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The Cost Analysis feature set allows you to calculate the cost of storage and assign these costs to the appropriate Billable Entity that is using that storage. Logical or application-level objects (such as subclients, SQL databases, and Oracle databases) are associated with Billable Entities (e.g. departments or business units), and physical storage resources (e.g. primary storage entities such as disks, UNIX logical volumes, etc. and/or secondary storage entities such as, tape/optical media, disk storage, etc.) are assigned to Cost Categories. This organization allows you to compute the total cost of storage.
The Cost Analysis model may be configured in one of two available modes as described below:
CommNet Mode allows you to establish a common set of definitions for Cost Analysis throughout the enterprise, both for primary and secondary storage.
In the CommNet Mode, the CommServe will receive a set of Billable Entity and Cost Category definitions from the CommNet Server and use these definitions exclusively. Any previously defined local definitions and associations will be discarded.
The CommNet mode which includes the Billable Entity and Cost Category definitions are available to a CommCell, as soon as the CommServe is registered with the CommNet Server. Any subsequent additions or modifications to these definitions are also updated and available immediately to the CommServe.
Local Mode allows you to establish an independent costing model for each CommServe for SRM (primary storage) entities.
In the Local mode Billable Entities and Cost Categories are established within CommCell and hence these Local Mode definitions exist within the scope of the local CommCell only. Local Mode is the default setting for a CommCell and can be overridden to use the CommNet Mode.
Within the CommCell (both Local and CommNet mode) there are several available Cost Analysis Reports for SRM entities (primary storage) which show costs and usage throughout your enterprise. For more information, see Reports - Cost Analysis.
The cost to store data on a type of storage entity can be defined in a Cost Category, and assigned as a defined unit cost that can be used to group physical storage resources (e.g. disks, UNIX logical volumes) by their relative expense based on acquisition cost, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), or some other measure. Bear in mind that a particular physical disk (or UNIX logical volume) can have only one cost category assigned to it. For agents that support subclients, the contents of a single physical disk, logical volume or storage group can be divided among multiple subclients, which allow different billable entities to be assigned to their respective portions of the resource. In the case of NAS, multiple physical disks can comprise a volume which is included in subclient content, and thus cost categories are assigned to subclients containing those volumes, but not disks.
Cost categories defined for primary storage can be associated with actual primary storage resources in the CommCell Console for SRM entities both in the Local and CommNet mode. 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:
A named entity representing a department or other organizational unit that can be used to group application storage objects (databases, etc.) for the purposes of Cost Analysis. A Billable Entity can be associated with the following objects:
The following section provides the steps for setting up cost analysis in the CommNet Mode:
The following section provides the steps for setting up cost analysis in the Local Mode:
Prior to assigning a cost categories, ensure that the following holds true:
- A Cost Category should be assigned to a Logical Volume only (if it exists). If a Cost Category is assigned to the Physical Volume and not the Logical Volume, it will not be counted.
- Cost Category assignment to a Physical Disk is valid only when no Logical Volume(s) exist.
In a shared file system configuration (e.g. Veritas Cluster File System), two clients would be using the same disks/volume/file systems. The Operating System might present the same underlying storage with a different naming convention. When a cost category is assigned to a disk visible from one client, the same cost category is populated for the other disk visible from second client. In the case of the Logical Volume, the user has to manually assign the same cost category for the both volumes visible from the two clients.