Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Discuss this article Flame the author     In this article Introduction Adjustments Many Choices, Grasshopper Executive Summary Convinced? The Utility Data Center Epoll Results

You can call it server consolidation or utility data center. It doesn't matter if you plan to use blades, racks of 1U servers or virtualization software. The bottom line is that many data centers are weighed down with a bloated TCO, and we're not going to take it anymore.

Still, making the business case for consolidation can be tricky--departmental server politics alone can blow a nascent project out of the water--and there's a raft of practical hurdles that need to be confronted for such an endeavor to succeed. Server-consolidation projects are complex, with whole books devoted to the subject, but this article will familiarize you and your organization with some of the common benefits and hang-ups that come with the territory.

In "Pitching Blades", contributing editor James E. Drews rounds up a smorgasbord of blade servers from Dell, HP and RLX. These blade offerings run from sub-$2,000 systems to a $32,923 device with bells and whistles out the wazoo. But all offer reductions in server space, cables and software licenses, and deliver tantalizing flexibility and ease of management.