I've not been particularly quiet about my distaste for VMware's vTax - I've blogged on it plenty, my view being that vTax could render vSphere 5 an expensive has-been within months. But the numbers now - already - seem to support that view.
I've just upgraded some Standard licensed 2-socket ESX 4.1 hosts from 48GB to 120GB (being 96GB new + 24GB of the existing), which by forecast should provide headroom for a further 2 years on these (CPU usage is relatively low) and facilite a general software refresh - standard stuff.
16GB DIMMs from the tier-1 server manufacturer yesterday cost me USD $330 each (~$20/GB), total $2k per host. Intention had been to move to vSphere 5 - so let's look at the numbers:
Physical RAM Cost - $2,000
Additional licenses for v5 - $2,000
Basic maintenance - $ 550
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Total Cost - $4,550
So VMware licensing is 125% of the underlying hardware cost, making this memory upgrade over twice as expensive as it would be if the hosts were running Hyper-V or any other hypervisor.
Maybe they should be upgraded to Enterprise. Assume VMware give full face-value credit for the existing standard licenses against that,
Physical RAM Cost - $2,000
Std->Enterprise - $3,750
Maintenace Std->Ent - $ 650
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Total Cost - $6,400
So VMware licensing would be 220% of the underlying hardware cost. Wind forward 12-18 months, the numbers will look even less paletable (250%+ of the underlying hardware).
VMware, I hope you're listening.