Dell Takes Stab at Blade Server Market

Dell's PowerEdge 1655MC is a 3U rackmount enclosure with room for up to six dual-processor Pentium III server blades. Each blade has space for optional dual SCSI hard drives, and each chassis includes a management card for remote in-band and out-of-band management. The servers support the Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Red Hat Linux operating systems.

In addition, each 1655MC chassis includes Dell's new OpenManage Remote Install remote management software, said Darrell Ward, senior product manager for PowerEdge servers at Dell. Remote Install can capture the image of one blade and deploy it to multiple blades, and also allows local installation of software via the USB port, he said.

Dell's entry into the blade-server arena has given some channel players good reason to be more optimistic about the space, said Joel Gilberts, vice president of solution provider Manchester Technologies.

"Dell makes me think there's interest out there," Gilberts said. The Hauppauge, N.Y.-based company has already started selling blade servers and has seen a growing interest in those products. "Dell waits for critical mass and then jumps into a market," he said.

The 1655MC servers, available now, start at $3,298 for an enclosure with one blade server. Future versions of Dell's blade servers, or "modular" servers, include two-, four- and eight-way Xeon-based models.

Dell uses Unisys, Wang and other third-party providers for physical blade installations using basic racks and cable, and for operating-system integration, Ward said.

The company also has its own professional services organization to help customers with consulting issues related to server migration, large data centers and Ethernet services.