actually guys.. I had orginally been looking at Sun hardware.
I was originally looking at buying some of the SunFire V120's and V210's... or possibly V240.
Although I am now looking at Dell and HP. If I were to run a Dell or HP server, I'd run a BSD variant.. probably FreeBSD b/c I'm most familiar with it.
However I was also looking at some of the IBM p-series AIX machines... but I don't know that AIX is best for my application.
The problem with Dell and HP is that I won't get that nice hardware/software relationship that I'd get with Sun.
The one company I have yet to really even look at is SGI. I know that some companies run SGI servers with their IRIX. Again though I know very little about them.
Another option I suppose is to go Sun with x86, although I hear that if I even were to consider this, I should wait until Solaris 10 is standard as apparently 9 on x86 is slow.
I dunno. I totally understand both points of view and to be honest they have basically been the points of view of the two arguing voices in my head (not literally.. I'm not schitzo
).
The entry level Sun hardware is decently priced and I actually am still awaiting a few bids from my local Sun authorized reseller.
On the other hand, I could still get more for my money with x86 Del, HP, IBM, etc.
The one thing that really bothers me is that I can't really tell what's equivalent between Sparc and x86. For example the V210... if I were to go dual CPU with it... I'd love to know what it stacks up to compared to x86. I just can't tell. While the entry level Sun servers are reasonably priced, what they stack up to compared to x86 does come into question.
It's a tough situation and decision... hence why I posted here