Section 8.20. Cost

8.20. Cost

The pricing aspect of backup software is too complex to cover in detail here, but suffice it to say that there are a number of factors that may be included in the total price, depending on which vendor you buy from:

• The number of clients that you want to back up

• The number of backup drives you wish to use

• What type of backup drives you want to use (high-speed devices often cost more)

• The number of libraries and the number of drives and slots that they have

• The size of the systems (in CPU power)

• The speed of backup that you need

• The number of database servers you have

• The number of different types of databases that you have

• The number of other special-treatment clients (e.g., MVS, Back Office) that require special interfaces

• The type of support you expect (24/7, 8/5, etc.)