Hardware Recommendations for LTSP

[Warren Togami]

I need to buy 10/100 ethernet switches, high capacity tape drives for the
Linux Terminal Servers that I will be putting into several schools.  Any
recommendations on these pieces of hardware?

For the switches I don't need any management features like disabling ports.
I'm aware that the generics will probably flake out at high capacity, but
thin client traffic should not go anywhere near those levels.

I've been looking at:
3Com 10/100 24port unmanaged about $600
SMC 10/100 24port unmanaged about $170

For the tape drives a colleague of mine recommended 4mm DAT.  A quick glance
at egghead.com showed these drives at $1,000+.  Anyone have any
recommendations regarding this?  I need massive amounts of backup capacity.

Warren Togami
warren at togami.com