For one of my for-university projects/products, I need to provide a
web server (which will have other daemons running as well such as
FTPD, SSHD, crond, etc.) which will serve the entire university (but
obviously not everyone at the same time). It is primarily a web and
file server via HTTP. I'm guessing that at peak, it will need to be
able to serve 1000 or more people downloading one or more files at a
time. This number could be wayyyy more or wayyy less, I've never done
anything with servers before.

For this purpose (non intensive php pages, posgresql, and intensive
file downloading server), how would I go about
building/buying/commissioning such a server?

- I don't mind assembling it myself if I have to.
- Cost (to the university) should be reasonable (nothing SUPER expensive)
- Should be able to serve simultaneously (pontially wayyyy)  more or
less people as described above.
- I'm thinking about 8TB worth of disks to start with in RAID 5
configuration (with parity disks and hot standby).
- What form factor should I go for? Full tower? Rackmount?
- How many ethernet ports and stuff?
- Will I need multiple servers to handle this volume? If so, how is
storage handled... leading to:
- Should I go for a storage area network (SAN)?
- How should backup be handled?

Answers? Tips? Comments/suggestions? There's a lot of other related
questions left out that I can't think of at the moment. Any help is
much appreciated.
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