All-

I’m working on a little exercise to determine what it costs us to backup a TB of data (or whatever other size) and, being a computer geek and not a finance major, I’m struggling with it a little bit.  Given the amount of pieces to the puzzle from media servers, LAN vs SAN backups, physical tapes, virtual tapes, offsite storage/transportation, 3yr amortization/depreciation, etc it’s becoming quite a daunting task.  I’m actually trying to make this a valid number vs the Shot in the Dark™ method which I’ve usually seen done with these things.  Also, I really don’t want to have to spend money on another reporting tool to tell me how much I’m spending on backup plus I’m not really trying to turn this into a true chargeback model….more like budget justification and demonstrating cost savings for removing ‘legacy’ data.

Any help on the formulas you used or the costs you figure out would be greatly appreciated.