another thought that may be useful at some point - you mention that some servers you host will be dedicated (or something to that effect - tapping away on my PDA so it's tricky to check sometimes), don't discount virtualisation to run several 'dedicated' servers on one good piece of kit - at MS we saved a heap of cash doing just this and even got rid of a whole farm by consolidating this way. You can even performance balance between individual virtual servers on the same box to suit their demands, time of day, etc on the fly more or less!
May not suit your circumstances, but I thought it worth chipping in just in case it saves you some moolah :)
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Posted - 27 December 2007 : 18:28:18
I think this directly applies to original question.