Storage Is Not as Cheap as You Think
Darryl Richardson - Experienced Sales Engineer/Architect
Lead Solutions Architect - Egnyte, Podcaster, Public Speaker, Visionary
How many times have you heard “Storage is cheap!” The storage is cheap mentality has been the norm for 10 years. As storage costs continue to get lower and many new storage vendors enter this crowded market the same message is clear, IT Organizations still believe storage is cheap. Let’s analyze this theology to determine if storage is as cheap as you think it is. There are many costs associated with storage of Enterprise data, the common cost I continue to see is around $3200.00 per TB per year to manage.
If we look at the costs of storing a mere petabyte of data here are some statistics of interest.
A single PB of storage with LFF drives would take up a full rack of storage space. -Associated costs for this Petabyte of data would also apply
?As you do not simply “Store” a Petabyte of data, there are many other devices needed to manage this amount of storage; controllers, server enclosures, network devices, management systems for allocating storage, raid controllers etc.
Still Think Storage is cheap? Let us look at some costs for this “Cheap storage”.
The Cost factor for “Cheap Storage”
A quick search of retailers in the storage business would return the following costs.
HPE StoreEasy with 64TB option would start at $11,500.00, this is a starter device with Windows Storage Server installed; You would need sixteen of these storage devices to create the capacity of 1 Petabyte; Cost $184,000 for an entry level storage device. Each of these storage servers are 2U, so you will need at least thirty-two rack spaces in your server rack.
The power requirements for each of these devices is 2x800 watts. This is equivalent to 2 commercial clothing dryers running 24x7. Add the redundant power supply to this x 16 and the cost would be estimated about $10,000 for the UPS and would add another 8 2U (additional sixteen rack spaces) devices to the rack which already holds 16 Storage servers.
Each storage server has 4x1GB Ethernet ports, this means to get full connectivity you will need an enterprise network switch that will support 64x1GB ethernet ports, and another 8x1GB Ethernet ports for the UPS management. That is a minimum of 72x1GB ethernet ports. I was able to find a 48-port managed ethernet switch for about $800.00 on Amazon, I would need two of them- $1600.00 for the network switch, not adding the enhanced CAT5 cables to connect the devices. These devices are 2U devices so it will take up 4 rack slots.
As for the rack itself with the above-mentioned sizes you will need a minimum of 52U or 52 rack slots, a typical enterprise rack will ship with a total of 42 total available spaces. A 42U Enterprise device rack is about $1000.00 x 2 since we are already at 50U for all the devices needed.
Ok, now that we have our 1 Petabyte of storage spec’d out, the cost is a mere: $197,600 for devices with a 3-year service life, as most devices reach the end of supportability after 3 years.
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We will need to back-up this storage as well, typical costs of Enterprise Backup range from $200-$400 per TB on the low end. You can expect to double the cost of your storage with your backup costs, there is also the retention of specific data sets. This means that you simply do not purchase 1 Petabyte of storage, you will need to estimate your retention sets of your backups as well. This typically means, even with a high dedupe rate, you will need an average of 40% more backup space than your total storage. In this case we will use the total of 1.4 PB of backup licensing and storage of this data. There are time allocations as well to backup this much data, in a lot of cases two identical 1PB storage arrays simply mirror each other. This would mean essentially doubling your storage costs above for data protection. If you do not have the space for now 4 complete storage 42U storage racks, then the backup solution is a space saver. On the low end for the costs associated with enterprise backup I would estimate the total backup license and costs would be roughly $560,000 to backup ?this much data and retain data retention sets for disaster recovery purposes.
Total for 1 Petabyte of Enterprise storage would be estimated to be about $757,600 USD.
Still think Storage is cheap. We have not put the personnel in place.
Two Storage admins to manage this data protection and storage will be a minimum of $70k per year, which also does not include the insurance and benefits. This total salary is very low, and would be an entry level salary, an experience IT Storage Admin for a normal Enterprise would be more than $100k salary per year.
Total cost for a Petabyte of storage is estimated to be $957,600 for a three-year hardware cost estimate, which equals $935 per TB. Still think storage is cheap.
The Aparavi Solution
Proper data management platforms like Aparavi – The Data Intelligence and Automation Platform can help in the reduction of stored data. If you can identify and reduce the total amount of unstructured data being stored, your costs will naturally be less. Aparavi gives your organization the knowledge about the data to make informed decisions, reduce the risk, and reduce your storage hardware footprint on all levels. Reducing the hardware storage footprint helps with Data center consolidation, cuts power usage and requirements, and can help to reduce the amount of enterprise level backup application licenses by as much as 60% year over year. Aparavi can provide an immediate ROI, to help you understand the data being stored, and cut the risk factor down as well. With enterprise search capabilities, all unstructured data stores will be indexed for content, complete metadata, and classified for regulated data requirements. Understanding your data, what it is, when was it accessed, and the age factor can help reduce the dependency of the hardware refresh every three years.
Executive Summary
The estimated costs per user for the typical enterprise for year of storage is $450.00 per user. The mindset of “Storage-is-cheap” is what storage vendors want you to believe, because they market the lowest cost meter possible, in this case $935.00 is under $1000.00 and gives the illusion of being cost effective, however there are 1024 TB in a PB of data. Multiply this and you get your estimated costs. The cost of storage is staggering, and what type of data is being stored? An estimated 60% of this data is considered ROT (redundant obsolete or trivial) and has no perceived value to the organization. That totals an estimated 614TB of total data in 1 petabyte is JUNK! However, there is a dark side to this data, most organizations do not know what this data is. Commonly referred to as Dark Data, this data may or may not be valuable, or may contain an immense amount of RISK. Data that sits longer than needed, in most cases, is more dangerous than deleting data pre-maturely. Storage and backup vendors will never tell you this.?
Darryl Richardson – CPE - (Chief Platform Evangelist)