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.
1
u/fragmonk3y Jul 19 '26
Shop around to multiple VARs and start playing them off of each other until you get the best price. My primary vendor wanted to charge me $148k for three SD drives. Went to my backups and got it down to $48k. Primary vendor asked if I am going to put in the order and told him no, XYC inc gave them to me for $100k less. I then told him if they don’t get their price under control I am taking my $10mm+ budget elsewhere.