If you already own the servers and can do without them, then that'll be a fast option for sure. That said, that's quite a bit to insure on the shipping (that's a quarter to half of a million $ of discs alone?). Hate to think of the damage if one of those servers were dropped. Plus you're shipping twice, so that's double the cost.

You can probably do via tape for circa $50k. Probably a lot less if you buy in bulk. Also depends on the kind of compression you can get on that 8pb.

If you can handle tape (500-1,000 tapes is a lot to do manually), I'd consider shipping the tape. Then try selling the tape at the destination (surely there is a decent market in SJC).