAS vs Unraid 2026: Building a NAS on a Used Server

TrueNAS vs Unraid 2026: Building a NAS on a Used Server

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Oct 13th 2026

Ask how to build a NAS on a used server and you get two answers, TrueNAS and Unraid, argued as if the choice were taste. It mostly isn’t. The two store data differently, cost differently and fail differently, and in October 2026 both have moved under the tutorials: TrueNAS SCA … read more
Hyper-V vs Proxmox vs ESXi: What Licensing Costs in 2026

Hyper-V vs Proxmox vs ESXi: What Licensing Costs in 2026

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Oct 5th 2026

Comparisons of Hyper-V, Proxmox and ESXi usually price the hypervisor. On a used two-socket server the hypervisor is the cheap part. The bill is set by what runs inside it, and by a number fixed the day you bought the box: how many physical cores it has. Microsoft counts cores … read more
iDRAC, iLO and IPMI Explained: Logins, Licenses, Firmware

iDRAC, iLO and IPMI Explained: Logins, Licenses, Firmware

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Sep 30th 2026

iDRAC, the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller, is the management computer Dell builds into every PowerEdge server: a separate chip with its own firmware and network address that lets you power the server on and off, read its sensors and update its firmware over the netwo … read more
Cisco UCS Explained: CIMC, UCS Manager EOL, M4 to M6 (2026)

Cisco UCS Explained: CIMC, UCS Manager EOL, M4 to M6 (2026)

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Sep 28th 2026

On September 15, 2026, Cisco put an end date on UCS Manager, the software at the center of its Unified Computing System since 2009. The end-of-life notice for release 6.0 stops sales on December 31, 2027 and support on December 31, 2030; the older 4.3 line ends s … read more
What to Run on Proxmox in 2026: Helper Scripts, LXC vs VM

What to Run on Proxmox in 2026: Helper Scripts, LXC vs VM

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Sep 25th 2026

Correction, October 2, 2026. Proxmox’s ZFS cache rule of thumb, 2 GiB plus 1 GiB per TiB, counts available storage, not raw disks, and neither it nor the installer’s default reserves memory: both are ceilings. The first version of this article applied the … read more
Best Used Server for Home Lab 2026: Noise, Watts, Real Prices

Best Used Server for Home Lab 2026: Noise, Watts, Real Prices

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Sep 2nd 2026

The 2026 home lab has settled into a recognizable stack. Proxmox is still the most-recommended base in this year's community starter guides, with TrueNAS 27 (correction, October 13, 2026: this line first said TrueNAS 26, the name iXsystems dropped on October 5; 27 is a release … read more
How to Buy a Used Server in 2026: Complete Guide | PCSP

How to Buy a Used Server in 2026: Complete Guide | PCSP

Posted by Konstantin Protasov, PCSP on Jun 23rd 2026

Buying a server in 2026 is a different decision than it was even two years ago. New enterprise hardware is caught in one of the sharpest component price runs in years — server RDIMM prices roughly doubled over the past year as the AI buildout pulled DRAM capacity toward h … read more
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