Virtualization Pricing trends

[mark_smith111]

Hey Folks, I was wondering, in terms of pricing of various virtualization offering, have you seen any visible trends. I guess pricing may be coming down from every vendor including VMWare - any thoughts - Thanks for helping us

[dejitarob]

I only have experience with Virtuozzo and their license (which you have to renew yearly if you want any updates, including security) prices went up. I switched to OpenVZ though and found it relatively painless to setup.

[PilotJLR]

Enterprise hypervisors are quickly becoming a commodity, so prices will absolutely decrease.
That's not to say it's free or cheap... support contracts are never free. Add on management and automation tools, and it gets pricey.

But for just a handful of servers, you can choose from Xen, ESXi, and Hyper-V... all of those hypervisors are free (with Hyper-V, free if you already buy the OS itself).

I don't see value adds like HA or DRS decreasing in price anytime soon, though.