Total cost of ownership model for data center technology evaluation

Abstract

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a comprehensive tool for cost estimation, provisioning, and decision making in a data center. The goal of this paper is to introduce an accurate yet simple model of TCO for data centers. TCO-estimation helps to clear the cost trade-offs, highlights the most impactful parameters on TCO in a datacenter which helps us to focus on research and development efforts to optimize such parameters. In a nutshell TCO consists of five major costs: infrastructure, server acquisition, power utilization, networking equipment, and maintenance cost. Each of these costs needs to be estimated as accurate as possible. This version of TCO model has distinguished features such as capturing different options for utility billing, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as a factor of saving power cost, and comprehensive maintenance model. By studying a few cases such as comparing different cooling solutions, high-efficiency power delivery solutions, and data center parametric sensitivity analysis, we can show the power of this analytical yet simple tool to connect the IT performance to the business performance in a data center.