The Great Server Debate: Blades vs. Single Rack Units

The technology bigots are facing off again. This time, it's blade servers vs. the single rack unit (1 RU) servers, a quasi-religious battle not unlike the Unix vs. Windows wars of the last decade. Just as most of the Global 2000 companies have ended up depending on both Unix and Windows, we can predict that, 10 years from now, they also will have found the right places for both blade and 1 RU servers.

At the moment, though, arguments that are rumbling through the crowded and often hot datacenters can be boiled down as follows:

* Blade servers pack a lot of punch into an evershrinking space with an ever-expanding selection of features, but they consume more power than 1 RUs, and wiring issues can get messy.

* Single Rack Unit servers deliver the latest dual-core technology and mounds of memory, so they are beefy enough to be used as virtualization platforms, yet they are misers on electrical power. On the downside, they consume more space than blade servers, and datacenter space is at an everincreasing premium.