I'm not answering your question directly, simply because I do not know
anything about it.

> The database will be fairly high volume of inserts, and less frequently,
> a few nasty queries for reporting ( a few times per day).

Unless you've already done so, taking a very close look at these few,
nasty queries may prove benefitial, there's no need to spend USD 5K on a
server if it all can be solved by tweaking a handful of select statements.

Set