What's in the black box: what are the costs of the virtual and physical infrastructure
Gartner analysts in April reported that global spending on data centers will increase compared to last year and pass for $ 170 billion. So much Forbes evaluates the Apple brand, and it is this amount that passes through all the stores of the largest retailer in the US Walmart. In this article, we will look at where that kind of money goes in the context of the data center, and talk about what makes up the costs of virtual and physical infrastructure.
/ frame from video about our SDN + data center ( more about 1cloud infrastructure)
It doesn't matter if we are talking about a cloud solution or about hardware, the calculation should take into account direct, indirect and hidden costs. All these groups of expenses fit into the total cost of ownership (TCO). It is believed that the majority of the cost of physical infrastructure is equipment. However, according to Intel, the cost of "iron" represents 15% of the total cost of IT-assets.
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In addition to hardware, direct costs include the cost of software, consumable electricity and auxiliary systems: heating, cooling, ventilation. Indirect costs associated with the payment of the RFP system administrator or other employees.
As for the equipment, the company will need to purchase the server itself and think about the future architecture of the data center - whether it is a scalable, modular system with multiple units, or traditional racks. You need to consider a strategy for further expansion.
Server cost varies depending on performance. At this point, the business opens room for savings, because the decision in favor of a particular device is made independently. However, a cheaper, but low-performing server is not always beneficial. It is important to pay attention to energy efficiency, which just provides savings in the long term.
The server room is equipped with electrical systems that include main and intermediate switchgear, lighting, UPS, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, fire protection, monitoring and security systems.
Next stop is software. The server needs an operating system, such as Windows Server 2016, which will have to be purchased. The company may need other tools for solving corporate tasks: Microsoft SQL Server, Citrix Presentation Server, etc. You also need to organize a network. Software recommendations for creating a local network can be found at specialized sites .
Finally, we got to the electricity, the cost of which is quite large. The story of Marco Ponchielli from Rackspace is very telling. He cites data that earlier the cost of electricity in total costs was so insignificant that it took from 30 to 50 years to get closer to the cost of calculations.
Now, in areas with high tariffs, this period was reduced to two years, and on average to four. Marco also talked about the IT department, which spent $ 22 million on blade servers. The cost of their maintenance for three years resulted in $ 30 million, and the modernization of the infrastructure for their installation - in $ 54 million.
There is another item of expenditure - the room. Here, the price range depends entirely on whether the office is in the company's possession, whether the machine room is built and how much space it occupies.
In addition, you should consider frames. Even in the case of remote server hosting, an enterprise requires an administrator, whose average salary level, according to the Trud portal, is about 40 thousand rubles in Russia. The size of the state will depend on the size of the infrastructure, so the calculations here are individual for each case.
For 2–4 years, the costs of both local and cloud solutions are limited to maintenance and support. However, after about five years, according to network administrators, the company is faced with the need to update corporate server solutions.
In the life cycle of physical servers, this is followed by new capital expenditures - this is the main item of hidden costs in the long run. In addition, the effectiveness of new physical equipment is much higher than the old one. Therefore, it is often possible to put an equal sign between outdated technologies and increased energy costs.
Do not forget that these investments for an impressive period also depreciate over time due to inflation. Equipment prices are increasing as demand increases over time.
The conditional cost estimate for creating a complete picture should also include intangible costs: the cost of transferring software and databases to the new platform and the cost of solutions that reduce the risk of migration.
Thus, the cost of maintaining the local infrastructure increases from year to year, and it is closed for a short hardware life cycle.
/ 1cloud
From the consumer’s point of view, the cloud economy is very simple: choose the configuration you need and pay the rent. It is enough to consider some aspects. For example, staff will need to be trained so that employees can effectively manage cloud infrastructure. In addition, the cost of migration to the cloud should be recorded in the hidden costs. Sometimes it includes unsuccessful attempts to work with various providers. All this ultimately costs money.
In the case of the cloud, the cost calculations for the client are fairly transparent, but what are they for the provider? By and large, the situation is similar to the corporate infrastructure, but, of course, the scale is much larger.
A quality Tier III data center connects multiprocessor servers located on disk arrays to the network via high-speed channels. For this, several interchangeable backbone routers are used. Cloud infrastructure is protected by packet analysis. Switches that form a system with duplicate connections are responsible for the distribution of network traffic. Storage should be provided with reliable hardware and software solutions capable of handling physical disks and software updates, as well as load balancing.
High availability is achieved by backup systems. For stability and optimization of work, the software suite has been supplemented with special solutions: energy efficiency control, dynamic load distribution, control panel, protection means, and so on.
As already noted, the human resource is another cost column in the work of the data center. Depending on the skills of the staff and geographic location, the annual salaries of the entire state serving the data center range from $ 75,000 to more than $ 125,000, according to Joe Clabby, head of research company Clabby Analytics. Do not forget that, in addition to administrators, dozens of other employees serve the data center. For example, Tier III data centers require server security.
But despite such scales, in some cases cloud providers manage to save money to customers. This is possible because the scale of operations in data centers allows operators to receive discounts on equipment and solutions.
At the same time, capital expenditures on equipment are distributed in terms of one rack or gigabyte of storage. Costs are amortized over the entire life cycle of the equipment. In addition, we should not forget about the hardware that serves the entire infrastructure - cooling systems, UPS, protection systems. Costs for them are "distributed" between servers.
The ecosystem of virtual providers allows the use of fewer servers, which reduces power consumption. In addition, given the scale and backup systems, it becomes possible to redistribute and shut down servers without affecting the system. According to the Uptime Institute, the decommissioning of a single 1U server rack can save more than $ 2 thousand annually.
According to the study of the Uptime Institute, in 2015, about 30% of all servers were not used, that is, they lay "dead weight" on the shoulders of providers. Worldwide, there were about 10 million "comatose" servers. In monetary terms, this is at least $ 30 billion. This is why cloud providers “get rid of the ballast”, thereby saving decent money for themselves and the client.
Therefore, companies are increasingly paying attention to cloud services. A recent report showed that investing in private data centers loses meaning for IT companies. Instead, managers are trying to increase investment in the development of business applications. Representatives of 70% of organizations surveyed said they plan to increase security costs in 2017, 67% gave priority to cloud applications, and another 52% to cloud infrastructure.
PS In our corporate blog there are other articles on the topic of virtual infrastructure :
/ frame from video about our SDN + data center ( more about 1cloud infrastructure)
Corporate server costs
It doesn't matter if we are talking about a cloud solution or about hardware, the calculation should take into account direct, indirect and hidden costs. All these groups of expenses fit into the total cost of ownership (TCO). It is believed that the majority of the cost of physical infrastructure is equipment. However, according to Intel, the cost of "iron" represents 15% of the total cost of IT-assets.
')
In addition to hardware, direct costs include the cost of software, consumable electricity and auxiliary systems: heating, cooling, ventilation. Indirect costs associated with the payment of the RFP system administrator or other employees.
As for the equipment, the company will need to purchase the server itself and think about the future architecture of the data center - whether it is a scalable, modular system with multiple units, or traditional racks. You need to consider a strategy for further expansion.
Server cost varies depending on performance. At this point, the business opens room for savings, because the decision in favor of a particular device is made independently. However, a cheaper, but low-performing server is not always beneficial. It is important to pay attention to energy efficiency, which just provides savings in the long term.
The server room is equipped with electrical systems that include main and intermediate switchgear, lighting, UPS, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, fire protection, monitoring and security systems.
Next stop is software. The server needs an operating system, such as Windows Server 2016, which will have to be purchased. The company may need other tools for solving corporate tasks: Microsoft SQL Server, Citrix Presentation Server, etc. You also need to organize a network. Software recommendations for creating a local network can be found at specialized sites .
Finally, we got to the electricity, the cost of which is quite large. The story of Marco Ponchielli from Rackspace is very telling. He cites data that earlier the cost of electricity in total costs was so insignificant that it took from 30 to 50 years to get closer to the cost of calculations.
Now, in areas with high tariffs, this period was reduced to two years, and on average to four. Marco also talked about the IT department, which spent $ 22 million on blade servers. The cost of their maintenance for three years resulted in $ 30 million, and the modernization of the infrastructure for their installation - in $ 54 million.
There is another item of expenditure - the room. Here, the price range depends entirely on whether the office is in the company's possession, whether the machine room is built and how much space it occupies.
In addition, you should consider frames. Even in the case of remote server hosting, an enterprise requires an administrator, whose average salary level, according to the Trud portal, is about 40 thousand rubles in Russia. The size of the state will depend on the size of the infrastructure, so the calculations here are individual for each case.
For 2–4 years, the costs of both local and cloud solutions are limited to maintenance and support. However, after about five years, according to network administrators, the company is faced with the need to update corporate server solutions.
In the life cycle of physical servers, this is followed by new capital expenditures - this is the main item of hidden costs in the long run. In addition, the effectiveness of new physical equipment is much higher than the old one. Therefore, it is often possible to put an equal sign between outdated technologies and increased energy costs.
Do not forget that these investments for an impressive period also depreciate over time due to inflation. Equipment prices are increasing as demand increases over time.
The conditional cost estimate for creating a complete picture should also include intangible costs: the cost of transferring software and databases to the new platform and the cost of solutions that reduce the risk of migration.
Thus, the cost of maintaining the local infrastructure increases from year to year, and it is closed for a short hardware life cycle.
/ 1cloud
Costs for virtual servers
From the consumer’s point of view, the cloud economy is very simple: choose the configuration you need and pay the rent. It is enough to consider some aspects. For example, staff will need to be trained so that employees can effectively manage cloud infrastructure. In addition, the cost of migration to the cloud should be recorded in the hidden costs. Sometimes it includes unsuccessful attempts to work with various providers. All this ultimately costs money.
In the case of the cloud, the cost calculations for the client are fairly transparent, but what are they for the provider? By and large, the situation is similar to the corporate infrastructure, but, of course, the scale is much larger.
A quality Tier III data center connects multiprocessor servers located on disk arrays to the network via high-speed channels. For this, several interchangeable backbone routers are used. Cloud infrastructure is protected by packet analysis. Switches that form a system with duplicate connections are responsible for the distribution of network traffic. Storage should be provided with reliable hardware and software solutions capable of handling physical disks and software updates, as well as load balancing.
High availability is achieved by backup systems. For stability and optimization of work, the software suite has been supplemented with special solutions: energy efficiency control, dynamic load distribution, control panel, protection means, and so on.
As already noted, the human resource is another cost column in the work of the data center. Depending on the skills of the staff and geographic location, the annual salaries of the entire state serving the data center range from $ 75,000 to more than $ 125,000, according to Joe Clabby, head of research company Clabby Analytics. Do not forget that, in addition to administrators, dozens of other employees serve the data center. For example, Tier III data centers require server security.
But despite such scales, in some cases cloud providers manage to save money to customers. This is possible because the scale of operations in data centers allows operators to receive discounts on equipment and solutions.
At the same time, capital expenditures on equipment are distributed in terms of one rack or gigabyte of storage. Costs are amortized over the entire life cycle of the equipment. In addition, we should not forget about the hardware that serves the entire infrastructure - cooling systems, UPS, protection systems. Costs for them are "distributed" between servers.
The ecosystem of virtual providers allows the use of fewer servers, which reduces power consumption. In addition, given the scale and backup systems, it becomes possible to redistribute and shut down servers without affecting the system. According to the Uptime Institute, the decommissioning of a single 1U server rack can save more than $ 2 thousand annually.
According to the study of the Uptime Institute, in 2015, about 30% of all servers were not used, that is, they lay "dead weight" on the shoulders of providers. Worldwide, there were about 10 million "comatose" servers. In monetary terms, this is at least $ 30 billion. This is why cloud providers “get rid of the ballast”, thereby saving decent money for themselves and the client.
Therefore, companies are increasingly paying attention to cloud services. A recent report showed that investing in private data centers loses meaning for IT companies. Instead, managers are trying to increase investment in the development of business applications. Representatives of 70% of organizations surveyed said they plan to increase security costs in 2017, 67% gave priority to cloud applications, and another 52% to cloud infrastructure.
PS In our corporate blog there are other articles on the topic of virtual infrastructure :
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/338082/
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