Principled Technologies compared the out-of-box experience of the following three blade systems:

  • Dell PowerEdge™ M600 blade system
  • HP BladeSystem c-Class
  • IBM BladeCenter® H

Key Findings:

  • The 16-blade PowerEdge M600 blade system took less than 15 minutes to assemble, compared to over 3 hours for the HP blade product and nearly 2 hours for the IBM system.
  • The Dell system arrived with the blades assembled and installed in the chassis. Both the HP and IBM products arrived unassembled, requiring the installation of a processor, memory and hard disk into each blade.
  • The Dell system arrived in one box. The HP product arrived in 78 boxes. The IBM product arrived in 62 boxes.