My company bought a PowerEdge R220 for $1,500. Not a high-end server, but we just need it to do some limited file serving. It came with 2 SATA 7200 RPM drives with a software RAID (RAID 1). It copies files at 4 MB/second. If you buy the cheapest computer at your local computer store you'll get 70-80 MB/second. Multiple calls to tech support yielded the same advice: this is about as fast as this server will be able to copy flles.
I ran tests from this Server copying from one network drive to another network drive, taking the Dell Server drives out of the equation, and got about 70+ MB/second. So it's clearly the Dell drives.
I called Dell for a return, but because I was just a few days outside their return policy date, they wouldn't budge. I asked to speak to a manager. And he wouldn't budge. Alex, ID 168907, Supervisor of Returns Department, San Salvador, El Salvador.
So I strongly encourage you to buy a Dell Server under 1 of the following 2 circumstances:
1) You want a server that copies files at 1/20th speed of a cheap desktop computer.
2) You want to spend money with a company that would rather keep your $1,500 rather than do the right thing and accept the blame for a server that isn't remotely qualified to be used as a server.
The fact that this U.S.-based company puts customer care in El Salvador tells you plenty about how they value customer care vs. saving money.
Gordon