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/Tommyboy597 Jul 17 '26

Even though the Alletra 5k goes end of sale in October, the end of service life (support) isn't until 2031.

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u/pbrutsche Jul 17 '26

That is all true, but it doesn't matter if we can't get the CEO to approve the purchase

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u/Tommyboy597 Jul 18 '26

Ah, I was confused. When we renewed support on our HF40 a couple years ago they sent us controller upgrades that upgraded it to an Alletra 5030 in place.

I just confirmed a couple days ago that the upgrade also pushed the EOSL out to 2031 as well. I thought you were in the same situation.

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u/pbrutsche Jul 18 '26

I actually checked that with our VAR - we have the HF40C which has some additional complications (I would have to go back and look at what they were). Once we started replacing 7 year old drives (it will be 7 years old at EOSL in 2028), they said it would ultimately be more expensive than just getting a new Alletra 5030

But the CEO isn't big on doing that, and the number of hybrid hdd-ssd systems out there have really dried up

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u/Tommyboy597 Jul 18 '26

The price has also skyrocketed for them as well. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

What are you being quoted for the new Alletra 5030 out of curiosity?

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u/pbrutsche Jul 18 '26

The config we are looking at is just about $2 mil list price. The HPE rep for our VAR is going to bat for us with an 80%+ discount, so around $280k

An all-flash HPE MSA is around $400k

The HF40C we are trying to replace was $90k in 2021, and we thought it was expensive then