ok, when you get to the TB of storage part, things get cheaper running in house, but couple of notes: 1: the dell at $7k does not include power, and your 12 2T

ok, when you get to the TB of storage part, things get cheaper running in house, but couple of notes: 1: the dell at $7k does not include power, and your 12 2Tb drives gives you 20Tb usuable with RAID6 (loosing 2 drives). if you loose more than 2 disks, you are screwed... so, you need to back that up somewhere... 2: you need someone to manage that machine also... 3: ESXi, for what you would need here (8gb ram or so) is free, unless you want support.... i think in all fairness, that depending on the amount of storage you need or want, its swings and round-a-bouts... i like the idea, but i would also like the idea of having a box in house with a lot of storage (like the big dell) and only select some parts for off site backup... this is what i do... most of my stuff is stored locally (RAID 1, Thecus NAS, Drobo) and only important stuff (music and videos i bought, photos i took, etc) is backed up to the "cloud"...