[swalsh]

This is good marketing, but you know what would be even better marketing? Give me access to that server for a week. Let me setup a demo of my biggest customer, and then run my tasks. We've started (and are in progress) of investing thousands of dollars in moving to Azure. A server this large is not something I can buy, and experiment on easily. Hard numbers would convince my superiors that its a better solution, but they're not going to give me $10k to do the experiment.

[jacquesm]

That's how accidents are made. If you can't spend a small fraction of the budget for the solution to experimentally verify that it is in fact the optimum solution you may very well be leading the company down a road that will cost them significantly more. It's not up to the writer of the article to provide you with the tools to run your least-cost-analysis, that's up to you and your bosses! (After all, you're the beneficiaries.)

[vegabook]

10k? Those sticks of RAM alone will cost you something like 75k USD. Then you'll need the processors, arguably 4 of the top of the line 18-core XEONs at 5000 USD each. Then you'll need to put it all together with software and a (properly cooled) rack, not to mention the terminal(s) to access it, plus the personnel to put this baby together for you. This box could easily cost you 150 grand.

[pquerna]

Its not cost effective to use non E5-class Xeons, or go above 32GB DIMMs right now.... So you want a Dual-Processor setup, 16 DIMM slots, so 16x 32GB = 512GB w/ Dual Proc -- which you can do for about $10,000.

[vegabook]

That's a very nice piece of kits for 10k I have to say. Thanks for the "sweetspot" price/perf advice. Seems like excellent value. I've had my heart on a badass mac pro but these specs put it to shame.