Dedicated ESXi: Server or something else?

Christopher Hoff, over at Rational Security discussed an interesting idea last week about VMWare's ESXi. One of his readers theorized that maybe ESXi-based servers shouldn't be considered as servers in some cases, but more like quasi-blade-chassis, since they essentially provide the same functionality.

They're exploiting the idea for auditing, but since I'm really too small for that sort of thing right now, I don't have to worry about that, much. I also don't worry about ESXi much, since even though it's free, the Virtual Infrastructure to really use it costs thousands of dollars.

I just figured I'd throw this out there to see what you all thought of it.

[Update] Fixed broken link. Thanks DDressler!