If you want spankin' new, go price a shelf from
IBM, DEC/Compaq, or
Dell.
A quick look at Dell shows a SCSI shelf with 14 36G 10k drives, dual
600W
power supplies, rails, cables, etc. for ~6k. (ETA 8days.)
Listen, I don't care who the heck we go through - I'll leave that up to
Jimbo. I'd just like a system with dual fibre channel (or SCSI, as
this system is). Whatever gives us the greatest bang for the buck -
I'm not trying to turn this into a partisan battle. 14x36GB is 504GB.
If we think that would be fine for the reasonable future, then that's
not a bad deal (at $6565 with the current 10% discount). (although
later expansion would involve replacing, not adding, drives).
Dell PowerVault SCSI:
- 14x36GB = 504GB
- Dual SCSI U320 ports
- 3yr support contract
- ?? on cache
Total: $7294 ($6565 with discount that expires Jan 14th)
Total: $8001 for 7x73GB ($7201 with current discount) - this gives
future expansion space
Apple Xserve RAID:
- 7x250GB = 1750GB (7200 RPM ATA drives)
- 256MB cache (128MB for each RAID subsystem)
- Dual fibre channel ports
- 3yr Applecare support contract
Total: $8997
Total: $7497 for 4x250 = 1000GB
In any case, nobody has even decided that this a bad/good idea. Is it
wise to spend a lot of money on a fast disk system, or should be be
buying bigger beefier servers instead? As near as I can tell, the
prices are pretty equal across the two boxes - the Dell would probably
be a bit faster (lower latency), the Apple would have quite a bit more
space. Penguin Computing also has storage gear, although they don't
allow you to price it out on their website.
--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN