Storage server price analysis July 2004
One requirement for the project is a large amount of storage for media (images, video, audio), database backups and server logs. This page compares the cost efficiency of several systems from Silicon Mechanics.
All priced with dual Xeon 2.4GHz CPUs and a gigabyte of RAM. SATA 200GB drives unless specified.
| Server/Drives | drv/ctrlr | 6x200 | $/drv | 8x200 | $/drv | 12x200 | $/drv | 16x200 | $/drv | 24x200 | $/drv |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2U SM-212RX 12 bays | 12 | 4904 | 817 | 5245 | 857 | 5954 | 496 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 3U SM-316RX 16 bays | 8 | 4825 | 804 | 5175 | 647 | 6424 | 535 | 7124 | 445 | n/a | n/a |
| 4U SM-416RX 16 PATA | 8 | 4627 | 771 | 4945 | 618 | 5581 | 465 | 6217 | 518 | n/a | n/a |
| 5U SM-524RX 24 bays | 12 | 6483 | 1081 | 6833 | 854 | 7533 | 627 | 9027 | 564 | 10427 | 435 |
200GB SATA hard drives can be added to our normal web servers at $169 per drive. Comparing that to the prices above it's clear why we're investigating network file systems which might allow combining space on multiple web servers, each having one to three 200GB hard drives.