Hardware and software cost analysis

The approach used to calculate the cost metrics for each of these scenarios was to build solutions that matched the preceding characteristics. When possible, for the 3-tier systems, the hardware and software BOM structure exactly matched those provided by a vendor's own reference architecture. The list prices were obtained from vendor pricing tools, vendor reseller quotes, and pricing databases. Because of the constraints on building real systems based on real pricing, not every dimension in the area of compute/storage/memory ratios could be matched exactly. Instead of trying to force fit the ratio, it is left up to the readers to gauge the importance of each variable when comparing the scenarios.

The costs of the solutions were calculated in the following categories:

Hardware CapEx

For compute/server/networking, the actual prices of components were used based on current vendor pricing, and vendor reseller quotes for compute, storage, and networking resouces...