When it comes to mass storage TCO, SUSE shows Red Hat the red card, and beats Dell, VMware, HPE, NetApp & IBM hands down.
T pros have long known that the upfront cost of storage systems can bear little relation to the total cost of running them over an extended period, and that an attractive entry price is all too often something of a ‘Trojan Horse’ sell – at first glance it looks like a gift. . . . but when it gets behind the walls of the enterprise a string of costs appear over time which more than take the shine off the attractive starting point.
Its not easy, however, to do the maths, as there are a string of complex variables to calculate: there’s cost of installation, software licenses, ongoing service and support, staff training, and of course the inevitable cost of adding in additional capacity as volumes grow. On top of this, storage admins must also consider the required feature set to get the ‘Goldilocks’ solution that is just right – avoiding paying for capability that is not needed whilst making sure you aren’t locked into an approach that won’t meet requirements in the future. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, some of the buying calculation isn’t completely completely rational – as the old saw ‘no-one ever got fired for buying IBM’ demonstrates – many like the comfort of paying a ‘brand tax’ for a system from a big name in the full knowledge that actually it doesn’t offer value for money, but it’s a damn sight easier to justify should something go wrong – and after all, what storage admin hasn’t dealt with a failure?