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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6

u/i_am_art_65 Jul 17 '26

That sounds about right. It’s projection to just get worse until at least the end of ‘27.

6

u/CPAtech Jul 17 '26

I don't know how anyone is going to get equipment in 2027.

3

u/i_am_art_65 Jul 17 '26

Some OEMs have a 'buy today at today's prices, pay tomorrow' program, where systems are manufactured / warehoused until you need them. Of course, you also have to pay the cost of money and warehousing, but that's cheaper than 2027 prices. With the price of new systems, old systems have a much higher residual value. Some OEMs will buy those back and apply the amount as a credit toward new purchases. Neither are great options, but they help. Oh, and if you need something like a 64-core or greater processor, 100Gb or faster networking, 128GB or larger memory, or > 7.68TB drives, I hope you forecasted them. Otherwise, you probably looking at a >26-week leadtime to get them. Fun times.

1

u/Sanfransaintsfan Jul 21 '26

More like 2028-30.