I ran some numbers for a customer recently and discovered the single processor high-RAM hardware configurations can be more cost effective for most corporate windows applications hosted on VMware ESX. Keep in mind that the number of processors a server has doesn’t always need to equal the number of sockets.
This includes the cost of hardware, ESX Enterprise, and Microsoft Windows Data Center Edition.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p0EnXM-6h5gbFTHB27ffELA
What did I miss in these calculations. There are also per port costs to include for Network, Storage, backup agents, etc.
NOTE: Recently updated to show HP blades with 16 GB DIMMS
Reference:
VMware’s Multi-Core Pricing & Licensing Policy
http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/multicore.html
VMware’s End User License Agreement
http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/virtualcenter.html
1.6 "Processor" means a single, physical chip that houses no more than six (6) processor cores.