Sun Java Communications Suite 5 Deployment Planning Guide

Understanding Total Cost of Ownership

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is another factor that affects capacity planning. This includes choosing the hardware upon which to deploy your Communications Suite. The following table presents some factors to consider as to whether to deploy more smaller hardware systems or fewer larger hardware systems.

Table 2–1 Considerations for Total Cost of Ownership

Hardware Choice  

Pros  

Cons  

More, smaller hardware systems 

  • Smaller hardware systems generally cost less.

  • More, smaller hardware systems can be deployed across many locations to support a distributed business environment.

  • More, smaller hardware systems can mean less down time for system maintenance, upgrade, and migration because traffic can be routed to other servers that are still online while others are being maintained.

  • Smaller hardware systems have a more limited capacity, so more of them are needed. Management, administration, and maintenance costs go up as the number of hardware systems goes up.

  • More, smaller hardware systems require more system maintenance because there are more of them to maintain.

Fewer, larger hardware systems 

  • Fewer hardware systems means fewer fixed management costs per server. If your management costs are a recurring monthly bill, whether internal or from an ISP, costs will be lower, because you have fewer hardware systems to manage.

  • Fewer hardware systems can also mean easier system maintenance, upgrade, and migration because there are fewer systems to maintain.

  • Larger hardware systems generally cost more initially.

  • Fewer hardware systems can mean a greater system down-time for maintenance, upgrade and migration.