Check out these myths and misconceptions about blades and virtualization.  This is a two part article, where the first three myths are covered in part one: Blades are too expensive, Blades require too much power and cooling, and Blades are not as powerful as rack servers, and so not a good platform for virtualization. 

As new IT technologies emerge and mature, there are always myths and misconceptions. They seem to evolve around both strengths (typically inflated by vendors) and weaknesses (often inflated by skeptics and/or individual bad experiences). In many cases, the flaws of the early product releases create concerns and horror stories that live long after those flaws have been addressed. This appears to be the case with a number of issues around blade server systems, and in particular, around blades and virtualization. Separating the myths and the hype from the reality is a challenging but important part of successful planning. Here are the most common myths I hear:

• Blades are too expensive
• Blades require too much power and cooling
• Blades are not as powerful as rack servers, and so not a good platform for virtualization
• Blades have problems in virtual environments since they boot from a SAN
• Virtualizing on blades is a problem due to I/O limitations
• PC blades are virtual PCs on blades

I'll tackle these myths one at a time over my next two columns, and then I'll drill down further in subsequent weeks. If you have more myths to add, email them to me, and I'll address them as well.

Read the entire part one of this article at SearchServerVirtualization.com.