Seeking Experiences with 100GB DB Servers

[E. Scott Menter, Manager, Information Resource Mgmt Group]

We need to support a bunch of databases that, combined, represent about 100 GB
of information (individual databases range from 0.1GB to 20.0GB).  Some
percentage of this data will be "interactive" (that is, will require high
speed query and update) while a larger percentage will be "historical" (in
this case, still requiring high speed query but able to tolerate slower
updates).

By the time this is rolled out, our shop will have about 1,000 Sun
workstations running applications that will be doing their best to pound
whatever system we put into place right into the ground 8^).

I'm looking for anybody with real-life experience with Unix systems supporting
this kind of configuration.  Besides performance issues, I'm *very* interested
in stories about service, backup/recovery, archiving, and interoperability.

No sales calls, please.

I promise to summarize responses back to this list.  Replies to me only,
please (especially as I don't regularly read this group).

Thanks in advance.

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E. Scott Menter, Vice President
Manager, Information Resource Management Group
Lehman Brothers Fixed Income Division
escott at shearson.com