Upgrade my Intel Xserve's

I have 2 Intel Xserves (late 2006). Current specs:
2 x 2GHx Dual Core Intel Zeon
2 x 1GB PC2-5300 FB-DIMM
80GB 7200RPM Hitachi.

I am looking to do upgrade following, in order of importance:
RAM
Internal storage
External storage
PCIe Cards
Processors


The ram is obviously next to nothing. For what I am doing I would prefer it be at LEAST in the 4-8GB range. I am super apprehensive I will buy the wrong kind so any pointers (or links to a good good deal?!?) anyone could offer would be much appreciated.

For the internal storage thing I am basically wondering what the largest drive(s) I can put into the 3 bays and have it function properly. Apple's listed capacity for this unit is 2.25TB (3x 750GB), but I put one of my 2TB drives and one of my 1TB drives in at the same time and it seemed to be completely fine read/write. Could I put 3x 2TB drives in (7200RPM)? or even better 3x 3TB 7200?

For external storage I am looking for something with a lot of expandability and FAST data transfer. Also I have a good rack so rackable is good. I have been looking at some 3u 16 bay SATA's that link up through SAS PCIe cards (current USB 'terra tower' to slow) but nothing has really seemed right so far, any recommendations (or again links to deals) would be greatly appreciated. Should I even be using SATA? I don't want to go back to IDE, and large SSD's are WAY to expensive but is there something else?

I would like to put a security camera PCIe Card with 8-16 channels in, but I haven't had any luck finding one (and I've been looking for months). Also I will most likely need to install a RAID card to support the extra storage capacity I need.

As for the processors I have seen a few forums talking about this, but I don't know anything about them so I wasn't sure if I could use the ones they were suggesting or not. Basically processors would be nice to upgrade, but are definitely not my priority right now.

Also just to clarify I would like inexpensive, but reliable stuff (reliability being paramount).

Thanks,
Jim

I've done some more research and OtherWorldComputing sells a huge range of hard drives for these xserves. As it turns out I can actually put 3x 4TB 7200rpm SATA 3.0 drives in the caddies.

Thanks for your response Will, but I don't think I'm ready to switch to PCs just yet haha.
Yea I have thought about buying something newer, but I really don't need the extra processing power if it comes at that much of a premium. As for the external storage "MrRackables" has some decent deals on ebay for SATA 16 bay miniSAS rack units (around $300 for complete unit and interface cards), but I am just wondering if that is the right way to go...

onecajun said:

THe Max on the caddies is 2tb, I have used Hatachi drives in my servers

Click to expand...

You were right, I had a friend bring a few large drives and we tested to see what would work and it turned out the 2TB was the max like you said. OWC has never failed me in the past so I'll attribute it to a single rep who didn't know what he was talking about. Either way thank you for setting me strait before I went and spent a lot of $$ on that