IT Hardware Planning Tools

Free calculators for the numbers that decide what to buy. Each one shows its formula with your inputs, says which values are assumptions, and links to the official sources it relies on.

  • RAID Calculator

    Usable capacity, drives needed and fault tolerance for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60, in TB and TiB.

    Example: 200TB usable from 24TB drives in RAID 6 takes 11 drives and survives any two drive failures.

    You need: Drive size, RAID level, and either the drive count or the capacity you need.

    See also: RAID 6 RAID 10 How many drives can fail

  • CCTV Storage, PoE and UPS Planner

    Recording storage from camera bitrates and retention, NVR drives and RAID, the PoE switch budget and the UPS load for a camera system.

    Example: 8 cameras at 4 Mbps recording for 30 days write 10.37TB of footage.

    You need: Camera count and bitrate, hours recorded, days to keep; optionally NVR bays, PoE classes and equipment watts.

  • UPS Battery Backup Calculator

    The UPS watt rating your equipment needs with headroom, and the most runtime a battery can give.

    Example: 620 W of equipment needs a UPS rated at least 775 W at 80% loading.

    You need: The watts each device draws; optionally the UPS watt rating and battery energy.

  • HPE Server Memory Configurator

    Checks a DIMM plan for HPE ProLiant DL360 and DL380 Gen10 or Gen11 against HPE’s population rules: slots to fill, memory speed and the most memory each processor takes.

    Example: 16 × 64 GB DDR5 per processor in a DL380 Gen11 with Gold 6448Y gives 2 TB at 4400 MT/s; 10 per processor is not supported.

    You need: Server model, processor model and count, and the HPE memory kit.

How these tools work

  • Every result shows the formula with your own numbers, so you can check it.
  • Values that are assumptions (bitrate starting points, efficiencies, headroom) are labelled and editable.
  • Capacity is shown in decimal TB, as drives are sold, and binary TiB, as most systems display it.
  • Runtime and storage figures are planning estimates; the tools say which datasheet figure confirms each one.
  • Technical constants and compatibility rules come from cited sources, such as IEEE PoE class power, published UPS runtimes and HPE memory population rules.

Updated 2026-10-23.

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