Deciding Dell NAS Storage Server Specs

I have a few questions first:

• Can you share the Option A and B server specifications?
• What is driving the decision? (Budget, Rack Space, Redundancy, Expandability, Long Video Retention, etc)
• Without any specifications with what you are comparing, what is the amount of server difference between Option A and Option B?

Without those answered I can provide some general ideas to consider:

If your driving factor is budget, as it often is, generally fewer servers with higher specs and more drives will be less expensive than more servers (because of the chassis/processor cost and additional installation time required), but this is not always true depending on if you are comparing 1U single processor, single power supply servers to 3U dual processor, dual power supply servers (just as an example).

More servers can require more rack space (and battery backup power outlets if required), unless (again) you are comparing 1U servers versus 3U servers. More servers should also require more installation and management costs.

With the presumption you are going to be utilizing RAID 5 at least, if you have 5 large servers, you are only "wasting" 5 hard drives for that configuration, or if you have 10 smaller servers you could be "wasting" 10 hard drives for a cost difference of 5 drives.

Sean - Thanks for the analysis. I am trying to compare the following; both from a technical and commercial angle:

Option A - 2 servers of 2x4 core processors and 32 GB RAM with RAID 5

Option B - 4 servers of 1x8 core processors and 16 GB RAM with RAID 5

Is there any other spec that you need to do the comparison?

why don't you consider the option B with 32 GB Ram as well?