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Single tier is the prevalent option, and because of that, rolling up actual storage costs and assigning those costs to various business units was not a gainful use of time or energy. Understandably, few IT departments captured expenses and even fewer communicated those expenses to business units. There are a few rare and exceptional IT departments who do roll up storage costs and bill-back departments. These IT groups are basically saying to the business units, &#034;Here is the amount of storage you use, please use less of it.&#034; They offer no tools or approaches for a business unit to take substantial action to reduce storage-related expenses. &#034;IT Bill-Back&#034; turns into an exercise in accounting, not motivation to use less or motivation to intelligently manage expensive storage resources. </p> <p class=text> Change boils down to spending and risk. Give the business units insight into spending, accompanied by real and meaningful alternatives to reduce spending at acceptable risk, and they&#039;ll cooperate. IT departments should know the cost of the storage they consume. They should be presented with options to reduce storage-related spending. </p> <p class=text> Help business units with clear information and alternative approaches to improve. Present business units with a before-and-after picture of their storage- related spending today, compared to storage-related spending relating to tiered storage. Spending is dynamic and changes with time, so a supporting bill-back system tracks spending and &#040;hopefully&#041; spending reductions. </p> <p class=text> Regarding risk, it must be said that there is no such thing as a risk-free storage system. It&#039;s all about how much risk is tolerable versus the amount of money that can be applied to reduce the risk. Business units should understand associated risks if they are to cooperate. It&#039;s useful and appropriate to present business units with a before-and-after picture of risk. Give business units insight into the risk they have right now. And show the business units how tiered storage will enable them to spend on risk reduction selectively&#151; where it matters most&#151;and therefore spend on risk effectively and frugally. </p> <h3>IT Bill-Back Example of SLA</h3> <p class=text> Even if the IT bill-back does not actually happen, it is worthwhile to publish a mock IT bill-back to communicate storage spending to business units, giving them the information they need to make informed decisions, to spend only where necessary, and to avoid consuming limited funds where ever possible. </p> <p class=text> An approximate unburdened annual costs per TB and for several two-tier alternatives could look like: </p> <ul class=text> <li><b>Scenario 1.</b> Single-Tier RAID-6 $3,000 per year per TB</li> <li><b>Scenario 2.</b> Tier 1 RAID-6, Tier 2 RAID-6</li> <ul> <li>$2,000 per year per TB</li> <li>&#040;assuming 20/80&#041;</li> </ul> <li><b>Scenario 3.</b> Tier 1 Mirrored, Tier 2 Mirrored $2,300 per year per TB</li> <ul> <li>&#040;assuming 20/80&#041;</li> <li>Tier 1 $4,000 per TB</li> <li>Tier 2 $2,000 per TB</li> </ul> <li><b>Scenario 4.</b> Tier 1 Mirrored & Replicated, Tier 2 Mirrored</li> <ul> <li>$2,800 per year per TB</li> <li>&#040;average&#041;</li> </ul> </ul> <p class=text> Table 1 contains an example IT bill-back. Of course, your mileage may vary&#151;storage system pricing and drive pricing are very dynamic and change all the time; soon enough, these estimates will be stale and inaccurate. The point is to get a feel for the comparisons of the total costs of typical Tier 1, compared to typical Tier 2, compared to typical Tier 3 total costs. As this is discussed, you can expect pushback and objections, probably along the lines of &#034;this is not just about TB/$; this is about reliability, data protection, and performance suited for the job at hand.&#034; And they will be correct; the point is to correct overengineering and common financial abuses that occur as a result of keeping Tier 2 data on Tier 1 systems and Tier 3 data on Tier 2 systems. </p> <center> <img src="http://www.ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/Images/2011-07SmithTable1.jpg" border="0" align="top"> </center> <p class=text><b>Table 1</b> Example IT Bill-Back </p> <p class=text> Expect resistance to change. IT technical folks will likely push to avoid work and risk by keeping single-tier storage. To get their skin in the game, they can go and present the business units with the bill for $4,000 per year per TB. Additionally we can expect IT technical folks to push for putting more than twenty percent of the storage on Tier 1. Again, this is a way to get their skin in the game; they can go and present the business units for the bill for a much larger number. </p> <p class=text> The last and most desirable solution, is to push as much data as possible to Tier 2; reducing the data stored on the expensive Tier 1 storage. This serves to reduce the total pricetag and improve performance and protection for Tier 1 data, where it matters most. And present the business units with a lower bill for better service in the areas where it matters most. </p> <p class=text> A low risk, high value pilot project will take a not-so-critical system and convert it to two-tier, track the total costs, and then develop best known methods for future projects. &#9830; <br> <br> <b>Read more <a href="http://ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/index.htm"><i>IT Performance Improvement</i></a></b> </p> <!--DISCLAIMER NOTICE AND COPYRIGHT--> <p class="copyright"> <br> <br> Certain names and logos on this page and others may constitute trademarks, servicemarks, or tradenames of <a HREF="http://www.crcpress.com" TARGET="_parent">Taylor & Francis LLC.</a> Copyright &#169; 2008&#151;2011 Taylor & Francis LLC. All rights reserved. </font> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> <td width="300"> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table style="background-color:#E0E0D1;" cellpadding="10" margin="5" border="0" valign="top"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan=2> <h3>This article is an excerpt from the book:</h3> </td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td> <center> <img src="http://www.ittoday.info/catalog/images/covers80w/K11571.jpg" Border=0> </center> </td> <td> <a href="http://www.crcpress.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?isbn=9781439834879&AF=WAUER" target="blank"> <font style="font-family:sans-serif; font-size:1em; text-align:left; font-weight:bold"> Data Center Storage: </font> <br> <font style="font-family:sans-serif; font-size:1em; text-align:left; font-weight:normal">Cost-Effective Strategies, Implementation, and Management </font> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <p class="text"> We overspend on data center storage & yet, we fall short of business requirements. It's not about the technologies. It's about the proper application of technologies to deliver storage services efficiently and affordably. It s about meeting business requirements dependent on data center storage. Spend less, deliver more. <br> <br> <a href="http://www.crcpress.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?isbn=9781439834879&AF=WAUER" target="blank"><b>Data Center Storage: Cost-Effective Strategies, Implementation, and Management</b></a> provides an industry insider s insight on how to properly scope, plan, evaluate, and implement storage technologies to maximize performance, capacity, reliability, and power savings. It provides business and use-case focused coverage of storage technology, including storage area networks (SAN), capacity-optimized drives, and solid-state drives. It offers key insights on financially responsible spending for data center storage. </p> <h3>About the Author</h3> <p class="text"> <b>Hubbert Smith</b> is an enterprise storage veteran with 25+ years of experience at Kodak, NCR, Intel, WDC, Samsung, and currently with LSI. He is a published author: Serial ATA Architectures and Applications; and patent holder: USPTO 7,007,142 Network Data Storage-related operations. Mr. Smith successfully managed 25 tech projects, negotiated and executed 15 significant technology-related business deals, and was a significant contributor in establishing the Serial ATA industry. </p> <br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </table> </body> </html>