Cost Model for Establishing a Data Center

Servers and other IT devices inside datacenters have hardware component and other software or virtual component. Some programs are required to create and secure everything related to the virtual environment on IT devices. These programs can be free or require a pre-paid license to be accessed .Most of the proposed datacenter total cost of ownership (TCO) models focus only on calculating the costs of the hardware component of IT devices and they ignore the costs of the other virtual component.In this paper, we present a cost model for building a datacenter and provide through it an analysis way to calculate the IT software license cost. Our model helps in solving a real problem in faculty of computers and information which plans to establish a datacenter. Our model can help the faculty administrators to know how much money they need to buy the IT devices and how much IT software license cost. We also calculate the cost of the power distribution equipment(PDU) and the uninterruptable power supply (UPS) systems which are required for operating the IT devices. The cost of the cooling systems that take the heat away once the power is consumed from IT devices, PDU devices and UPS systems is also calculated in our model.