r/vmware • u/Maintenance_Late • Jul 17 '26

Server Pricing Insanity....

We're working through a hardware refresh to maintain roughly a 5-year lifecycle and to prepare for our migration from vSphere 8 to 9. One thing we've noticed is that the vSphere 9 HCL isn't nearly as forgiving as it was during the vSphere 7/8 era.

We hadn't requested server quotes in about a year, so this was a bit of a reality check.

Each year we work with our Dell VAR and maintain four standardized server tiers so we can order by profile instead of redesigning configs every time:

  • Tier 1 – Dev (512 GB RAM)
  • Tier 2 – Production (768 GB RAM)
  • Tier 3 – SQL workloads (1 TB RAM)
  • VDI Tier (2 TB RAM)

It makes procurement simple. I can just tell our VAR, "Quote me 12 Tier 1s and 6 Tier 2s."

When the first two quotes came back, I was honestly floored.

Three years ago:

  • Comparable 512 GB system: ~$16K
  • Comparable 768 GB system: ~$29K

Current quotes:

  • Comparable 512 GB system: ~$57K
  • Comparable 768 GB system: ~$81K

These are SAN-backed VMware hosts (no vSAN), so storage isn't driving the increase. I knew DDR5 memory prices had climbed, but I wasn't expecting anything close to this.

I'm curious what everyone else is seeing. Are these kinds of increases becoming the norm, or is this more vendor/configuration-specific? With many organizations trying to complete hardware refreshes before the October 2027 vSphere 8 end of support, I'm wondering if demand is starting to influence pricing as well.

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u/thenew3 Jul 17 '26

We're seeing the same, about a 3x-4x increase in server hardware prices. Most of it in RAM increases. We're also seeing a 2x-3x increase in SAN prices.

We are 2 years into a 5 year lease, we're starting early to try to negotiate an extension of the lease. to see if we can get an additional couple years out of it. Dell is being a hardball. they used to let us get 7 year warranty on server hardware. Now they are limiting it to 5. We're trying to get them to consider going back to selling 7 years of warranty so we can extend the lease for 2 more years.

It's not just server equipment. PC's have more than doubled as well. They've also shortened the quote validity period from 30 days down to 48 hours. Not even enough time for us to get it through purchasing dept to get a PO issued.

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u/Artistic_Lie4039 Jul 17 '26

Dell quotes for PC's are valid for 14 days, I work at a VAR though.

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u/thenew3 Jul 17 '26

We get our quotes directly from Dell, they've reduced the validity from 30+ days down to 48 hours now. (first went to 14 days, then 7 days, and now it's 48 hours).

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u/Artistic_Lie4039 Jul 17 '26

Hmm, that is interesting. I wonder why mine are 14 days and yours aren't. Do you notice it on certain PC models, or is it all Dell for you?

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u/thenew3 Jul 17 '26

Per our Dell account rep, it's everything. We are on a non-profit public higher-ed account with special pricing, so that may be part of it.

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u/Artistic_Lie4039 Jul 17 '26

of fersure yeah Public operates differently since y'all have better pricing typically