The Cost of a (Private) Cloud

Lately I see many medium to large companies asking wether they should build their own “private cloud” (a.k.a. ‘datacenter’) or go with one of the cloud computing providers. Especially now with the adoption of Eucalyptus, rumors that next version of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) will be “cloud enabled” and with Microsoft pushing for on-premises cloud services, I truly believe this is a valid question.

Before you get your IT guys working on building your cloud, I’d suggest you to read this white-paper by Albert Greenberg, (ex Microsoft, working for Amazon) James Hamilton, David A. Maltz and Parveen Patel - “The Cost of a Cloud: Research Problems in Data Center Networks“. Remember, at the end of the day you’re building a data center.

Starting with the guide to where costs go in the data center

∼45% Servers CPU, memory, storage systems
∼25% Infrastructure Power distribution and cooling
∼15% Power draw Electrical utility costs
∼15% Network Links, transit, equipment

I bet you had other numbers in mind …

You can find the white-paper after the jump …here.

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