Hardware Recommendations for 50/60 user system

Our company is currently considering an expansion that would go beyond the limits of our current hardware. What is a good mid-range Unix hardware platform for business database applications? We currently are using Informix ESQL/C (without the On-Line database engine) on a 33 MHz '486-based Altos system (a series 5000). Response time is acceptable with approximately 30 users. We're looking to expand to approximately 70 users with roughly triple the number of transactions (although, of course, we want room to expand further). Our database is currently about 1 GB, but would probably grow to about 3. I'm thinking that the On-Line engine would definitely be a Good Thing (tm) (especially since it would let us do continuous backups), but I doubt that that alone would give us enough extra capacity to push our poor little 486 that far. What is a good kind of platform for this sort of load? I'm thinking that it will probably be some kind of HP or Sun RISC-based machine, but I'm not all that familiar with what's out there. I suppose that the key performance metric would be the I/O subsystem (and enough RAM for effective caching)... Is there any point to getting a box that can support multiple processors? If anyone would care to recommend a good place to buy such a system (one that provides service contracts, of course) in the LA area, I'd love to hear about that, too. advTHANKSance, Bill -- Bill Foote | Oh, and I suppose *you'd* prefer a little bill@pds.com | animated clown who would juggle over to the uunet!promdist!bill | little file cabinet and then wink at you and PDS Corp, Los Angeles, CA USA | point to the right drawer -- Crow T. Robot