The RG Solutions® Resource Catalog is the basis of all cost processing. The catalog contains information that is related to the Data Centers, Resource Pools, and the costs associated with each.
The key element within the Resource Catalog is a Resource Pool and is a related set of processing resources. A Resource Pool can consist of three types of resources:
- System: A single computing system.
- Virtual System: This is system that houses different Virtual Appliances. Each one of these virtual appliances will be a system similar to the previous entry but without the dedicated hardware.
- Aggregate: This is a group of related Systems, Virtual Systems, or other Aggregates that comprise a common Cost Pool.
The Resource Catalog also contains information about a data center and each System or Virtual System must be associated with one. The Data Center contains information pertaining to the environmental cost considerations (i.e. power, air, etc.) for the system.
The catalog processing also includes the ability to “Normalize” systems contained within the catalog. The Normalization process determines the standard processing power of a system. This power rating is used for Metering and other cost calculations. The catalog processing also allows for a system’s total life usage calculation. This process is automated and uses some of the actual data collected from the physical system for its calculations.
TCO Cost Model
The resource catalog Cost Model is based on Total Cost of Ownership. This calculation uses all capital costs and annual expenses related to the capital expenditure. The processing uses standard time value of money calculations to determine the Total Cost of Ownership.
This type of cost basis differs with a traditional Chargeback system. For traditional systems, the capital costs are based on depreciation schedules that reflect Tax Code policy rather than investment decisions. Using depreciation schedules results in accelerated cost recovery but does not provide a consistent pricing model. TCO allows for a stable price model for the shared resources.
Life Cycle Usage
The key to any fixed priced system is the ability to determine the lifetime usage of an asset. This process is provide as part of the Resource Catalog and uses actual native system data for its calculations.
The processing takes into account the different demands placed on a resource as determined by the time-of-day and day-of-week. The calculations use in-service and out-of-service dates along with an estimated growth rate to determine total use during the resource’s life cycle.
Normalization
Open system architecture generally has shared systems that are of differing platforms and system power. The main issue to measuring shared resources or dealing with one or more instances of an application is the ability to consistently measure the system(s) resource usage. This is done by normalizing the system for Metering.
Normalization processing establishes a standard computing power for a heterogeneous system. This value is based on a common unit and allows for different systems to be consistently measured, combined, and compared. Even when an application moves to a new processing environment, the new measurements will be consistent with the previous measures created in the old environment.
Cost Manifests
One of the strengths of the Resource Catalog is the ability to create a static cost manifest associated with a particular resource pool. The Resource Catalog knows all the individual costs associated with the pool and can provide an itemized list of those costs.
When the Life Cycle Usage information is included with the cost manifests, it is possible to breakdown the individual cost contributions for each unit of metered usage.
