Cloud & Infrastructure
Server & Storage Solutions in the UAE
OptiFi supplies, configures and supports servers, storage and backup for UAE businesses. The on-premise versus cloud question is answered on your own five-year numbers — including the power, cooling and space costs that most comparisons omit — and we are content when it points away from a hardware sale.
On-premise or cloud, decided on your numbers
This is asked as a philosophical question and answered properly only as an arithmetic one. Hardware is capital, replaced every four or five years, and it needs power, cooling, space and someone to maintain it. Cloud is operating expenditure that continues indefinitely and scales with use.
In the UAE the physical side carries real weight. Cooling runs year-round, a server room without proper air handling shortens equipment life measurably, and office space is expensive enough that a rack has a rent cost most calculations omit.
There is also a middle answer that suits many businesses: a modest on-premise server for the workloads that benefit from being local, with backup and disaster recovery in the cloud. We build the comparison on your actual figures and are content when it points away from a hardware sale.
Total cost over five years
Hardware, power, cooling, space, maintenance and replacement against the cloud equivalent.
Workload placement
What genuinely benefits from being local, which is usually less than expected.
Hybrid options
Local compute with cloud backup and recovery, often the practical answer.
Exit position
What either choice costs to reverse in three years.
Sizing honestly
Servers are routinely oversold. A specification chosen defensively — because nobody is criticised for buying too much — means paying for capacity that sits idle for its whole life while the money could have gone to a proper backup arrangement.
Undersizing is worse and rarer. The fix is measurement: what the current systems actually consume, what growth is realistic rather than aspirational, and headroom sized to that. We quote what the workload needs and explain what we left out.
Measured baseline
What the current systems actually consume across a normal month, not a specification chosen defensively.
Realistic growth
Headroom sized to plausible growth rather than to the best case in the business plan.
What we left out
The components we did not quote and why, so a cheaper proposal can be compared fairly.
Upgrade path
What can be added later without replacing the chassis, which is usually cheaper than buying it now.
Backup, and the restore you have not tried
Most businesses that suffer data loss had backups. What they did not have was a restore anyone had performed — so the job that had been failing quietly for eight months, or the database excluded during a change nobody documented, was discovered at the only moment it mattered.
We follow the ordinary discipline: multiple copies, on more than one type of media, with at least one off-site and one that ransomware cannot reach. Then we restore from them on a schedule and give you the evidence.
For a UAE business the off-site copy raises the residency question again, and it should be answered deliberately — a backup stored in a jurisdiction your contracts do not permit is a compliance problem wearing a technical costume.
Multiple copies
More than one, on more than one medium, with one off-site.
Immutable copies
At least one that ransomware cannot encrypt or delete.
Tested restores
Performed on a schedule, with the evidence handed to you.
Retention
Matched to your record-keeping obligations rather than to the default setting.
Warranty and support, locally
Hardware is only as good as the response when it fails. We supply Dell and HP with warranty terms stated plainly — next business day or four hours, on-site or return to base — because those differ enormously in cost and in consequence.
Parts availability in the region is worth asking about specifically. An international warranty that requires a part to ship from another continent is technically valid and practically useless when a production server is down, and the time to establish that is at purchase.
Response terms in writing
Next business day or four hours, on-site or return to base — stated plainly, because they differ enormously in consequence.
Regional parts
Whether spares are held in the region, asked at purchase rather than discovered when a production server is down.
Coverage period
Three years or five, with the cost of extending established before the first term expires.
Who logs the call
Us or you, agreed in advance, so nobody is reading a warranty document during an outage.
What’s included
- Capacity and workload assessment
- Server and storage sizing with growth headroom
- Virtualisation design and deployment
- Resilient storage with RAID and snapshots
- Backup integration and restore testing
- UPS, cooling and physical security review
Platforms we support
How we deliver
- 01
Discover
We map your current setup, constraints and priorities before proposing anything.
- 02
Architect
A written design with fixed deliverables, so scope is agreed before work starts.
- 03
Implement
Phased rollout with rollback points — production is never left in an unknown state.
- 04
Support
A named engineer, agreed response times and a handover your team can actually run.
Common questions
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