Re: mid 2007 "best bang for the buck" hardware opinions

On 8/8/07, justin <justin(at)dslr(dot)net> wrote:
> I saw an interesting topic in the archives on best bang for the buck for
> $20k.. about a year old now.
>
> So whats the thoughts on a current combined rack/disks/cpu combo around
> the $10k-$15k point, currently?
>
> I can configure up a Dell poweredge 2900 for $9k, but am wondering if
> I'm missing out on something better.
> ( 9k spent with mr dell that gets you 2x quad core xeon X535s, so thats
> 8 cores total, with 24gb of memory
> and 8x 146gb 15k serial attached scsi connected, raid10, attached to a
> perc 5/i with redundant power supplies,
> all in what looks like a 3u chassis). But the system is pretty maxxed
> out like that, no room for future expansion.
>
> better options? or a better balance for a pure db box that is mostly
> smaller reads and large indexes?

That's not much kit for $20k.

I went to www.aberdeeninc.com and speced out a box with 24 750G
barracudas, battery backed cache RAID and dual Quad core 2.66GHz
xeons, and 16 Gigs of ram for $15k. Another 16gigs of ram would
probably put it around 18k or so, but they didn't have the config
option enabled there.

I consider Dells to be mediocre hardware with mediocre support.

There are lots of medium sized integration shops out there that make
better servers with lots more storage for a lot less.