$30k is a significant amount, especially in academic environment, I don't deny it. But it's not much for > 100 servers. In my previous job, I had licenses which were about 15k€ for one server (thanks Oracle...) and the Windows Server licenses were also pretty expensive. $300-500 per server/year is not much more than a Photoshop license for one designer. And if we talk big business (1000's of servers and even more), you will get very special pricing anyway.