Re: Computing cost per GB in a SAN environment
- From: _firstname_@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:48:09 -0000
In article <1129217009.150591.47270@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<dwhitlow1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>What is the best practice for computing the cost per GB within a SAN?
....
>Also, is there some standard for factoring the human capital involved
>as well?
Standard: I don't know. Typical rule of thumb is that operating costs
(floorspace, power, cooling, excluding personnel, maintenance
contracts) at least double purchase cost, often triple it.
Administring a storage system (the personnel cost) is another huge
factor on top of that. I would guess that administration cost could
easily be 3x or 5x the purchase cost.
>I'm doing a study internally for our company and looking for the best
>way to do this.
This is VERY VERY hard to do. If you have the resources of a big
company, order yourself some research reports from Gartner or IDC, and
use them as a starting point only.
> The end result is to show the difference between
>varying levels of storage including FC vs. iSCSI-based storage, FC vs
>SATA HDDs, and things like that.
Everyone wants to do that. Every vendor of product X will try to
prove that product X will greatly reduce the "overhead" costs. It is
difficult or impossible to get unbiased data, unless you happen to
work for one of the large storage vendors, and happen to be the person
who is making up these dishonest claims.
>Any tips on how others have calculated this would be greatly
>appreciated.
I would start with Gartner and IDC, and then talk to people in similar
industries with similar-size data centers. Don't forget to include
costs like the network infrastructure (often charged to a different
department), or backup tape media. And I would take any information
that comes from an interested party (i.e., a vendor) which a huge
grain of salt. If you are talking to vendors, play them off against
each other; they typically have white papers and consultants that can
prove to you that their solution is the best; then have the competitor
dismantle their arguments.
Good luck! And by the way, I work in storage for a big company (I
won't tell you which one, nor which part of storage), and certainly
our storage system will have the lowest overall cost of ownership :-)
--
The address in the header is invalid for obvious reasons. Please
reconstruct the address from the information below (look for _).
Ralph Becker-Szendy _firstname_@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
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