We all know the pitch, consolidate your storage, virtualise your servers and share the infrastructure where possible  through use of a blade based solution for the best possible TCO.  Why would anyone do anything else? We are all agreed. OK lets look at some prices to back up our cost busting claims. I have used list prices throughout. Discounts will vary according to customer, vendor and the time of year.

Example 1

Customer has been buying HP-UX servers and storage for one application and IBM AIX servers and storage for another application that often sit together in the same rack. Would it make sense for both systems to use the same storage? Of course it will. OK what's is the price? The HP storage being used is an MSA60 SAS attached with 9 disks....

If you need a cost effective switch for your IBM bladecenter for little more than the price of the passthrough module, it's worth taking a look at the "IBM Server Connectivity Module"

See details here ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x_pdf/31r1755.pdf

As soon as I get my hands on one I'll post some feedback. Looking at the specification they look like a great option to keep the cost down, without resulting to passthrough modules (and subsequent cabling headaches!). Two features available in more expensive switches that caught my eye include port aggregation with failed link  failover and L2 Failover option which will disable the server blade ports if all uplinks fail (allowing the blade teaming to fail-over to an alternative switch)

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