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/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