We are looking to phase-out our 2-AIX TSM servers and replace them with
Linux/Dell boxes (state contract - don't have a choice on the hardware).

They have asked me to come up with some prefered specs for the hardware.

So, I am looking to see what other folks have configured, on this kind of
platform.

Some questions.

Does dual-core CPU's help, much ? Does TSM on Linux utilize them ?   I
realize that TSM is mostly I/O bound, so having fast, internal disk is
more important.