Question : 4 powerhouse servers and sharepoint

You have four 64-bit, 24GB servers, with 16 cores each with which to implement SharePoint.  I know there are some variables here, buit how well do you think it can handle 1000 users.  How many users can it handle?  Intent is to ultimately replace 90% of file share functionality. which has 1TB of data.

I've intentionally left storage out because it can be expanded upon overtime.  History shows me the other things are much harder to get "approved" for expansion since the case to be made for expanding things like processors and memory tends to be more subjective (vs storage with either "IS" or "ISN'T" running out).  Assume RAID 10.

Thanks.

Answer : 4 powerhouse servers and sharepoint

Boy, this reeks of a garbage in=garbage out.  How many users?  How about how many transactions/sec?  

The biggest thing is your storage farm.   It isn't rocket science to know that 4 x 500GB SATA disks in a RAID10 isn't going to handle a fraction as many transactions as a few dozen 73GB 15k RPM SAS-2 disks.

RAID10, absolutely not.   Lots of RAID1 SAS or 4Gbit FC devices.

Also use a good SSD, and not the cheap NAND-based stuff ... you need the DRAM-based SSD that starts in the $10K range and goes up.   Use this for index files & scratch table space and such.