Compared to conventional servers, managing blades is a snap, says Edwards. He notes that having the servers near each other and managing them with HP’s Insight Manager software streamlines administration. "For example, where we have 48 servers, the management utilities allow you to manage six servers in one array," says Edwards. As a result, the system has cut in half the time required by system administration duties. Edwards says this capability will free up staff to handle other tasks.

Although he’s now a blade server believer, Edwards says that as recently as a year ago he wouldn’t have considered adopting the technology because of concerns that blade servers hadn’t yet proved their value. But time changed his mind. "We just felt like the technology had matured, and the advantages of using it for this particular application outweighed the disadvantages and risks."

Rising Sales

While sales are rising, blade server prices are heading in the opposite direction, thanks to strong competition between Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, RackSaver, RLX Technologies, Sun Microsystems and other blade server vendors. Dell’s blades, for example, start at about $1,499; enclosures begin at $1,799. Although ultracompact blade servers are significantly more expensive up front than their standalone counterparts (IBM’s Xeon-powered BladeCenter HS20 costs around $2,500 with software, versus $1,400 for an equivalent standalone IBM xSeries 225), enterprises can reap rewards in reduced floor space, lower power consumption, simplified network cabling, and easier maintenance and administration.

Beyond the technology and attractive prices, enterprises are being drawn toward blades because the products are establishing a favorable track record. "People have had enough experience, at least the early adopters have, that they can see examples of how blades can really work effectively to help cut costs," says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at technology analysis company Nucleus Research.

Upcoming "diskless blades"?units with no hard drive?promise to make blade servers even more popular. These devices increase the servers’ mean time between failures, since drives tend to be the major source of hardware disasters. The technology will also let enterprises fully leverage a storage infrastructure?including storage area networks?into the blade environment. "Diskless blades are configured to be able to boot from external storage and utilize all of their disk storage needs using external devices rather than accessing local drives," says Gartner’s Hewitt. "It will take some technical efforts to achieve this and have the blade servers run efficiently." Gartner predicts diskless blades will be available from all major server vendors by the end of 2008, although many blade server makers will offer the technology well before then.