Where is a good place for server reviews.

As required by VT contracts I must get a Dell. I want to see models side by side that are good. I need 2 domain controllers for around 100 computers expadable to 250 within 2+ years. I also need one semibasic file server that also will do web sharing with surf to ip.

Any thoughts??

ram/hd/processor?
celeron ok???

Since you are going to be using this machine as a domain controller you are going to be limited to Windows for an OS. Because of this, and MS's lack of native AMD64 support (probably won't be available for another year or so) I cannot recommend the Opteron. You will get much better price/performance out of a dual/quad Intel Xeon setup. If this was *nix, I would recommend AMD64 based (specifically 2/4 way Opteron) if anyone is wondering.

How much money do you have to spend on these machines? I'd go with a few quad (4 way) Xeon machines. Couple them with a few GiB of ECC and SATA WD Raptor drives in RAID 5 and you are set.

-Weaver

Things to consider:
Are you going to be racking the servers?
Are you going to by a model that will allow you to maximize internal expansion or go with a JBOD?
My reccomendation is Compaq Proliant but you seem to be locked in by contract to go Dell. If this is the case then go with the 2600 tower ro 2650 rack. I noticed you plan on growing in the future. If so look at the controller card and go for the higher cache amount for around 128. Do you know what kind of IO your going to have?
On the Proc I would go with two get the 1mb models.
Are you goinng to run Server 2003? or just 2000? If you can set up load ballancing I would.
Either way I would use the SCSI hard drive 10k's
As far as servers are concerned SATA has not proven themselves as longterm reliable.

Also what are you doing for email? Are you going to run Exchange?

The web server is that static or active content?

We are getting a bad celeron.

We are getting it with scsi and sata raid. But the processor/cache is crap.