On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, Stan Horwitz wrote:

SH> We're at the early stages of charging other departments to do backups of
SH> their servers to our central site NetWorker server. Right now, the only
SH> charge is for the cost of a client connection and any optional modules they
SH> may need. I am wondering if others are in this situation. I assume so. How
SH> do you keep track of which department owns which auth code? I am using 7.2.1
SH> so I have set up an Excel spread sheet with the details on it and I fill in
SH> the comment field on each auth code I register for an outside department,
SH> but this is going to get too confusing, esp. since NetWorker doesn't know
SH> who owns which license.
SH> 
SH> At some point, we will also charge for tape resources, but that hasn't
SH> happened yet. This idea is not mine; I think it is not cost-effective to buy
SH> individual client connections each time we need to add a new server onto our
SH> nightly backup schedule, but that's the way management wants it here.
SH> 
SH> If anyone has any suggestions on how to manage this stuff so that you don't
SH> accidentally use one department's license for another group's server, please
SH> let me know.

We rent licenses to our customers, by looking at which savesets exist for 
each client. All clients that have one or more savesets active are 
reported as active. We then charge customers for a recurring base fee on a 
monthly basis, which includes parts of the costs for everything, including 
license costs. We then record the size of every non-expired saveset and 
write it to a database. We then also bill the customer per gig active in 
the library on a monthly basis. 

Although we use common networker CLI utilities to gather the data, the 
software for information gathering and reporting has been developed 
in-house, so I can't provide anyone with the actual software.

//Oscar

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