Blade Watch

Working out the cost of a blade will depend on a number of things, the manufacturer, your organizations agreement with them in terms of discounts etc, not to mention the blades chosen and their specification.

A blade round figures is several thousand dollars for a server blade with two processors and several gigabytes of ram.  An IBM enclosure holds 14 blades, the p-class HP enclosure holds 16 blades. The blades themselves therefore aren’t that expensive, it’s the power supplies, the network switches, and the enclosure itself that pushes up the total cost.

As a very rough estimate, approximately £50,000 gets you 16 half height blades, with the enclosure, the power supplies and the network switches etc. This cost though is dependent on the deal you have with your manufacturer and any rebates/special offers when you make your purchase.

The HP site has a good shopping site which allows you to add it all up, and I published their press release discussing how blades are cheaper than rackmounts, that details the blade costs in an example.

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