Microsoft recently made the release date its new operating systems official. Windows 8.1 is set for launch on October 18, the same day Windows Server 2012 R2 will also see daylight.
And soon after the announcement, Microsoft quietly published (PDF link) the updated pricing and licensing sheets for the upcoming product. And the news is not very rosy, in terms of pricing of this upcoming server version of Windows.
Those in the market for the datacenter version are going to have to dig a little deeper — 28 percent deeper, in fact — into their pockets.
The Windows Server 2012 Datacenter SKU currently costs $4,089 (without the additional client-access licenses that are priced separately). Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter SKU, on the other hand, will come with a price tag of $6,155, again barebones.
A recent report over at ZDNet details this new pricing scheme.
The datasheet confirms that users and businesses that are Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) licensees that already have Windows Server 2012 will not have to pay anything additional to upgrade to the R2 version of the platform.
But the company does claim that it is making these changes based on market conditions.
The Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2012 R2 offers unlimited installations of Windows Server on licensed hosts, and is usually cheaper than licensing individual VMs via the standard editions of the server platform.
