Dell Unveils Its First Blade Servers

The Dell 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, based here. Remote Install can capture the image of one blade and deploy it to multiple blades, and the application allows local installation of software via the USB port, he said.

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

For physical installations using basic racks and cable, as well as for operating system integration, Dell uses Unisys, Wang and other third-party providers, said Ward. The company also has its own professional services organization of Dell-badged employees to help clients with consulting issues related to server migration, large data centers and Ethernet services. Such services spring from the company's May 2002 acquisition of Plural, a New York-based integrator, said Ward.

"Dell has said for some time that it will look at opportunistically at expanding services where appropriate," Ward said. "The Plural acquisition fills Dell's model. We will look to more partners like EDS and may consider other acquisitions."