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| Tech Update
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E-mail is no network bargain
Hardware costs and operations
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By Matt Cain
February 8, 2002
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Our model estimates the average server cost to be $30,000, including maintenance, storage, operating system, and backup. Servers at headquarters cost more, and servers at the 100-person site cost less than $30,000 (due to users-per-server scalability load), but the average cost is $30,000. Therefore, $30,000 written off over three years is $10,000 per annum. Our hypothetical company has 12 Exchange mailbox servers (two active-passive cluster pairs in headquarters, and one server in each remote site [except the 50-person sites], two SMTP gateway servers, and two public folder servers). There are two Global Catalog servers solely dedicated to Exchange in headquarters. Each remote site (except the 50-person sites) has a Global Catalog server, but they are not accounted for in our model because each site requires a Domain Controller (DC) for Active Directory anyway, and the cost of adding Global Catalog duties to the DC is insignificant. Therefore, we have a total of 18 servers dedicated to the mail system, for an annual cost of $180,000.
Hardware operations
We assume a certain amount of human activity associated with keeping the base server platform operational. This activity includes:
- Examining server logs for exceptions and summaries daily
- Adding, changing, and deleting users at the network operating system level
- Performing daily backup duties (mounting the media, initiating the backup, checking progress, and then cataloging and filing the media)
- Managing server storage - compacting, rearranging, and defragging disks weekly
- Applying hot fixes and service packs to the operating system
- Troubleshooting and problem resolution of both the hardware and system software
On average, we assume one full-time-equivalent (FTE) employee can support about 10 servers per year at the hardware and system software level. We calculate the FTE cost to be $100,000 per year, fully burdened, assuming a 50 percent salary benefit premium (for office space, healthcare benefits). So we calculate that for every 10 servers, it costs most organizations $100,000 per year for basic operational functionality, or $10,000 per server. Global catalog servers require fewer storage management duties, so we estimated the operational costs for those two serves at $5,000 per server. So we multiply 16 servers by $10,000 and two servers for $5,000 for a total hardware operation cost of $170,000 per annum, which, when added to the hardware procurement cost, means $350,000 annually for Exchange servers.
Consequently, we conclude the single most important action for reducing overall mail costs is to consolidate servers. Based on these dynamics, as well as increased server scalability and dropping bandwidth costs, the average per-server scalability of Exchange will move from about 600 users in 2001, to 2,000 users in 2004.
Email: What cost?
First published in January, 2002
Visit Meta Group for more IT and E-business research and analysis.
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