Utility Pricing Solutions


There are two distinct types of Utility Pricing Solutions. The first is a set of Instant Capacity solutions and the other is the utility computing solution called Pay per use.

The Instant Capacity solutions allow you to purchase a system that has more capacity than is required when the system is purchased. You then have the ability to activate and pay for the capacity when you need it. In other words, Instant Capacity is all about simplifying the upgrade process. It was originally designed as a way to reduce the lead time for CPU upgrades. The idea was that if the system is shipped with the upgrades already installed (but inactive), the customer could activate the additional capacity instantly. Since the customer doesn't pay for the bulk of the cost of the upgrade until they activate the CPUs, this program has cost characteristics that are similar to a standard purchase and installation of additional CPUs. However, it can be done instantly and without shutting down the system.

Effectively this gives you instant access to capacity upgrades while deferring the cost of the upgrades until you actually need them. This is useful if you know that the system you are purchasing will require an upgrade at some time in the future but that the system will be underutilized until then.

Currently, Instant Capacity can be obtained for one or more CPUs or cell boards. This program requires you to purchase what is called a right-to-access (RTA) license for the inactive resources. The up-front cost of the RTA license is a fraction of the full cost of the resources. However, this amount can be applied to the cost of the permanent activation of the resource later.

Figure 8-1 shows how the cost of the system increases over time as you activate additional capacity.

Figure 8-1. The Overall Cost of a System as Instant Capacity Resources Are Activated


You can see in this graph that the capacity can be added gradually if you have a steady increase in load. You can also increase the capacity in larger increments if you have larger, more-sudden increases in load, like the addition of new workloads or migration of a large number of users onto the system.

There is another Instant Capacity solution, called Temporary Instant Capacity. The key to this is that you can activate Instant Capacity CPU resources for short periods of time and then deactivate them when they are no longer needed. Figure 8-2 shows a contrasting view of costs over time with Temporary Instant Capacity.

Figure 8-2. The Cost of a System as Temporary Instant Capacity Resources Are Activated and Deactivated


In this case you can see that the costs increase only during the short periods of time that you actually need to the resources to be active. In addition, if you have longer-term increases in load, you can activate one or more of the CPUs permanently.

The last of the Utility Pricing Solutions is called Pay per use (PPU). The overall time-varying cost aspects of Pay per use are similar to Temporary Instant Capacity, but PPU is a leasing model. You are leasing the system from HP Financial Services (HPFS), but the lease payment varies from one month to the next depending on the utilization of the server. Figure 8-3 shows how the PPU cost varies over the life of a lease.

Figure 8-3. The Lease Cost of a Pay Per Use System Compared to a Standard Lease


This graph shows that with a standard lease you would pay for all of the resources of the system every month. With a PPU lease, you would have a lower payment in any month where the system is lightly used. You might also pay slightly more than a standard lease if the system is heavily used over the course of the month. The key is that as long as the system isn't heavily used every month, you will end up paying less. In fact, as will be described later, you are guaranteed not to pay any more than a standard lease over the life of a PPU lease.

The remainder of this chapter will provide more detail about each of these solutions, including the program requirements for each of them.



The HP Virtual Server Environment. Making the Adaptive Enterprise Vision a Reality in Your Datacenter
The HP Virtual Server Environment: Making the Adaptive Enterprise Vision a Reality in Your Datacenter
ISBN: 0131855220
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 197

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