Virtualization Cost Model

Back after the New Year.  Feels good.  I wanted to post my virtualization cost model that I developed when virtualization got out of control at a previous engagement.  See my virtualization crack blog posting for more information on that.

The cost model front end was easy to develop.  If you have been doing consulting for many years I am sure your Excel skills could do the lists, if statements, links and data filtering that is on the front end of this model.

The hard part is the back end.  There are a lot of equations that I worked for days on to figure out specifics on the model.  Some examples being: How do you calculate price per port?  How do you calculate price of cooling?  How do you calculate the cost of physical space?  Etc.

I had to sit down and figure out these equations and then sit down with business owners, finance and IT to get these base costs to plug into the equations.  

Do we include purchase price of past equipment?  How do you calculate the cost of a GB?  Is it just the cost of the array/# of GB?  What if you add disk?

I came up with some weird ideas, but it worked and was agreed upon in the end.  I also had to work with someone across the world to calculate DR and backup replication costs.

For the network, I just did the total cost of the equipment/ports for the cost per port.  This isnt the best way to do it, but for the network gear, that is what was agreed on.

Backup costs include de-duplication.  How do you figure that out?  Actually that is easy.  I just did some averages for ratio and came up with a total size based on that.  For example a 5 TB de-duplicated array really is 50 TB, so I used that number.

Anyways, after I figured out all of the equations I plugged in the numbers into a worksheet and the front end references those.  There are drop down lists, which contain if statements based on the choice.

Here is a screenshot of the first version of the model.  For some reason I cant find the latest version on my USB stick.

Let me know if you have questions.