Since we're doing more low power cores nowadays, maybe Microsoft should charge per watt? ;)

I would totally get behind that, especially if it could be actual wattage used and not just based on the tdp of the CPU. Nothing sucks more than having to pay huge money for servers that are sub 5% utilization because you're trying to have some headroom.

and from time to time a MS sales rep drops by and measures your power consumption to recalculate cost.

or maybe have a power consumption tracking dongle that sends the information back to MS for billing while the MS techs just check if those are connected to the correct machine.

Great ideas!

Wasn't the fact that Microsoft began charging per processor, one of the reasons the antitrust lawsuit against it started?

But these days Microsoft is also beginning to exclude third-party browsers from its store, so I guess they don't care they're repeating the same violations all over again. Too much money on the line, when the worst case scenario is a slap on the wrist financially and some "monitoring" by federal agencies.

Or use postgres for $0 and hire a database expert for 2-3 years.

>$456k for one server - ouch!

Sounds like an IBM machine

Considering DB2 is bundled as part of the OS license for IBM i, 10K/core is still cheaper than SQL Server (though then you get to pay for drivers...because we're fucking IBM).