I’m sure that $10k/terabyte quote was complete overkill for what we needed- but that’s what the stove piped storage org was offering, and it killed the project we were working on.
I wasn't really sure what they pitched us technically, but your pitch sounds reasonable. It was also complete overkill- we were hosting
read only static images (map tiles). Azure and AWS were less than $300/TB/Year at the time, and their triple replication was more than what we needed availability wise.
Because the storage group refused to sign off on a cheaper solution with lower specs (I don't know why) and acquisitions in the government is a mess so going outside would have tied up one of our primary constraints (the tech lead) more than it was worth.
The overall system ended up with worse capabilities than it should have had, but it did ship.
If 1-2TB drives were handily $1k in 2010 (2005 $1K hot you 128GB 15KRPM)
and your array set is at least R10,
already raw storage is approaching half of ten thousand dollars.
And this ignores controllers, cabling and chassis.
And this is before we look at our storage software licenses.
Is backup, point in time SLA, replication and availability in this budget?