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