Thoughts on Hardware selection

Thought I digress a bit on the how's and whys of server hardware selection.  There are lots of ideas on this but it should always come down to xxx requirements:

1. The hardware must be capable of supporting the solution both now and for the next 3-5 years.
2. Performance and cost (both capital and recurring/operational)must be balanced.
3. Reliability and cost must be balanced.
4. Risk and cost must be balanced.

Notice the theme here?  Note how cost figures into almost everything?  The one good thing is that cost is the easiest component to figure.  Performance is not too hard to divine these days either.  But reliability and risk are tougher.

Chosing just the best equipment can be an expensive undertaking, what with budget constraints.  So often, just good enough has to do.  And, surprisingly, there is a lot of good less expensive equipment out there that will do the job just fine.

For SANS:
There is no doubt that that EMC, NetAPP or HP SAN will get the job done, but do you really need that level of performance?  Perhaps a LeftHand solution or even a PROMISE SAN can fill the bill.  Maybe, you can acquire a backup unit with the initial purchase, that may make the need for a support contract unnecessary.  Is fiber really the right answer, or will iSCSI provide sufficient throughput? 

For Networking:
Do you really need smart switches everywhere or just at critical junctures?  What about network wiring when VOIP/POE is involved?  Home runs or put the POE equipement in the department closets?  Use one vendor or the most cost effective soluton?

For Servers:
Do we virtualize/cluster/replicate?  Do I use 3U 4 processor unit for 48 cores and a built in RAID array, or the 2U 4 node 2 processor unit (total 96 cores) with a single or mirrored array for each node and a SAN with MPIO?

How do you decide?

The next several postings will address these issues.  First up: Server selection.