A Level Playing Field for Strategic IT Options - Understanding Energy, Network and other Overheads

Transcription

1 A Level Playing Field for Strategic IT Options - Understanding Energy, Network and other Overheads Martin Bennett and Peter James Green IT for Science Responsible Energy Costs (RECSO)

2 Key Decision Factors Cost Opportunity Reliability Risk Capacity Carbon/Environment

3 Cost Factors Utilisation Compute efficiency (applications) Facilities (cooling, power, space) Network Procurement Provisioning Support

4 Amazon Web Services

5 Cost Debates TCO per server falls 80% when going from 1,000 to 100,000 Microsoft Average 95% fall in per-transaction emissions for cloud Salesforce.com Our organisation has proven that you don t need to have a big data centre to be efficient. We ve won awards to prove it. - Steve Bowes-Phipps, Univ of Herts -

6 Cloud Costing This is a new area, and the costs and performance of cloud computing and comparisons with existing institutional provision are difficult to obtain the difficulty in understanding the sheer range of cloud computing options is itself a barrier to uptake there is a bewildering array of options available for researchers thinking about using commercially provided cloud computing Curtis + Cartwright, Cost Analysis of Cloud Computing for Research, EPSRC and JISC

7 The Costing (+ Environmental) Case for the Cloud Economies of scale in procuring hardware and running data centres Avoid costs of procurement, maintenance and space Dynamic flexibility + scalability to smooth uneven demand ( cloudbursting )

8 Cost Issues Overall Level Identifying all relevant costs on an ongoing basis in sufficient granularity Underpinning this: measuring resource consumption in sufficient granularity Identifying the main cost drivers (i.e. the potential for scale economies): - at what levels? - over what time horizons?

9 Cost Issues Variability Over multiple possible time-horizons:- Initial investment (one-off, transitional) Fixed in the long-term Fixed in the short-term Immediately variable with usage

10 Costs of cloud services with reserved instances 20,000 18,000 16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 cc2.8xlarge 1yr On-demand Light Medium Heavy 20,000 18,000 16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 cc2.8xlarge 3yr On-demand Light Medium Heavy % uptime over 1 yr % uptime over 3 yr

11 Cost Issues Influencing Which people are best placed to understand and help manage costs? How best to incentivise them (or otherwise motivate/manage/control their use of IT)? Current costing/charging models - Free at the point of use - Hybrid: resources free but priority or dedicated access can also be purchased - Charged: purchase of all computing time

12 Cost Issues Processes Cloud implies more devolved budgeting - more complex and some risks, but exposing [users] to the cost of the resources consumed may increase understanding and encourage efficient use of computing Adapting procedures to credit card-type billing: - setting appropriate spending limits - accurate up-to-date data on actual spending - ensuring accountability

13 CapEx / OpEx Cloud sourcing changes upfront CapEx into spread-out OpEx - can be attractive if finance is limited Reserved instances can reduce costs but issues of - leasing-type future commitments of several years - internal authorisation for future commitments Cloud providers offer alternative time-periods flexibility for finite-life projects

14 Asset Lives and Depreciation Analyses depend on assumed asset lives These vary though 3 years for servers and 10 years for infrastructure are typical Are these always appropriate? frequently find fully depreciated assets still in use, i.e. estimated lives were over-prudent In practice, are some in-house services partly free through using fully depreciated equipment?

15 TCO / WLC Need to consider + integrate both initial and inuse costs at the decision point, i.e. before acquisition, requiring both:- an appropriately detailed system, consistently applied adequate data (present and future) to support TCO/WLC analyses controls/incentives to ensure that WLC analyses actually provide the basis for decisions

16 HE Cloud Cost Model - JISC Study by Curtis + Cartwright Stage 1: Getting started Stage 2: Production and operational costs Stage 3: Storage and end-of-life Resource selection (may involve procurement) Configuration and setup Code porting Data transfer in Research support staff Software licensing Virtual infrastructure costs: cpu/instance hours Data transfer Data storage Storage (10 year requirement) Data transfer out

17 HE In-house Cost Model - JISC Study by Curtis + Cartwright Stage 1: Getting started Resource selection and the procurement process Capital hardware costs Configuration and OS install Infrastructural costs (buildings) Initial training Stage 2: Production and operational costs Technical support staff Research support staff Software licensing Energy (power and cooling) Hardware maintenance Infrastructure maintenance Stage 3: Storage and end-of-life Storage (10 year requirement) Recycling and disposal

18 HE HPC Conclusions Cloud X costlier per core-hour - sensitive to utilisation levels - sensitive to pricing models - reserved instances cheaper (tho less flexible) and sometimes equivalent Many hidden costs - Cloud (e.g. tech support, code porting) - Internal (e.g. energy, facilities) Quality differences

19 Cost Distortions

20 A Gap in the Market? Fast-changing and complex environment - individual users struggle to monitor + evaluate all options Need for an independent user-friendly body? - up-to-date summary of different cloud providers offerings, cost levels and structures - e-brokerage - benchmarking service - advice on transparent costing and granular data capture (including metering)