System information
A Principled Technologies test report 39
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs.
legacy hardware solution
We do not include data center costs such as space or build costs because we assume these solutions would be
installed within the SMB or branch office, not in a centralized enterprise data center.
We include costs to power and cool the solutions using power utilization measurements we made during
testing. We estimate cooling costs as the same as power costs.
We estimate negligible downtime for VRTX and nine hours per server per year for the older legacy servers. To
calculate the cost of downtime, we estimate that the SMB has 40 users, with an average salary (including
benefits) of $30 an hour, and that each user loses 20 percent of their productivity for the hours the server is
down. Using these assumptions each hour of downtime costs the SMB $240 in end-user productivity.
Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution costs
Figure 16 shows the costs we calculated for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution.
Dell PowerEdge VRTX
platform
Unit
Cost per unit
Quantity
description
Quantity
Total cost
Acquisition costs
Hardware
Dell PowerEdge VRTX platform
Platform
$22,710.00
One VRTX
1
$22,710.00
Software licenses
Windows Server 2012
Standard Edition (processor
licenses)
Each server with
up to two
processors. Up to
two VMs per
license.
$883.00
Two servers with
one or two
processors each and
one to two VMs per
server
2
$1,766.00
Microsoft SQL Server® 2012
Standard (server + CAL
licensing)
One license per
SQL VM
$898.00
One SQL Server VM
1
$898.00
Microsoft Exchange Server
2013 Standard Edition (server
+ CAL licensing)
One license per
Exchange VM
$708.00
One Exchange VM
1
$708.00
VMware vSphere 5 Standard
for 1 processor
One per processor
$995.00
Number processors
4
$3,980.00
Setup
Cost per hour
$50.00
Number hours
16
$800.00
Total acquisition costs
$30,862.00
Annual costs
Hardware and software
support
Hardware support
Platform
$1,300.00
One VRTX
1
$1,300.00
Windows Server 2012
Standard Edition (Software
Assurance)
Each server with
up to two
processors
$220.75
Two servers with
two processors
2
$441.50