Get your best deal and press for everything. We already had our VMware licensing, but we had to upgrade to Enterprise Plus to implement the full features of the VBlock and the VDS, rather than using the normal enterprise or standard level licensing from VMware. Plan for room to grow the system in the future. We have expanded SAN capacity much more than the compute capacity, as databases and data files continue to grow and eat more data space.

The paid support for Vblock is expensive.

I think the pricing is on the higher end of the spectrum. There could be some adjustments that could be made there.

Regarding licensing, watch compatibility with external products that you run on Vblock. It has got to be properly architected, otherwise, you will run into licensing issues.

Vblock is priced at a premium because people don't want the headache of managing and deploying different products. When people buy Vblock, they buy it for a specific reason.

It is not cheap. However, if you have a storage/network/virtualization experts on your team who can combine a similar storage/compute/network to match performance to Vblock then you will find that you will be saving money. Calculate your total ROI and cost of ownership to determine if it is the right fit for you.

Vblock appears from the first while to be very expensive. There are more items you cannot see in the BOQ: customer service, support, delivery short time, and highly experienced VCE engineers.

vBlock can appear as something very costly as first, but settle everything together - man/day, end customer satisfaction, delivery time - and you can figure out it’s a real win-win solution.

Just be careful to buy enough licenses to grow your environment when necessary.

Strive for a consolidated ELA.

I would not say the pricing is not good value. It is still on the expensive side, near the top-end of cost compared to what's available now.

The licensing has to be improved. There has to be a clear definition of the licensing from the initial set-up so the customer knows what they are paying for, without being hit later on with extra licensing. The licensing definitions should be clearer and, perhaps, have one set of licenses rather than multiple licenses.

Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive.