The cost benefits of a SAN: an analysis of total cost of ownership (TCO) of an iSCSI SAN, fibre channel SAN, and direct-attached storage.The growth of business data continues to explode, along with the need to store it. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a study by Merrill Lynch Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MER TYO: 8675 ), through its subsidiaries and affiliates, provides capital markets services, investment banking and advisory services, wealth management, asset management, insurance, banking and related products and services on a global basis. and McKinsey & Company, annual growth of data storage capacity will average a startling star·tle v. star·tled, star·tling, star·tles v.tr. 1. To cause to make a quick involuntary movement or start. 2. To alarm, frighten, or surprise suddenly. See Synonyms at frighten. 76% over the next five years. To squeeze the most data storage out of every IT dollar, managers must start by assessing all data storage costs--those tied to initial equipment acquisition, as well as those for resource management, capacity use, and most importantly Adv. 1. most importantly - above and beyond all other consideration; "above all, you must be independent" above all, most especially , system downtime The time during which a computer is not functioning due to hardware, operating system or application program failure. . For years, adding storage meant purchasing additional servers, tape libraries, and disk enclosures A disk enclosure is essentially a specialized chassis designed to hold and power disk drives while providing a mechanism to allow them to communicate to one or more separate computers. to attach to the server--a costly and inefficient approach that left large amounts of storage capacity and computing computing - computer power unused. Today, storage area networks (SAN)--high-speed networks that connect multiple storage devices so that they may be accessed on all servers in a local area network (LAN (Local Area Network) A communications network that serves users within a confined geographical area. The "clients" are the user's workstations typically running Windows, although Mac and Linux clients are also used. ) or wide area network (WAN)--have been proven to reduce management costs as a percentage of overall storage costs. And there are many other benefits of SANs as well, including: * Increased disk utilization * Reduced data center/rack floor space * Improved data availability Refers to the degree to which data can be instantly accessed. The term is mostly associated with service levels that are set up either by the internal IT organization or that may be guaranteed by a third party datacenter or storage provider. * Improved LAN/WAN LAN/WAN Local Area Network/Wide Area Network performance * Reduced storage maintenance costs * Improved protection of critical data With SANs, expanding storage to keep pace with data growth is as simple and economical as purchasing a disk array or adding drives to an existing disk array. But, how can an IT manager gauge return on investment of a SAN? One way is to determine total cost of ownership (TCO (1) (Total Cost of Ownership) The cost of using a computer. It includes the cost of the hardware, software and upgrades as well as the cost of the inhouse staff and/or consultants that provide training and technical support. See ROI. ) for three alternatives: an iSCSI SAN, a fibre channel SAN or traditional direct-attached storage Direct-attached storage (DAS) refers to a digital storage system directly attached to a server or workstation, without a storage network in between. It is a retronym, mainly used to differentiate non-networked storage from SAN and NAS. (DAS). This paper illustrates how a SAN is a cost-effective way for IT managers to scale storage to meet the demands of their burgeoning data growth. iSCSI SAN vs. FC SAN vs. DAS: An Analysis of TCO There are two types of costs associated with purchasing new storage. The first and most easily recognizable are the hard--or direct--costs. These costs bear directly on the IT budget and include capital spending capital spending Spending for long-term assets such as factories, equipment, machinery, and buildings that permits the production of more goods and services in future years. , labor, outsourcing, professional services (job) professional services - A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products. , support contracts, and training. Hard costs are usually out-of-pocket expenses out-of-pocket expenses n. moneys paid directly for necessary items by a contractor, trustee, executor, administrator or any person responsible to cover expenses not detailed by agreement. at the time of purchase of new storage. The second type of costs--soft, or indirect--are less tangible, and often hidden. They typically result from reduced staff productivity or lost business revenue when a system goes offline, such as for an upgrade, for repairs, or to accommodate large backup windows. Both hard and soft costs must be considered when calculating TCO for any storage investment. What follows is an analysis of what a typical company would go through in planning to expand its storage capacity by 2TB over the next 12 months, including how the company would calculate TCO for their various storage options. The types of storage the company is evaluating are: * SCSI-based DAS * SAN using high-performance fibre channel * SAN using low-cost iSCSI The costs that are of most interest are: Hard Costs * Total acquisition cost * Total annual administration cost * Total capacity utilization Capacity Utilization measures the rate at which a firm makes use of their capital productive capacities, such as factories and machinery. Capacity Utilization generally rises when the economy is healthy and falls when demand softens. Soft Costs * Storage availability * Cost per downtime hour (based on estimated downtime) Factors most relevant to the IT team's evaluation include: Hardware * Installation * Support * Scalability Software * Administrative (discovery & configuration) * Data management * Reporting (usage & failures) Following, is an itemized list of the hardware and software costs to deploy an iSCSI SAN, a fibre channel SAN, and a traditional SCSI SCSI in full Small Computer System Interface Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB. DAS solution. Once hardware and software costs have been estimated, the TCO and ROI (Return On Investment) The monetary benefits derived from having spent money on developing or revising a system. In the IT world, there are more ways to compute ROI than Carter has liver pills (and for those of you who never heard of that expression, it means a lot). for each technology can be calculated. Determining Costs Administrative Costs administrative costs, n.pl the overhead expenses incurred in the operation of a dental benefits program, excluding costs of dental services provided. The storage management ratio between DAS and SAN is 5:1--meaning it takes five times as many administrators to manage DAS storage as the same amount of SAN storage. Additionally, one administrator can manage a maximum of 4800GB of SAN storage. Using the 5:1 DAS to SAN ratio, one administrator can manage 960GB of DAS storage. Capacity Utilization Costs Based on the finding of a Merrill Lynch/McKinsey study that a SAN is far more efficient than DAS in using available disk space--85 percent versus 50 percent disk utilization, respectively--a company doing a TCO analysis like this would calculate that a SAN provides 35% more storage available for future growth. Soft Costs The primary factor used to determine soft costs in an analysis such as this is unplanned downtime. To calculate downtime, a company would review the reliability of its DAS system over the past year. Such a review in this sample analysis reveals 70 hours of unplanned downtime (5.8 hours per month), for 97.8% availability (based on 12 hours a day, 5 days a week). Based on industry data on SAN availability, a company could reasonably estimate that a SAN would experience only one hour of unscheduled unscheduled Adjective not planned or intended Adj. 1. unscheduled - not scheduled or not on a regular schedule; "an unscheduled meeting"; "the plane made an unscheduled stop at Gander for refueling" downtime per year, for an overall availability of 99.96%. Thus, a company doing this analysis would base its soft-cost calculations on 97.8% uptime for a DAS and 99.96% uptime for SAN. To determine the cost of downtime, a company doing this analysis could use the industry downtime cost estimates in "IT Performance Engineering & Measurement Strategies: Quantifying Performance Loss," an October 2000 report by the Meta Group. This study showed the average revenue lost per employee-hour for a 2,000-employee company was $248.65, and the loss totaled $497,300 if all systems went down during peak work hours. A company doing this calculation could assume that unplanned downtime would affect only 5% of its work force (a conservative estimate) and thus cost it $24,865 per hour. Conclusion A thorough calculation of all hard costs has shown that, while a traditional SCSI DAS deployment has the lowest acquisition cost, it bears a much higher total cost of ownership than either a fibre channel SAN or an iSCSI SAN. Additionally, the TCO of an iSCSI SAN is lower than that of a fibre channel SAN. However, TCO should not be the only criteria for determining the right SAN solution. Despite slightly higher costs, fibre channel SANs provide highly reliable storage at the highest performance. And, iSCSI SANs offer the most affordable and scalable storage. Overall, however, SANs are an ideal solution for addressing the needs of burgeoning data growth.
Hardware and Software Costs
DAS iSCSI FC
HBA/RAID Controller $ 2,431 $ 5,280 $ 7,200
Switch $ 6,779 $ 39,400
Cables $ 418 $ 483 $ 809
RAID Box/JBOD $ 12,787 $ 23,947 $ 60,778
HDD $ 18,357 $ 18,357 $ 18,870
Tape Library $ 15,039 $ 13,889 $ 13,889
TP Drives $ 17,199 $ 8,599 $ 8,599
Media $ 1,519 $ 1,519 $ 1,519
Cleaning TP $ 317 $ 158 $ 158
PC-SCSI RTR $ 4,149
Software $ 4,080 $ 2,790 $ 28,555
HW & SW Cost Total $ 72,147 $ 81,801 $183,926
TCO Analysis
Enterprise Storage Cost DAS iSCSI SAN FC SAN
Comparison
Direct (Hard) Costs:
Storage Acquisition
Planned Capacity - (12 Months) 2,000 2,000 2,000
GB
$/MB $ 0.04 $ 0.05 $ 0.09
Total Acquisition Cost $ 80,000 $ 100,000 $ 180,000
Storage Administration
Capacity per Administrator 2000 4800 4800
(GB)
Number of Administrators 1.0 0.4 0.4
Burdened Salary per $ 95,000 $ 95,000 $ 110,000
Administrator
Total Annual Administrator Cost $ 95,000 $ 38,000 $ 44,000
Installation
Installation Cost $ 800 $ 5,000
Capacity Utilisation 50% 85% 85%
Increased Storage to mach SAN 1,400
(GB)
$/MB $ 0.04
Utilisation Cost without SAN $ 56,000
Total Cost of $ 231,000 $ 138,800 $ 229,000
Ownership Based on
Direct Costs
Total Cost of $ 0.12 $ 0.07 $ 0.11
Ownership Based on
Direct Costs ($/MB)
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