It used to be that if you were running Linux, none of that stuff would work, so I never paid any attention to it, and lately I haven't really been paying attention because the stuff I've been ordering has been lower end stuff for almost pure number crunching, and the additional cost of the management card just hasn't been worth it.
On the Proliant side, all of it worked under Linux, even for the customers that were rolling custom kernels. Most of the focus to get it running on Linux was not only due to customer demand, but also internal demand. The SmartStart CDs that shipped with the server used to run Windows 9x. Instead of porting everything over to the NT kernel and having to continue to buy Windows licenses for a management disc, they ported it all over to Linux. The versions I remember working with booted X, then Mozilla full screen to display the web interface being driven by apache with PHP.
Cost wise, I've never paid close attention to the differences between the vendors of servers. Now that I may be involved with hardware purchasing down the road, I'm starting to though. Also keeping an eye on Dell's blades, to see how they follow the HP ones. For what we need, blade enclosures with mixed servers and storage blades would work well, and is something Dell doesn't currently provide.
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