I've just gone through the process of selecting a server to act as a 
storage node.  Being a solaris shop here, we prefer sun hardware running 
solaris, but the existing sun servers (like the v490) didn't seem to have 
the i/o throughput to handle trunked gig-E and drive a couple of LTO3's. 
Started looking into IBM hardware, but Sun announced its T2000 servers. 
According to the literature, these things are quite a jump in i/o 
capability from the previous generation of hardware.

For my storage nodes, which I expect, at a minimum, to be able to drive a 
pair of LTO3 at 80MB/sec, I selected the 8 core server, with two dual port 
fibre channel HBA (both PCI-E, 4x), and a 10-GE ethernet (PCI-X 
133MHz/64bit).

The machines are ordered.  Any guesses how many LTO3 drives I can keep 
running at 80MB/sec once this thing is set up?

I'll keep you all posted.

Jim




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