Dell gets into Blade game
ENT News | at | by Mike
Dell Computer Corp. this week delivered on an earlier promise to begin shipping blade servers. It is immediately offering a 3U enclosure that packs as many as 12 processors. The Dell 1655MC starts at $3,298 for an enclosure and one server blade. The enclosure can fit up to six server blades, which share common power supplies, cooling fans, management cards and network switches.
Randy Groves, vice president of Dell's Enterprise Systems Group, says the "design will address issues our data center customers face, reducing cables by up to 80 percent and rack space by nearly 50 percent." Dell officials also contend the common components that the blades share throughout the enclosure saves nearly 30 percent in costs. Dell offers the new servers with Pentium III processors and Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Server.