[rant]
Come on, a single core AMD 2003 Oracle 10g server with SATA2 HD can handle a bigger load of DB connections (and small read/writes) per second than an i7 2008 R2 Oracle 10g server with SATA3 HD. For a SOAP test generating/storing 5000 small XML messages per sec (multi-threaded) the 2008 R2 file system gave up after 2 hours. Litteraly severing the link between filesystem and hard disk. The server was telling me that it lost the hard disk, destroying a 300GByte database because Oracle was not able to write to some files for internal upkeep. A simple reboot was needed to gain access to the HD again and that drive checked out fine, so it was really the OS/filesystem that couldn´t keep up. CPU load on the i7 never went over 8%, so kudos to Intel
AMD has nothing to b ashamed about either with a average load around 19%.
The 7 year old 2003 server fullfilled its role as backup as a true soldier and lasted the whole week needed for the test. Without a hitch. So I am inclined to agree with the statement from 40Hz about MS making decent servers.
But for me the ¨sweet spot¨ lies with their 2003 Server.
[/rant]