Building The Perfect Map Cache Server

Now that the Arcgis Server javascript and flex apis have really taken off, the demand for map caches is growing. We have a couple of machines that we use for developing Arcgis server based applications, and one big, dedicated production box.

So, when it comes time to build map cache, the question always arises...Where should we build it? On the production box? Should we throttle the processes? On the development boxes? Our development boxes are usually the older, hand me downs (from production) and are usually slower by today's standards.

So, we are always stuck. If we build cache on the prod box, we run the risk of slowing down production applications. If we build in our development boxes, it will take forever. We have gotten to the point where we are creating new caches 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

So, I sit here, wondering how to make the best of my hardware budget. I could go to dell, and drop 5k on a monster with 16gb of Ram and dual 3 ghtz quad core cpus. But do I need a machine like that? Those boxes are huge with all sorts of space for disk arrays, etc - and the price tag reflects that. This has me really thinking like the cloud computing infrastructure is fleshing out. Like how google specs out their servers for pure high density computing. All I need is pure CPU madness to crank out cache as fast as possible. Well, that and some Ram, which is so cheap these days. I have a nice SAN to put all the cache, so I should be set.

What would you do? Build your own cache server with the latest and greatest cpu? Invest in a blade system? Put it all in the Cloud?