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Re: [Networker] Budgeting for tape media
2008-01-14 17:12:35
On Jan 14, 2008, at 4:38 PM, Preston de Guise wrote:
Hi Stan,
We are trying to grapple with the problem of budgeting to purchase
more tape media. I am wondering how other organizations handle this
problem. Is anyone aware of any software and/or methodology that
would
help us decide how much money to allocate for tape media purchases
over a given period of time? Thanks.
The biggest problem with budgeting for tape media is that the prices
vary
over time. For instance, I had a customer once insist that we quote
for the
3 years media in advance based on current prices, which came to a
ridiculously high price since they were intending an LTO-2 solution
when
LTO-2 was brand new.
I've gone with the strategy of pricing the next 3 months worth of
media at
current prices, then pricing the next 3 months worth of media at 10%
less,
then the following 6 months media at 10% less again, and it usually
comes
out a little better.
(While it's not something that's easy to convince accounting types
on, tapes
should not be budgeted for under "capital investment" but rather,
"operational expenditure".)
Due to fluctuations in market prices, budgeting an absolute fixed
amount
over more than 3-6 months, particularly for new media, is
problematic at
best.
My problem is that management is steadfast against spending another
dime on tape media without me providing a plan on how much we will
need for one year out, however, I am not privy to any information
about the servers I back up. I never know when someone will add a few
hundred GB worth of data to a server or bring in a new server until
the day it happens. I am quite frankly at a loss as to how to meet
this requirement.
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