M3-2XLarge = $720 per month, 60% = $432
As a softlayer customer, I would be very surprised if you can get 2620/64GB/4TB disks at this price range, we also consider ourself not a small customer, but for the above config, I guess we need to pay $800+. (after discount)
http://www.100tb.com/server-deals/
We get access to Softlayer's vpn, their control panel..pretty much everything.
Years ago, at a different company, we used Softlayer proper...you can negotiate prices down by huge amounts..even so, they are overpriced when you take into account their reseller. (Note, I know the deal says 48GB, but we have 10 or so of those servers, and they all came with 64...ssshhhh).
We have several 48GB machines ordered directly from SL, even after so called discount from SL's sales, we need to pay around $5xx per month.
I pick the min. cost for EC2 as my point is to show you that SL isn't much cheaper by a lot (at least using the official channel)