September 24, 2002
(Computerworld)
IBM today introduced a line of blade servers so compact that 84 of the devices, built around Intel Xeon processors, can fit in a standard server rack.
Tom Bradicich, chief technology officer for IBM's xSeries servers, said the design of the new blades will serve as a road map for the design of future products that IBM and Intel Corp. plan to jointly develop under an agreement announced last week (see story).
Pricing for the new IBM eServer BladeCenter starts at $1,879, with the chassis designed to hold the blades priced at $4,988. Each chassis holds 14 blades -- each of them essentially a server on a card -- and a standard rack can hold six of the chassis.
Each server comes with up to 8GB of memory, Bradicich said, and two internal hard drives. Users can choose optional fiber switches and a Fibre Channel architecture for a faster I/O.
Bradicich said IBM would start shipping the new blades in November.
In a related development, Hewlett-Packard Co., which introduced its blade server line last year, said its blade shipments have now passed 1,800 units per month.
"The blade server market is taking off like a rocket, and it's only the most agile and innovative vendors that can take advantage of this opportunity," James Mouton, HP's vice president of enterprise servers, said in a statement.
Market research firm IDC in Framingham, Mass., said sales in the new blade server category would total only $120 million this year but will grow to $3.7 billion in 2006.