"The first danger of blades is cost. Blade enclosures are
generally very expensive, even though blades themselves are often
less expensive than their rackmount counterparts. In a quick price
comparison of a large blade vendor's offerings, the enclosure was
approximately $5,000 and could hold a maximum of eight blade
servers.
"Each blade was roughly $500 less expensive than the matching
vendor's rackmount server of the same or similar specs. This means
that a fully populated blade enclosure, at list price, from this
vendor would cost $1,000 more than the equivalent computational
power in traditional form factors. And every blade slot not
populated would be an additional $500 deficit.
"The cost of blades is not just a total cost factor. Blade
enclosures, often holding eight to sixteen blade servers, need to
be purchased up front. If you need enough servers to match the
capacity of an enclosure this is not a factor, but if you are
looking to buy only a single server now, you may be making a
significant investment in proposed future server farm growth. This
means increased risk as well as an investment against the
time-value of your dollar."
