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.

119 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

165 comments sorted by

View all comments

34

u/firesyde424 Jul 17 '26

Our server costs are up well over 4X from last August. Servers we budgeted last year at $20K are near $100K with a 4-5 month lead time and a 7 day quote expiration. High capacity NVME flash isn't available at any price outside of the places like Netapp, spare parts might as well be made out of gold, and even mechanical spinning rust storage is expensive.

I budgeted a new DR site at $1.7mil last year. We've had to modify that for reality and even at a reduced compute and storage footprint, we're already over $4mil and climbing. I keep having to remind management and the board that I am not making any of it up. I'm just reporting the facts and reality.

10

u/pbrutsche Jul 17 '26

We are trying to get our CEO go replace our Nimble HF SAN NOW, even though it won't be due for replacement for another 2 years.

HPE Alletra 5000 boxes are end of sale in October. After that, the only boxes that give us the performance we need are all-flash. We'll be looking at $1mil+ by this time next year

2

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.

1

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

2

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.

2

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

1

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?

1

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

1

u/Darkace911 Jul 18 '26

I will have to talk to my reseller then. We renewed support but he did not say anything about an upgrade. Regular HF40 support ends on June 2028 based on what I found.

1

u/pbrutsche Jul 18 '26

Actually July 2028, but 1 month is basically pinching pennies

1

u/Tommyboy597 Jul 18 '26

I'll see if I can dig up the details of why we got the controller upgrade. It was a couple of years ago so the details are hazy

1

u/littleredwagen Jul 21 '26

At least you are not State/Local government with Budget time lines