System information

A Principled Technologies test report 38

Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs.

legacy hardware solution

APPENDIX D – TCO CALCULATIONS

In this appendix, we estimate and compare 5-year costs for the two solutions we tested in this report. Each

solution supports one SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition instance, one Microsoft Exchange 2013 Standard Edition

instance, and one instance for file/print -- in three VMs on the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution and on individual servers in

the legacy solution.

 Dell PowerEdge VRTX – we include acquisition costs and annual costs to run the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution

we tested in this report.

 Legacy solution – we compared performance of the Dell PowerEdge VRTX to a set of three 4- to 5-year-old HP

servers, a shared HP storage array, and a switch. We estimate costs for this solution.

Our cost estimates are conservative. We do not for example include costs to replace the legacy servers, which by

the end of this analysis would be reaching 10 years old and increasingly susceptible to breakdown. We do include a

downtime cost for this solution to account for its growing age and greater likelihood to fail compared to the newer Dell

PowerEdge VRTX solution, which is designed for high availability.

Key assumptions

 For the legacy solution, we assume the SMB would repurpose legacy equipment from other uses, so the SMB

would need to purchase software for it.

 For the legacy solution, we assume the SMB purchases post-warranty hardware support each year from the

vendor for the servers and storage array.

 We use current dollars for all calculations.

 We use undiscounted costs for hardware and software.

 We annualize multi-year costs for software support.

 We assume all tasks are carried out by a system administrator earning in salary and benefits the equivalent of

$50 an hour.

 For the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution, we include staff costs for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution to manage

the on-premise hardware and VMware VSphere 5 virtualization.

 For the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution, we assume an existing VMware vCenter server that is not included in this

cost analysis.

 We consider only the costs that are platform specific. We thus omit staff costs for tasks that would be common

to the two solutions and would require same or similar effort and cost on the two solutions – costs of setting up

and maintaining the SQL Server and Exchange databases, updating the operating system versions, and updating

the SQL server versions as updates become available over the 5-year TCO timeframe.

 We include only server licensing in this model and omit client access license costs and other client licensing.

 We include software license costs with acquisition costs and software support costs with annual costs.

Based on the national average System Administrator II salary and benefits of $103,649 as reported by Salary.com in June 2013. We

divided that value by 2080 hours (52 40-hour weeks) to get a rounded value of $50 per hour staff time. See:

swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Systems-Administrator-Salary-

Details.aspx?hdcbxbonuse=off&isshowpiechart=true&isshowjobchart=false&isshowsalarydetailcharts=false&isshownextsteps=false

&isshowcompanyfct=false&isshowaboutyou=false