IT staff outlines data‑center refresh options amid rising VMware costs

On Jan. 21 the Communications Technology Committee reviewed options to replace an aging district data center appliance and discussed shifting to a five‑year Dell Apex arrangement rather than buying equipment outright.

Mr. Cuzzo explained the district runs a primary data center at the committee’s building and a redundant data center at the high school. "All of our virtual servers are run on this platform," he said, describing Dell VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure and noting that Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has driven licensing costs higher. He reported that a single appliance’s annual licensing now runs about $32,000 and that Broadcom has significantly increased prices since acquiring VMware.

The Dell Apex five‑year option presented shows lower annual cash outlay compared with buying hardware outright. Cuzzo said a four‑node configuration originally quoted at about $68,000 per year had been reduced—after removing unneeded network capacity—to roughly $55,000 per year, which he said fits within his refresh budget. He asked the committee for feedback before bringing the matter forward to the board for eventual approval.

Committee members questioned whether the district’s hosted SaaS offerings would allow reduced internal infrastructure; staff said most core applications are third‑party hosted and that internal infrastructure is largely for network functions and redundancy. Several members discussed lease-versus‑buy tradeoffs and noted the need to include the proposal in the district’s three‑to‑five‑year budgeting projection.

No procurement action was taken at the committee meeting. Staff said the plan would be fleshed out with finance and eventually presented to the board.