One area I'd like to dig into today is pricing. In my news story, I quote Enterprise Strategy Group Analyst Mark Bowker saying that pricing is the biggest factor in vSphere -- more than VMsafe, Fault Tolerance, VStorage, distributed virtual switches and so on. Burton Group Analyst and Virtualization Review "Virtual Advisor" columnist Chris Wolf also praised the pricing model.

So let's break it down.

There are two entry-level suites: Essentials and Essentials Plus. Essentials Plus adds high availability and data protection onto Essential's base offering. Essentials is $995 for three servers (about $166 per socket), and Plus triples that, for a cost of $2,995.

The four core suites are Standard, Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Pricing: Standard: $795/proc Advanced: $2,245/proc Enterprise: $2,875/proc Enterprise Plus: $3,495/proc

Key features like VMotion and Fault Tolerance are avialable at the Advanced level. Time-saving features like distributed virtual switches and host profiles are only available at the Enterprise Plus tier.

Now, the issue here is not whether the pricing structure is fair, or worth the money. The issue, in terms of marketshare, is how this compares to what the competition offers.

Source: http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/mental-ward/2009/04/breaking-down--vsphere-pricing.aspx