Hi everybody!

Right now i am a little bit confused regarding the performance problems using block IO.
Were planning to implement DSS as an iscsi solution for our ESX Servers, including replication to an secondary iscsi DSS.
We are running 13 ESX servers hosting approx. 100 VMs (incl. 40 SAP R3 Systems), so we really need performance :-)

For our primary DSS storage (64 bit mode) we want to use: (same server for secondary DSS with less ram and cpu)
2x Intel QuadCore 2,3GHz
32GB Ram
Areca 1280 with 2GB Cache
24x 1TB Seagate SATA (22 in raid6, 2 hot spare)
QLogic QLA4052C or QLE4062C
Intel QuadPort GB Ethernet Adaptor

So my questions are:
- regarding performance: is it better to use 8 cpus with 2,3GHz (QuadCore) or 4 cpus with 3GHz (Dualcore)
- is DSS able to use 32GB Ram for caching in block IO mode?
- if not, can file IO use that amound of ram for cache and is file IO suitable for large ESX files (>100GB), especially in context of replication?

Thanks in advance for any information..

Kind regards,
Lutz