I've never visited your server room, but I'd wager that behind every rack resides a cobweb of cables. This tangled mass isn't just unsightly; it's indicative of how IT admins are stretching the architectural limits of conventional, stand-alone servers and storage devices and facing more complicated troubleshooting and maintenance activities.

The Bottom Line HP BladeSystem c3000 HP, hp.com Excellent  9.5 criteria score weight Availability 10 25% Performance 9 20% Scalability 9 20% Management 10 15% Serviceability 10 10% Value 9 10% Cost: Price as tested: $25,700, includes all software and three years of support Platforms: Linux, NetWare, Solaris, and Windows Bottom Line: With room for eight powerful server or storage blades and support for multiple operating systems and diversified network connectivity, the HP c3000 is a hard-to-refuse alternative to filling your datacenter with more loose machines. Its comprehensive administrative tools make the system an easy-to-deploy, easy-to-manage proposition for small businesses and remote offices. However, the ability to easily add more blades and chasses pushes its scalability beyond practical limits. The larger initial expenditure is easily offset by less expensive operating costs than comparable stand-alone solutions. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

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By gradually replacing standard servers with blade systems, large datacenters can achieve easier and more effective management, all the while reducing power and cooling costs. Small datacenters have similar needs for more power-efficient, compact systems, not to mention less cluttered connections between servers and storage devices, and they could benefit from the same remedy. Until recently, though, vendors were targeting blade systems at more demanding requirements.

That's all changing. Vendors such as Sun have primed these trim servers for entry-level to midsize requirements, and attached to them a more affordable price. Joining the ranks of these lean machines is HP's BladeSystem c3000.

Unleashed last September, BladeSystem c3000 lets you pack as many as eight half-size blades into just 6U. Moreover, the unit can be loaded with serious processing power, capacious storage devices, and first-class management tools that defy alternative standalone products. It's a powerful, reliable, easy-to-manage machine. In fact, after using the BladeSystem c3000 for several weeks (check out my first impressions and photos here and here), I've become addicted.

Meet Shorty
If you have never handled a blade system, just unpacking it can be an educational -- and even fun-filled -- experience. Out of its crate, the c3000 can be stripped down to a bare chassis, which I did not only out of curiosity, but also to get its weight to a more manageable level.

Given its contained dimensions, it’s no surprise that HP nicknamed the c3000 "Shorty." Despite its small form factor, the unit hosts eight blade slots in the front for servers or storage devices, plus a DVD drive and a management console. The console has a small, slick LCD screen that you can make disappear in its own slit when not in use. In the back of the c3000, you can mount as many as six fans, six power-supply modules, and four switches that offer Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand connectivity.

All of the aforementioned components slide in and out easily without the need to power off the chassis. The c3000's well-designed layout also helps admins minimize cable cluttering. Components with external connections are located along the perimeter of the chassis so that their cables can be neatly routed out of the way.

In fact, two of the four slots for switches are located near the top edge of the machine; the other two are situated at the bottom edge of the enclosure. Similarly, the six power supply sockets are equally spaced along the left and right edges.

My evaluation unit mounted two server blades running Windows Server 2003 plus a third blade with Windows Storage Server 2003. WSS 2003 is Microsoft's unified storage solution that enables provisioning of storage as network shares and iSCSI volumes.

The WSS 2003 blade had two 146GB SAS drives on board, but it also controlled the additional capacity of HP's StorageWorks All-in-One (AiO) SB600c, essentially a storage blade that packs six small-form-factor SAS drives of 146GB each.

The SB600c is essentially a blade-oriented version of HP's StorageWorks AiO 600 storage system, which I looked at in late 2006. Although I didn't have the two systems side by side as when I tested the c3000, I feel comfortable saying that the blade version has nothing to envy in its nonblade sibling: Performance, ease of use, and manageability are comparable -- if not better.

Strong connections
Worth noting is how a storage blade is essentially direct-attached to a server blade, even though there are no cables connecting the two. There is, however, an invisible connection running via the c3000 midplane that connects "partner" devices such as a server and a storage blade.

To create that connection, the two blades simply have to occupy adjacent sockets -- effective and easy. It's also fast: Running Iometer between the AiO server and the storage blade, I measured a transfer rate of around 550MBps, which is consistent with the results measured on, for example, a local drive.

Although I was using the space-demanding dual-parity RAID 6 on the unit, there was more than half a terabyte of storage available for my applications. A similar configuration would gobble half a 3U enclosure in a comparable, traditional storage device, but it occupies only a half-size blade socket on the c3000.