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The software provides a flexible costing model to calculate the cost of both the primary and secondary storage based on the types of storage media used. In addition the storage costs can be distributed to billable entities, such as departments within a company. The costing model can be defined centrally and is automatically distributed to all CommCells within the CommNet domain. The costing model consists of defining the cost categories and billable entities. These are explained in the following sections.
The estimated per megabyte cost to store and protect data on a type of storage entity can be defined in a cost category. Cost categories can be associated with the following storage entities:
Cost categories defined for primary storage can be associated with actual primary storage resources in the CommCell Console for SRM entities, once a CommCell is registered with the CommNet Server. Primary storage resources include:
Data protection operations that create protected copies of primary storage data are managed from the CommCell Console. Cost categories can be assigned to these storage resources in the CommNet Server and then can be viewed from a CommCell Console, once that CommCell is registered with the CommNet Server. Secondary storage resources include:
Note that if you do not have an elaborate model for defining cost categories and billable entities in you organization, you can also generate the Billing Charge Back Report using a fixed costing. See Fixed Costing section in Billing Charge Back Report for more information.
A billable entity can be associated with the following objects, wherever applicable:
After defining the Cost Categories and Billable Entities, you must associate the appropriate primary and secondary storage entities in the CommCells. You must also Synchronize Cells before generating the reports. See Cost Analysis - Example for more information.
The following reports can be generated:
For the Billing Configuration node, tasks are available from the Cost Categories Tasks and Billable Entities Tasks section of the CommNet Browser. These tasks allow you to view information regarding important aspects of the cost categories and billing entities that are configured within the CommNet domain.
The following is a list of Billing Configuration tasks:
When the following configurations are modified, the changes are immediately pushed to the active CommCell(s); cell synchronization is not required to propagate this information to the cells.
This information will be pushed accordingly when services (CommNet Server or Bull Calypso Server Event Manager) are restarted as well.