downtime costs

downtime costs

[Luca Ferrari]

Hi,
I'm doing a study about the cost of downtime of servers (comparing linux, BSD, 
Windows, etc.), but I cannot find any documentation on line about this. Does 
anybody have any idea where I can find any paper or article about the costs 
of downtime of servers? 

Thanks,
Luca
-- 
Luca Ferrari,
fluca1978@infinito.it

Re: downtime costs

[Scott Taylor]

Luca Ferrari said:
> Hi,
> I'm doing a study about the cost of downtime of servers (comparing
linux, BSD, Windows, etc.), but I cannot find any documentation on line
about this. Does anybody have any idea where I can find any paper or
article about the costs of downtime of servers?

Luca,

There is nothing specific, if you think about it, it all depends on the
company that is loosing:

a.) productivity (how many more people do you need in accounting,
marketing, sales, to do the same job with out the server?

b.) sales revenue (lost sales because the order desk keeps saying "my
computer is down" instead of helping the customer)

C.) customers (pissed off clients because they keep hearing "my computer
is down" instead of getting the help they need)

d.) production (stop building/ordering products and loosing more sales
because you don't have the supply, because some order desk clerks forgot
how to read and write with out their computer.  Maybe production will have
to put in over-time to catch up)

e.) safety reporting (resulting in injuries)

f.) delivery/dispatching (resulting in liabilities to clientele)

What else do your servers cover?

This is going to be different for every company; a server doesn't cost
anything to be down, it's what a company could be missing out on that is
costly.

So, you see, it's up to you to point it out to your company, you need to
write the paper yourself, from scratch.  Start with a list of what your
server provides, who in each department utilizes those services, and what
would it cost to do it with out, for the short term and the long term.

Now you want to know if the cost of running Windows Servers (high
downtime, lots of reboots, huge licensing bills, but sysadmins are
accounting staff that push the on/off button and change backup tapes,
forget about security and stability) <=> the cost of running Linux/BSD
(low down time, very little reboots, fewer licenses, but paying serious
consultant or full time SysAdmin to maintain a secure and stable network).
 How serious is the business and what is it's data and uptime worth to
them.

That's how good SysAdmins gets what they want. :)

--
Scott

Re: downtime costs

[Thornton Prime]

There is also another cost associated with downtime which is often
overlooked ... recovery cost. Recovery costs will depend on type of
failure, availability and competence of support, etc.

I've been in a few situations where recovery cost was greater than
several months of downtime cost. In that case, we chose to leave the
server down.

thornton