Blade server review: Dell PowerEdge M1000e

In our January 2007 blade server shoot-out, Dell was the dark horse candidate that posted impressive performance numbers, but fell short on features compared to the other solutions. In the intervening few years, Dell has clearly taken the time to polish up its solution. The Dell PowerEdge M1000e is far more attractive and functional than its predecessors.

In today's M1000e, a brand-new set of chassis management tools offer many features suited for day-to-day operations, and the chassis-wide deployment and modification tools are simply fantastic. The downsides include some lack of visibility into chassis environmental parameters and the absence of multichassis management capabilities. Unless you put external management tools to use, each Dell chassis exists as an island.

The main selling points of the Dell blades system are the density and price. The M1000e makes a great virtualization platform, but would do well in just about any situation. It doesn't offer some of the expansion of the HP chassis, but does offer similar features to the IBM solution, but if you have no need for internal storage or centralized multichassis management, it's a great solution.

Chassis and blades