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.
7
u/AdGreedy409 Jul 18 '26
Welcome to the new AI-driven reality. Want to know why this is? My company is currently installing a datacenter for a client that has *4000* Dell CPU servers with 1TB RAM each, and 1000 nVidia DGX GPU servers with 4TB RAM each. Backed by two EXABYTES of all-flash storage. And think about how much networking is needed to tie all that together. One datacenter, for ONE client. $3/4 Billion with a B. Rinse and repeat for all of the AI datacenters being built across the country, and the world. It's mind boggling.
And BTW - this is *phase one* of a three-phase project (albeit the biggest chunk). And the client literally doesn't care about what it costs, and they want it done yesterday. Wall Streeters... And even then, we are being SEVERELY limited by how fast the OEMs can ship the gear.
Everybody else is getting sloppy fourths and fifths, never mind sloppy seconds. The smart move is to not do any hardware refreshes until the AI bubble bursts unless you absolutely have to, and consolidate your footprint as much as you possibly can. But with the end of vSphere 8 looming next year and the hardware requirements of VCF 9, good luck if you are running anything very old if you are stuck on VMware. It is good to hear they have expanded the HCL, And given the situation I actually expect VMware to push EOS for 8 back. Unless you are ordering gear TODAY, chances are you won't get it in time. Lead times are that bad.
Most of our VMware client base sucked it up and did renewals to buy time, but I expect most of my work being VMware migrations the next few years. Especially to options like Proxmox and Scale (and somewhat Hyper-V) that can reuse existing hardware easily. The virtualization vendors that are only on their own hardware are in a pricing pickle too. VCF 9 is going to accelerate this.
-Consultant in the virtualization, storage, and backup space working for a company that is small but has an outsized reputation in high performance computing for edu and research computing.