How are you handling the price increases?
Posted by draggar@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 141 comments
How is everyone handling the price increases? Honestly, I feel less optimistic now than I did at the start of COVID.
It's getting crazy on my end and we've already missed out on two good deals (relatively speaking) for laptops (mainly for refreshes) because management doesn't want to have equipment sitting on a shelf while the warranty is running out (and yes, we have a VAR and they've helped us with this in the past). (Last fall I had a hard enough time convincing them to let me purchase another 20 laptops for refreshes when we first got word of what was about to happen).
Laptops and desktops have gone up at least 25% since the fall (and we don't order anything high end, standard workstations).
While the specs we order have changed, we still have several desktops that could us a larger hard drive - yet prices have gone from $89 for 1TB to $250. Luckily we've been good with RAM for a while now, we upped our specs to 16GB 2 years ago (and were trying to purchase them and upgrading systems prior).
Honestly, I'm at the point that if it works and it does the job, even if it's older equipment, I'm not sending it to e-waste. I'll deploy an 8 year old desktop with a 265GB SSD and 8GB of RAM if I have to (or pull the ram out of one so another one can have 16GB of RAM). Even my facilities manager (who handles e-waste) reached out to me to mention that we haven't requested to have the bin emptied in a while).
tapwater86@reddit
When I was a young solo admin, I’d make the need for replacements much more apparent to the people who decided on things. Like for one terrible example, my Exchange server was reaching end of life (2007). I put in a request to upgrade with hardware including storage and licensing. Denied. It’s too expensive and things work fine now.
Ok but what if they didn’t? So I’d randomly restart the server during the day. Told them the server was on its last leg. Or some b/s about it being a bug they fixed in a newer version. Only took a few weeks for my package to get reassessed and approved.
ZaradimLako@reddit
Not my monkey not my circus. Management never wants to spend money even if the laptops would have cost 50 cent, I have gotten pushback all the time no matter the context or price. I haven't adapted anything, when something is needed then it is needed and if management is throwing a hissy fit about the finances, I demand a written response that they will accept the consequences if something happens related to it or if the workflow is a lot worse than it should have been been if we spent the money.
Same thing with laptop not just server hardware or whatever. You dont want to pay? I can pull a bunny out of a hat, not an elephant. If you want the engineer running solidworks to have the 1000 dollar pc instead of the 2000, then I want you to know that everything that engineer will be doing will take twice as long and I will not "optimise" anything on that pc in a ridiculous attempt to make a under specced pc run better. 9.5 out of 10 times I get what I want and recommend.
Novel_Fault9705@reddit
Had replacement for a 12 y/o NAS hosting marketing and creative team files (think video and photoshop files) striped from the budget (again…). Guess what died 5 months later? That dept was dead in the water while recovery efforts had to be taken. The company saved $10k only to lose significantly more in productivity months later.
Bromlife@reddit
This is the reason IT are ok with moving to the cloud. We know it costs more. But the business pays for the consumption. It's out of our hands.
cwk9@reddit
This guy gets it. I'd rather tell them "don't pay for 365, don't get email" than have to ask for money for a new SAN, server, licencing etc.. only to get told "it's working today you can make due."
ponytuh@reddit
... are you saying that your org is still using on-prem Exchange?
cwk9@reddit
My exchange hosting days are over and I don't miss it. Now if I could only get rid of Active Directory.
throwaway-458425@reddit
we’re currently considering different alternatives to AD. mainly because the AD wasn’t maintained for decades, but secondarily we’ve moved everything else to the cloud. are you guys actively considering a move away from AD?
cwk9@reddit
Slowly. Just got rid of file servers. Moving from hybrid to entra joined is next. I'm thinking SOA for sync'd objects. Then cutting the cord between Entra and AD. Realistically AD will still be around for existing servers and the odd app but users won't interact with it in any meaningful way.
FrivolousMe@reddit
It makes perfect sense for singular orgs. It's a lot tougher in the MSP space where you are essentially trading your own income is replaced by rent payments to Microsoft, Amazon, et al.
Krigen89@reddit
The MSPs I worked for all agreed SaaS what's the right play for their customers. The MSP gets a cut on all licences and on management, and we basically stopped getting evening/night calls.
Novel_Fault9705@reddit
Honestly, yeah. Companies appetites for Op Ex expenditures seem higher than Cap Ex, especially when fulfilling buzzword initiatives like ~cloud adoption~. If it costs 4x long term and I don’t have to fight for hardware at the end of every lifecycle, then sure.
This will (and has) inevitably shift back towards on-prem solutions, as the premium paid for 3rd party hosting becomes more apparent.
Bromlife@reddit
I’m not seeing that shift beyond a handful of notable exceptions, and the increase in hardware prices thanks to the AI hardware boom means it’s going to be pretty difficult to make a savings arguments for the foreseeable future.
I think you’ll only see companies that respect technology and technology proficient leaders even consider this move back to the server room. There’s not many of those.
BrokenByEpicor@reddit
There's a realness to this. On the one hand it means I can't fix it when it breaks, but like I have time for that. I'm too busy researching how to unfuck whatever Microslop has broken this week in windows. Then I need to beat our ERP vendor into doing their goddamned job on the 10 open tickets I have with them. Then I need to embrace the void for 15 minutes because I accidentally saw some world news. Then I have lunch.
wise0wl@reddit
I feel this deep in my bones. So much of ITs job is chasing down vendors whose priorities are not yours. You’re talking about helplessness. Feeling boxed in on all sides and having no way to make it better.
Just remember, if you have no control what is there to worry about really? Do your part and then check out. Stop sacrificing your own mental health for a company that doesn’t care about you. You are worth more than their budget or their projects or whatever your boss tells you you need to “lean in” and invest yourself in.
I’m a Director at my current company, and I’m still deep in the code every day. I know where the struggles are and I tell my direct reports and their direct reports the same thing I just told you. Do your best but don’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else (the company) warm.
BrokenByEpicor@reddit
Oh hell yeah dude, I'm in my late 30s and I have that one figured out. But it's sort of one of those things where you can know it all day long and be as disengaged as you want, only put in 40 hours, the works, and still find it absolutely grinding your sanity.
Fuck, yesterday we found out that an issue we have been trying to solve for 6 literal months with our ERP software that they steadfastly blamed our systems for and we've spent literal weeks of manhours on while dealing with increasingly irritable users..... was something their network team had told them might happen and we are not in fact the only people having this (contrary to what we'd been previously told). And we learned that after badgering our way all the way to the head of their network team, who's apparently been telling his other dept that this was a problem for some time now. Even expecting the dog shit that I expect from this vendor I could feel my brain trying to go apoplectic at that - it just didn't have the juice to fire up the rage core. For reference that's like a warp core but instead of harnessing the energy from matter-antimatter annihilation it harnesses the energy from reasonable expectations of people colliding with reality.
And you know what? They will face ZERO consequence for that. Management might negotiate the bill down a little bit but that will be it. No losses will be accounted for in any way that actually recompenses the people affected. I lost weeks of productive work time, our reps probably lost sales which equates to lost income for not only the company but them as well. Now you could say that management is getting some of that lost income back if they refuse to pay the full bill, but first off I have no belief that they will get what they are theoretically owed and also I don't really care because not one red cent of that money will ever end up in my hands.
/Rant
Squeezer999@reddit
the throwing away dollars to save pennies strategy
ZaradimLako@reddit
I bet 20$ you were told "youre out IT guy, I am sure you can figure it out" in a slightly condescending passive aggresive tone when the budget got stripped.
Jawb0nz@reddit
"I will be sure to update you immediately when a significant problem with the hardware develops.
checks phone I do have your cell number, so I can keep you abreast without the delays of having to check email."
IllegalButHonest@reddit
Agree I lay out the options and the risks.
tdhuck@reddit
It is not my money, but I still try to get good pricing when I can, that being said, I'm not wasting too much time if I can't get a better price. I just take the quote and send it to my boss. He has spending approval up to a certain amount before he needs approval by the IT director. If he says no for something I was asked to price or if he is told no for something that he was asked to price, then we we document what can happen if we don't proceed with the purchase.
If I/we are asked for cheaper alternatives, those options are provided but we also document why we don't recommend the cheaper alternatives.
I'm in the middle of doing NVR upgrades and management wants to cut corners and buy server hardware that can handle 5-8 cameras and they will 'deal with' not having as much video storage as some of the larger sites with true server rated hardware.
I've explained that if we go down this path that I can't troubleshoot these systems as we would be starting with systems (servers) that are already below the recommended hardware specs for the environment we need.
It is a huge costs savings to do what they are asking, but what they are asking is not reasonable. Forget the storage for a minute, they aren't thinking about computer power, remote user connections, active cameras connected to the server for display, recording, etc.
I'm not sure where they are currently at in their decision making process, but I've done all I can do and as stated above, I politely made it clear that this is something I can't 'fix' for them if they go down the cheap path.
draggar@reddit (OP)
My director once said to me "You spend money like you're spending your own money" - and I took it as a compliment. I work with my VAR for hardware but components I'll look around and find the best products for the best prices.
tdhuck@reddit
Realistically that's how it should be, but that also assumed that there is a benefit to me, as well. If I don't receive some type of compensation for trying to get the best deal for the company, why should I keep wasting my time?
This is where companies drop the ball, IMO.
You hear stories where managers save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware costs, licensing costs, etc. and don't even bother to give that person a bonus, instead, they'll throw a pizza party or buy lunch for your team.
If that's all you get, why would you be incentivized to keep getting better pricing for other projects, renewals, etc?
draggar@reddit (OP)
The only time we get the proverbial pizza party is when a vendor buys us lunch. 😂😭😂
draggar@reddit (OP)
I do all of my communication in writing so it's documented where the "no" came from - it's covered my rear in the past and some of my teammates have also done this.
slashinhobo1@reddit
Ill agree to that. As long as im stikk get the paid, the price increases mean very little to me. If they want it they will shell out for it. If they dont then i have no power tonsway it either way.
gafan_8@reddit
Please share thy gift with the world and let us blunt and to the point IT personnel learn the ways of making it clear who’s responsible without hurting egos.
You don’t have an ability but a super power
bitslammer@reddit
This is sadly the correct and only thing you can do. Unfortunately though cheaping out on hardware and other things eventually lands back on the lap of someone in IT, or in my case infosec, where there's an incident or outage and someone ends up getting called in and having their work/life situation messed up.
LRS_David@reddit
I tell management / owners what is happening and ask if they want to buy now or wait. Their decision.
thepfy1@reddit
Its painful Public sector so there are pretty stringent rules around procurement and if above threshold, multiple quotes or waivers need signing in addition to the normal sign offs.
The delays in getting paperwork signed means quotes expired and either means increased costs or reduction in quantity. We've also had vendors back out of orders which still have valid quotes because the manufacturer has raised prices.
hosalabad@reddit
Sitting back and smiling. Not my problem. “Here is what we asked for, and here is what it costs now.” Let me know.
meatymimic@reddit
State government / higher education here.
Our policy is to replace every 5 years. We get a higher ed discount on most of our purchases. Endpoints are usually half of what list price is.
The price has definitely increased, though. Even with a steep discount, it huts.
Professional_Bat8938@reddit
Shitty. I live in F-all Florida and things are astronomically expensive. Inflation stole 30% of our income and the bosses kept it instead of doing the right thing and making us whole. Now each quarter they are bragging about record profits. Twist ending: I work at a public hospital so profit isn't supposed to be a thing. My Gov is appointing board members who select the C-Suite whose objective is to destroy public health. I am close to just leaving.
jooooooohn@reddit
Reseller here. 1 server from Dell for a modest Hyper-V host = $100,000 msrp…we sold them a recent refurb model with 3rd party support instead for 15k. Price changes everywhere and all the time, like someone is shaking a blanket. 🤣
jsand2@reddit
Its not my money. If we need something we buy it. As for more expensive purchases, we have yet to have upper management turn anything down due to inflated price.
Saying that, we havent had the need to buy any servers or anything like that this year. But if we need them, we would likely buy them withouyt any issues.
We are currently working on a bid from our security company. They kept the bid today the same as it was 6 months ago. Upper management turned it down 6 months ago b/c it was pricy with little return. Due to HR, there is currrently high demand for it, so we are running with it now. It was nice to see them not increase the price, even though they increased pricing on 4/1/26, as we reengaged them on 4/2.
pmormr@reddit
Word on the street for servers is there's customers seeing increases in the 200-300% range.
GhostandVodka@reddit
What sucks about this is probably 150% of that is due to the market and another 150% is price gouging because they know customers are expecting higher prices
jsand2@reddit
I have heard the same on the internet, but havent personally seen it.
The only thing I can say price wise is that I was able to secure 32gb of DDR5 for $200, compared to the absolutely absurd prices you see people post online.
While yes, that is double what I paid 2 years ago, it is minimal compared to the $800-$4000 price tags people have posted on reddit.
Personally, $200 for RAM is nothing. My company would bawk even less than me on that.
I feel like we will be buying servers in the next year for an addition, so I will be curious to see what they are when we get there. The thing is, it wont matter the price, we will have to buy them regardless at that point.
SergeantMojo@reddit
Start saving now 🤣. We had a UCS quote go from 300k to over a million within 4 weeks.
EraYaN@reddit
Flash is about 500% in one of our latest quotes, to be delivered q3 and if at that time the price is higher they can charge us that price.
ZealousidealFudge851@reddit
Life cycle plans, but we're probably going to hit a point soon where the subscription model is more fiscally viable.
Full-Entertainer-606@reddit
Nonprofit here. Holding off as much as we can. Looking for alternatives if possible. Microslop is quickly becoming our biggest expense but no one is interested in looking at alternatives.
Garriga@reddit
Look at the hardware requirements needed to run the software. Not everyone needs 32 gb ram.
Unless it’s ICS, software development or engineering, 16 gb ram and half a TB with a 8th gen processor should work. It depends on the software that will run in the machine . Why spend thousands on a laptop for a receptionist when you can probably get away with spending few hundred.
This is just my opinion..
Fallingdamage@reddit
We buy used laptops and desktops from companies that sell off old corporate assets. Started doing that 3 years ago. I can buy 5 of them for the price of one new one, so I dont care about warranty. Just grab another off the shelf and get it to the user and see if the one they gave back to you is actually dead or they just dont know how to use a computer.
At the moment, the current outgoing-generation of machines that we buy in bulk on the second-hand market are i7's with 16gb RAM and 500gb SSDs and W11 pro. They may not be capable of running AI models very well, but in a world of Office apps and browser based SaaS products, they kick ass. Users assume they're new. Happily, we're also finding that the UEFI bios on them is fully compatible with the new bootloader certs needing to be pushed out.
Management also likes that we can replace so many PCs for literally nothing compared to what we spent in the past on new stuff.
zatset@reddit
We buy used laptops and desktops from companies that sell off old corporate assets. Started doing that 3 years ago. I can buy 5 of them for the price of one new one, so I dont care about warranty. Just grab another off the shelf and get it to the user and see if the one they gave back to you is actually dead or they just dont know how to use a computer.*
I do mostly exactly the same thing. Many users don’t need super powerful computers, just computers that are compatible with the software that is used.
Fallingdamage@reddit
Management and Administration get new PCs. I cant risk those going down or having problems, but most all other desktops across the whole business are second-run models from corporations doing their 3-5 year overhauls. Ive been tracking our assets carefully since we started doing this and overall our failure rate on that stuff has been about 2.5%. Biggest issue I run into are nvme drives that fail (probably high use during their first life.) We just put in a new one and reimage.
zatset@reddit
Management and administration mostly save everything they have on the file server in personal directories that only they can access. Even brand new computers are no immune from drives going bad. Contrary to the RAID of the server where for information to be lost, at least 2 to 3 drives must defect.
Hollow3ddd@reddit
My self from 3 years ago would cringe. My current self with a solid RMM would say, as long as nobody complains and it doesn’t kill the support desk. But we stick to one manufacturer, diverse in builds. These are the days we are in for reductions on budget and removing the current slowness
We cut a 1.6k build into a 1k build for gen pop. Left the options for fingerprints readers across the board for WHfB. No warrantys. If QA takes a dump like during Covid, worse we will do is break even. Went Lenovo direct, MSP is gone due to lack of actual needs from those services. Not my preferred route but I don’t make money, I use it efficiently and prob are part of that problem MSP, sorry.
New focus on modular app deployment on absolute needs, not an overall image with everything. Intune/RMM fixed delays and negated a bit the GPO junk loads for sign in and outs.
Looking good so far. I’ll get shammed, but it’s not my call. So doing what needs to but done….. ya know, for the 100k+ new AI budget
zatset@reddit
By freezing the purchases of anything that is not essential. If something major breaks that stops the organisation from functioning or is about to break…arguing with finances leads to then begrudgingly moving forward with the expense.
recovering-pentester@reddit
Third party maintenance and hope :)
cytra821@reddit
Sweet_Mother_Russia@reddit
It’s not my money and I don’t care. My organization is huge and I’ve told my boss that I wanted to purchase hundreds of computers ahead of our schedule so that we’d get them with cheaper contract pricing… it didn’t happen.
So it goes.
en-rob-deraj@reddit
Cost of doing business. Not your job to worry about that. Adjust budget and move along.
Parity99@reddit
This 100%. There is nothing you can do to influence these pricing changes.
djumv@reddit
I’m on the VAR/MSP side. To be frank, I’m trying to keep my customers from getting screwed by predatory OEM sales critters.
But if you go directly to the OEM, I can’t do anything for you but take my paltry 5%. They’ll take my other 10% and the 10-15% I would have passed on to you. I’ll tell you once, and if you don’t listen, I’ll just let you get screwed because there are 10 other versions of you that will listens
But for the most part if you’re SMB and Mid-market, I’ll have you retaining what you have, renting if you have to grow, or supplementing with public cloud resources for the next 3 years. Time to prioritize switch refreshes. Maybe work on implementing resilience in your network. If you’re enterprise, who cares, you have the money.
Buckle up.
l0st1nP4r4d1ce@reddit
We are having an intense debate about memory upgrades. Since 16GB stick for a user laptop is hitting $600.
Don't even get me started on Server upgrades.
Hollow3ddd@reddit
Tbh, most out users don’t tough that high and apps eat up whatever is there. So it’s a tough one to gauge
listur65@reddit
As a /r/sysadmin - Not my problem
As a /r/homelab enthusiast - It is very much my problem :(
Hollow3ddd@reddit
Sysadmin is flexible. What isn’t our problem today, maybe tomorrow
Komputers_Are_Life@reddit
I work for a E-waste company. We have been doing okay most of our upgrades come from what we get into our shop.
I’ve been trying to do my best to keep some RAM, and SSDs for local sale at reasonable prices for regular people not resellers.
FALSE_PROTAGONIST@reddit
Doing gods work
Hollow3ddd@reddit
Right. Guy/girl is going to keep some loyal customers
SergeantMojo@reddit
We are lucky at our org that our executives actually listen and respect our opinions as long as we have the data to back up what we need. Unfortunately, we had a quote triple in price but it's a need and prices aren't going to come back down so we were able to make our case and cut a PO. From what I am hearing from our VAR most of their customers are mostly still buying whether it's from Cisco or moving to Dell, HP, etc.
gwig9@reddit
I did my due diligence and warned our purchasing agent what was coming. She told me to put together a quote for the next year's refreshes asap and we had everything purchased within a week.
Glad we did because our reseller has already removed pricing from their purchase portal and is now only honoring quotes for 7 days...
Shits crazy out there... And I think it's only going to get worse.
Trust_8067@reddit
The price increases aren't the real problem; It's not my money after all. The real issue is the 8+ weeks for new hardware now.
shemp33@reddit
Never accept budget constraint as a valid reason not to buy something you need. If it’s important enough, they’ll find money for it.
Budget constraint is just a polite way of telling you where it fits on the priority list.
harley247@reddit
Of course, but you still have to work with what you're given. They still have to do their job to the best of their ability with what they have whether they have a budget or not. And OP is mostly talking about desktops in his post. I don't think Christina at the reception desk that only uses Edge and O365 needs a brand new PC with 32GB of DDR5 when her 5 year old PC can handle it fine.
draggar@reddit (OP)
Yep, I agree, but it's not my say.
itspie@reddit
Have made management known this was going to be an issue. Bought 1/4 of the servers we needed and budgeted because they're on an annual budget. Not my problem after that.
matiascoca@reddit
On the cloud side, the AWS/Azure/GCP providers haven't raised list prices yet, but effective costs are rising because they're tightening committed use discount terms and reducing free tier allowances quietly. The real lever most orgs aren't pulling is rightsizing — most cloud workloads run at 20–40% actual utilization against what they're paying for, and that's recoverable without any vendor negotiation. For hardware, the 8-year-old desktop play actually makes sense for knowledge workers who spend 90% of their time in a browser; the marginal productivity difference between a 2018 and 2025 desktop is close to zero for most roles.
Jawb0nz@reddit
I have a new host on my bench to build and ship to a customer when all the parts come in. The 6 drives for it were a sticker shock, coming in at over $3k/drive, significantly higher than I've ever seen, even for 1.92TB drives.
The 14 additional sticks of RAM will be $42k alone.
The only borderline redemption to those obscene costs is if I can get through a build without an RMA process on something.
FALSE_PROTAGONIST@reddit
Yeah fuck. What will be the deployed specs?
Jawb0nz@reddit
Not a big machine, but the customer still wants on-prem hardware for their operation.
Dual Xeon silver 4510 (12-core)
512GB DDR5-5600
6x 1.92TB SSD
FALSE_PROTAGONIST@reddit
Yeah not that big at all. What’s the final cost of that bad boy?
Jawb0nz@reddit
Without any licensing, a little north of $74k. It's obscene. This is a $35-40k host, at most. Skynet has changed that for the foreseeable future.
FALSE_PROTAGONIST@reddit
That’s fucking crazy man. Like double the normal cost!!
SarcasticFluency@reddit
Without any licensing, a little north of $74k. It's obscene. This is a $35-40k host, at most. Skynet has changed that for the foreseeable future.
ohyeahwell@reddit
More info? It's hard to think about on-prem as anything other than tech-debt in 2026.
mb194dc@reddit
Extend the use of everything. Hardware from 5 years ago will do the job in 99% of normal business use cases.
draggar@reddit (OP)
Yep - we still have systems being used that are over 10 years old, just swapped out the platter hard drive with an SSD a few years ago - helped extend the life of those systems during crunch times.
19610taw3@reddit
As long as it's windows 11 compatible, I say keep running it.
19610taw3@reddit
Management at my last job is complaining about the price of new computers right now but just had to buy 500 new computers.
To replace computers from 2023. They never were on a 3 year cycle. Everything has 24 or 32 GB of ram as it is and works fine.
Doso777@reddit
We still have old contracts for most stuff so not really an issue. For the few things we need to buy new, like our firewalls that are about to eol, we simply pay the premium. Management isn't happy and they will do another review of the firewalls but i don't see things changing.
jstar77@reddit
How are we handling it? By getting comically behind on our refresh cycle.
draggar@reddit (OP)
I inherited this. Low budget and then COVID put this place way behind with their refreshes and it wasn't until 2 years ago I got the budget to do a mass refresh.
pdp10@reddit
We've never made purchasing or cash-flow decisions around hardware warranties, and have never had any regrets on this count.
draggar@reddit (OP)
I've never done it nor have I seen management do this in the past, too.
rcook55@reddit
We got the notice from our Dell rep about the increases. Bought 200 laptops via CDW who is warehousing them for us.
Our VDC team however needed new Alienware towers and we paid through the nose for them, $9K + $1200 in RAM upgrades... Ironically the price increases are indirectly caused by what my company does... build data centers.
draggar@reddit (OP)
I just got an Alienware PC for home and I'm glad I got it when I did. The RAM, GPU, motherboard, processor, and SSD alone (retail) were very close to the price of the system.
My VAR alerted us about Dell last month but we don't buy Dells (HPs) - but they also let me know that HP and Lenovo are also expecting price increases soon.
rcook55@reddit
So my Dell rep said he was quoting a server and he had to re-quote 20 times because pricing was changing so fast, absolutely insane.
zdelusion@reddit
I, fortunately, don't have quite as large a fleet as some here. We're buying less from the VAR, I'm piecemealing some orders, still getting our normal SKUs but from Lenovo directly or from other 3rd parties in addition to stuff off the shelf from the VAR when the deals are good. We also moved from a 3 -> 4 year replacement cadence. Which was probably going to happen at some point anyway, stuff is just "better" now than it used to be, but these supply chain shenanigans definitely helped it along. If things don't get better moving to a 5 year cadence in a year or two will probably be on the table.
draggar@reddit (OP)
What's your fleet size? I'm at roughly 800 devices, split almost 50/50 between desktops and laptops.
We're at a 5 year (laptop) and 7 year (desktop) refresh cycle.
zdelusion@reddit
Around 1000, almost exclusively laptops, but many in pretty harsh environments in the global south. So they tend to get used hard. We were lining replacement up with warranty support previously.
iama_bad_person@reddit
Telling I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO in my head at Finance when they ask why the price of laptops has gone up 30%.
Fucking idiots tried to tell me to wait a month or two before ordering the annual refresh laptops, "didn't know if we it quite in the budget", they didn't think laptop prices could change that much. So, I trusted that I had the political pull to ignore that and instead I ordered all the HP 6, 8 and X G1i's our supplier had in stock which was just enough.
When our departments finance officer asked why I went against their advice I showed them the current price of laptops and told them we would be paying close to $200k more right now if I had waited. They stopped being pissy, CFO actually thanked me weirdly enough.
draggar@reddit (OP)
Don't you wish we could say that out loud, without risking out jobs, when it is fully deserved?
sheep5555@reddit
I knew it was coming last year, made big purchases that were slated for this year last year. Good management :)
draggar@reddit (OP)
I tried - but he only wanted to buy 1-2 months' worth of inventory.
The_Original_Miser@reddit
Laughs in non profit.
I do what I can based on budget. Sometimes there's a large lag between quote and funding and all of my emails with quotes (separate from the vendor warnings) essentially say this quote is good for a week at best.
We've resorted going to the secondary market (not eBay used, but off lease equipment vendors) for our stuff since luckily our workload is light (no CAD or anything of that sort). It will have to do. New laptops and desks that should be $1200 or so are now $1800-$2000, or more. There's no way we can afford that. So, it's either refresh is slower or go used. We're doing a bit of both.
draggar@reddit (OP)
We're a non-profit, too. (Small community hospital).
My previous job was at a community college.
Yep, I know all about limited budgets and getting around financial issues. It was great in corporate (2000's) - just throw money at problems.
The_Original_Miser@reddit
I've worked in all sorts of companies. Some where you rushed to (their) bank to cash your check before everyone else did, to places where they spent money like they had an unlimited supply.
But these prices just suck. Heck I've even had to put home lab projects on hold/carefully consider what I want to do next/make the most out of what I have.
chippinganimal@reddit
Kinda similar situation here, non profit public access TV station here, joined in 2023 and saw most were editing on x79 workstations and was able to get the ball rolling on upgrades to get everyone on windows 11 because of the tpm/CPU security stuff. Thankfully I did keep around most of those systems since they still worked, to do lab stuff with, including all the ddr3
(I do find it kinda arbitrary tho, we have some 7th Gen Intel laptops that support tpm 2 but still fail the win 11 security check without a bypass, one of them is a 1st gen Surface Book 13)
ibringstharuckus@reddit
My frustration comes in the time it takes to make a decision to buy,not whether to buy or not. I have explained numerous times. If you want to get these at this price, order them now. If you wait,you will not get these most likely. You will get a worse product for 20% more, and it's gonna take a while for them to get here. Administration. Morons
draggar@reddit (OP)
Yep, I thought they would have learned that. I got a quote for a few laptops, they dragged their feet, then the prices went up $200.
My signature says if you are responding to a quote, respond within 2 business days. Prices are changing that quickly.
WellFedHobo@reddit
Overtime is now forbidden without pre-approval. Our supply budgets and discretionary spending allowances are gone. Even mice and keyboards require approval before purchase. Old servers are staying in production as long as we can get a support contract on them for drives and RAM. Things like monitors are not getting upgraded anymore. Our workstation and laptop replacement cycle has gone from 3 years to 5+ years (or whenever they fail in most cases). My stack of R730xd/R740xd servers might actually get pulled from the lab rack and put back into production if capacity is needed. We are having to eat the increased cost of laptops and macbooks for new hires where we have nothing on the shelf for them.
Where we once did old tech giveaways to get rid of old monitors, keyboards, workstations, network gear, and sometimes servers, we are piloting a program to offer them for low but agreeable prices with the usual "fresh Windows install, no support or warranty implied or otherwise" to add to the department budget.
~~Plus, I have a case of new spare 20, 22, and 24 TB WD Red Pro drives under my desk in case I need to buy a house in the next year and can trade for a down payment...~~
phantomtofu@reddit
I'm lucky that network equipment isn't as affected, and most of our switches and firewalls are already current-gen.
A data science R&D department was due to refresh a server cluster this year though, as is a major manufacturing site. Budgeting is a huge pain in "normal" years, and they simply can't get what they need with what was budgeted for this year. I suspect they'll buy what they can and just not retire all of the old.
I don't deal directly with workstation deployment. My laptop is four years old, and nearly eligible for refresh. I'm planning to ask if they can just replace the battery and I'll hold out as long as they're willing to support the model.
sssRealm@reddit
Just not buying any server hardware. Some upgrades we had planned don't fit in the yearly budget. At least we are fine with what we have for at least a year.
A_SingleSpeeder@reddit
We were just quoted $45K for four 3.84TB drives from Dell for a server that's less than a year old. Yea, that's not happening. This AI craze (which I think will die down as people wake up to what it really is - a glorified chatbot IMHO) has made everything go up.
Heck, we have a 7 year old Dev server that has a 1.92TB failing HD and Dell quoted us $6 for one replacement drive. Unreal.
Add on top of that, our data center bill is going to double so we're forcing Dev to consolidate stuff so we can go from 4 to 3 cabinets. We are not a large company either.
baw3000@reddit
Stuff costs what it costs. I do my best to keep costs down but at the end of the day it’s out of my control. We need what we need.
Creshal@reddit
We explained the situation to management in November, got both new purchases and warranty extensions for semi-old hardware done in December, and don't plan on throwing anything workable away until after this calms down.
Ramorous@reddit
We had a budget for some new servers throughout the year. We had one priced out at 100k and it ballooned to 300k (CAD) before we got a PO cut. Ram/nvme prices are crazy.
Needless to say we're waiting.
ohyeahwell@reddit
When the tariffs were first announced I started saving all old hardware just in case.
When Lenovo announced significant price hikes I ordered 7 laptops on top of what we already had in stock We’re good for a little bit.
I got rid of 10th gen last year but 11th gen is still holding on. Most of those are around the 5 year mark.
G305_Enjoyer@reddit
I still have 8th gen Intel in the fleet which assuming it's quad core, 16gb, NVMe should be fine.. but lately I am having people with 11th Gen and fresh reloads complain about performance.. I'm at a loss what to do with this problem, all this shitty chromium/electron software and web based everything is killing me. I've just bought some more laptops I didn't need even with a bunch "aging out on the shelf". Got to get those out I guess and hope throwing cores at the problem or placebo solves it for the complainers.
admlshake@reddit
I just told a guy yesterday who was sweating this. There is some stuff we need for a project the higher ups started but are now balking at the price of. "Submit the CAPEX request and if it gets denied, move on. When people ask make sure you tell them WHO denied it and to go talk to them. This isn't your problem. Let management explain why they turned it down. The complaints need to come from the users/managers/sr managers/VP's until they reach whomever can authorize the puchase. You complaining about it to them isn't going to accomplish jack shit other than getting your blood pressure up. This isn't your fight. Don't make it one."
dalonehunter@reddit
This seems to be the general sentiment and I heavily agree. This applies to many things we do and it's a lot better for your mental health as well. No need to stress about things not in your control.
tkst3llar@reddit
Equipment manufacturers will eventually catchup, lower prices or make planned obsolescence’s timeline speed up.
I’m sure upper management is throwing your requests into chat then doing whatever it tells them to do anymore anyway.
TerrificVixen5693@reddit
It’s not my money, kid.
Laser_Fish@reddit
I used to work in really small shops where I had to help make financial decisions. Now I'm in a larger org. I tell them what I need and they tell me they can't afford it right now. My boss documents reasons why things are being denied and why vulnerabilities are present. I'm annoyed as hell by the whole thing, but I can't do anything about it.
ryche24@reddit
Probably extending existing hardware support and trying to wait it out over 2-3 years 😭
The_Wkwied@reddit
"I'm just the mechanic, not the race car driver. If the bosses don't want to order new parts, and your car needs new parts, you are not going to have new parts."
"I'm the mechanic, not the money-man. Go talk to the money-man, racecar driver. Tell them that you need to buy new tyres so that you can have the mechanic install them so you can race in the rat race."
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
If it’s not on me to make the decision, I can give advice, but at the end of the day, it’s not on me.
If it’s not on me, I don’t let it in. It’s the only way to stay sane.
Nandulal@reddit
In my personal life I have pretty much lost all interest in new hardware.
packet_sniffs@reddit
We’re going from Lenovo to HP to cut costs and it’s been horrendous
The failure rate on these HPs has been annoyingly high
Valdaraak@reddit
A combination of being proactive and luck. When the writing got on the wall about the hardware shortages, we ordered a decent stockpile of laptops that should last us this year. We updated our server hardware at the beginning of last year so we're good to go there for the next 5 or so.
Everything else I just take the pricing to management and tell them that's what the thing they want costs.
hackrack@reddit
This is good for sysadmins. If what you are managing and supporting is as cheap as toilet paper then the business sees you as less important than if what you mange and support is as expensive as gold.
usa_reddit@reddit
I am just sending quotes to management as normal with the typical project plans. They can approve/deny and live with the consequences.
Server infrastructure is decent but user devices have really shot up, especially RAM upgrades.
Those Apple Neos are looking better and better.
joverclock@reddit
switched from dell to lenovo. Same specs but our base is now 32gb up from 16gb. Price is same.
PantsOnHeadCrazy@reddit
I had a friend point out that is is far worse than Covid. 10’s of thousands of people dying doesn’t move the needle nearly as much as a handful of companies swinging their dick around in an AI bubble.
fnordhole@reddit
Not my problem.
jasmeralia@reddit
Not my problem, really. Everything I manage as a DevOps lead is in the cloud, and there's a corporate IT department that handles managing workstations. But $WORK is also in a good place financially, and we just got our bonuses/raises. The most direct impact to me with the current hardware market issues is actually the non-work related delay of the Steam Machine launch.
SGG@reddit
It costs what it costs.
Get the requirements, build up at least one quote, maybe two, then provide them explaining the quote terms/validity period.
If you get a yes you put in the order as quickly as possible. If you get a question why it has increased so much you explain that component shortages and global instability have caused prices to skyrocket. If you get a no, you get a no.
AlfaHotelWhiskey@reddit
As a “tribe” I find IT sys admins / managers to be almost too emotionally tied to the expense of infrastructure and user endpoints. You should be efficient with your system design but the market price is the market price. It shouldn’t be so emotional an experience or a situation where emotion leads you to gaming the market when you just need to get the approval you need for your design and pull the trigger.
Sweet-Sale-7303@reddit
Found a hole. Needed a desktop for our business manager. Everything was out of stock at dell. Or so I though. Turns out dell still has a ton of AMD 16 gig towers in a warehouse in Pennsylvania. Ordered it yesterday and its out for delivery today. Wasn't that much more either.
EggElectrical669@reddit
Yeah it’s been rough, we’ve started holding onto older machines longer too if they still get the job done. Management finally understood once they saw the price jumps firsthand. It’s not ideal, but stretching lifecycle feels like the only real option right now.
cokebottle22@reddit
Server prices are insane. Anything with a little horsepower is $7500+
MetalEnthusiast83@reddit
Don’t own the company so don’t care.
matt95110@reddit
I’m pretty certain no one at my company is getting a raise this year so I don’t care if costs are going up.
Bipen17@reddit
I managed to get permission to spend this year's budget back in December and saved a good chunk of change.
But now I have practically zero budget til next april
thebigshoe247@reddit
I have yet to get a raise, any raise, at all, in all 8 years I've been there. I for one, welcome these price increases.
jasped@reddit
It’s the cost of doing business. If the company won’t purchase ahead then there isn’t much that you can do. Make them aware and continue forward.
Luckily I was able to bulk purchase this years stock in January because of the price increases coming. Since we bulk purchased I was able to negotiate about 15% better pricing than if I’d bought in smaller batches. Also helped by knocking off some monitor and dock pricing.
autogyrophilia@reddit
With gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes.
Don't you know this business can't afford an extra 20€ a month for the ERP system that 12 employees use?
tommymat@reddit
I caught a flash on hps site and bought direct. Used the corp card and saved a ton of money. Sent an email to finance showing price from Var versus direct. They thanked me for being responsible.