System information

A Principled Technologies test report 41
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs.
legacy hardware solution
Annual costs
Annual costs include mission critical support for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX platform, Microsoft Software
Assurance for the Microsoft software and VMware Support and Subscription costs for the VMware software, staff time
to maintain the hardware and support the VMs, and energy costs for powering and cooling the platforms.
Hardware support
Dell supplied annual cost for mission critical support for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution that we tested.
Software support
We estimated Microsoft Software Assurance costs at 25 percent per year for the Microsoft server software. We
used VMware prices for one-year Basic support for the VMware software.
4
Energy costs for power and cooling
We measured power utilization while running the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution under load and at idle. We
average the two values to estimate average power utilization for the solution in an SMB environment. We estimated
annual energy costs for a solution running around the clock, year round, at that average power. For the energy cost, we
used the national average commercial cost of 9.999 cents per KwH for the year ending March 2013 reported by the US
Energy Information Administration.
5
We estimated equal costs to power and to cool the equipment, so we doubled the
cost for power to get energy costs for power and cooling.
Systems management
With mission-critical Dell support for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution, our hypothetical SMB should be able to
keep in-house costs for hardware maintenance low. We include costs for one hour per month hardware management
and two hours per month VMware management for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution.
Legacy solution costs
Figure 17 shows the costs we calculated for the legacy solution.
Legacy costs
Unit
Cost per unit
Quantity
description
Quantity
Total cost
Acquisition costs
Software licenses
Windows Server 2012
Standard Edition (processor
licenses)
Each server with up to
two processors. Up to
two VMs per license.
$883.00
Three servers
with one or two
processors each
3
$2,649.00
Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Standard (server + CAL
licenses)
One server
$898.00
One server with
SQL installed
1
$898.00
4
www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/pricing.html
5
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_06_a