Dell said its PowerEdge 1855 blade server may now connect to a McData switch, part of a bid to lure new customers with the promise of more flexibility.
Customer can now connect and run up to two McData 4314 fibre channel
customers to tap into a storage area network (SAN)
Fibre channel traffic is aggregated in the switch from a daughter card port
on each blade server to four uplink ports that connect directly to storage
or other fibre channel switches.
The idea is that, by providing more connectivity options, Dell will be able
to cover more customers. Clients of the 1855 won’t need to buy additional
equipment to make the blade server work in their data center, said Tim
Golden, director for PowerEdge servers at Dell.
Sales of the 1855, which also supports Ethernet, Fibre Channel and
InfiniBand connectivity hardware from Dell, Intel, Brocade, QLogic and
Topspin, have been growing at a nice rate for the computer maker.
The company only released the PowerEdge 1855 last November, but was able to
boost its market share for x86 blades with two processors from 4 to 12
percent from fourth quarter 2004 to the first quarter 2005, according to
IDC.
The research firm expects the market to hit $8.5 billion by 2009 as
shipments increased by 68.2 percent and factory revenue gained 106 percent
in Q1 2005. Led by IBM with 39.2 percent of the market, blade servers
accounted for $409 million in the quarter.
That has led Dell to believe it could do better against market leaders IBM
and HP, which own more than 60 percent of the blade market.
The McData 4314 Fibre Channel switch for the Dell PowerEdge 1855 is
available now, with pricing for a single switch starting at $8,999. This
includes four Short Wave Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) optical
transceivers.
