Mastering Cost Planning in IT Infrastructure : Cost Management Part 2

Introduction

In the last part of this 3 part blog series , we learnt about the first phase of Cost Management that is ‘Understand and Manage’ through Total Cost of Ownership, Cost Analysis and Cost Optimization Capabilities.

In this part, we are going to learn about how to plan for your infrastructure ahead of time.

As organizations increasingly rely on IT infrastructure to support their business operations, effective cost planning and upfront cost management become paramount to ensure scalability, performance, and optimal utilization of resources. In today’s dynamic business landscape, it is essential to have a comprehensive understanding of your infrastructure and workload requirements in both traditional and hyperconverged environments.

A solution for infrastructure and workload planning should offer powerful tools to assist in planning for Infrastructure Cost while maintaining transparency through tracking mechanisms. This article will explore how to carry out cost and capacity planning for traditional and hyperconverged infrastructures, workload planning, and migration planning, enabling businesses to make informed decisions about their IT investments.

Need for Cost Planning

As we learnt in the last part of this series, Cost planning is important for new projects, employees, budgets, and even new cloud types.

For successful cloud cost planning, use a structured approach. We’ve identified four cost capability levels, each addressing particular questions.

Implementing Cost Planning

Infrastructure Planning

answers the question “We are starting new projects, how much would a suitable host cost and will it fit my datacenter?” or “We are ending a project, how much cost and capacity addition can I avoid on removal of a host from my datacenter?”

VMware Aria Operations supports cost and capacity planning for both traditional and hyperconverged infrastructures.

Infrastructure Planning enables you to:

• Carry out cost planning for future Infrastructure across all VMware Clouds in VMware Aria Operations.
• Use a predictive, real-time cost forecasting engine, providing a set of ‘What if Scenarios’ that can be combined and run against infrastructure resources to determine the cost of adding new hosts

Workload Planning

answers the question “We are hiring new employees, how much would a suitable VM cost and will it fit my cluster?” or “Some of our team members are leaving, how much cost and capacity addition can I avoid on removal of their VMs?”

VMware Aria Operations supports workload planning for both traditional and hyperconverged  infrastructures.

It Includes a set of ‘What if Scenarios’ that can be run against current resources to determine if there is enough capacity to satisfy new projects that  involve expansions to existing applications or new application deployments.

Workload Planning enables you to:

• Carry out cost planning for future workloads across all VMware Clouds in VMware Aria Operations.
• Include a set of ‘What if Scenarios’ that can be run against current resources to determine the cost of your workloads for your new projects that  involve expansions to existing applications or new application deployments. . 

Migration Planning

answers the question “I have learnt about a new cloud type and want to see how much it will cost compared to my current cloud and others in the market?”

VMware Aria Operations supports migration planning for moving workloads to:

• a VMware Cloud instance such as VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, Google Cloud VMware Engine.
• a public cloud instance such as AWS, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or to VMware Cloud on AWS

Migration Planning enables you to

• Compare cost competitiveness across VMware Clouds like VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution or Google Cloud VMware Engine.
• Compare Cost competitiveness for Public Clouds versus private cloud for comparable workloads

Budget Planning and Upfront Cost/Price

answers the question “My organization has allocated IT budget and I want to track the expenses against that budget and be informed of any overage?”

A user should be able to do budgeting for Infrastructure Cost and track-down against the budget should be available for transparency. You should be able to see

• Monthly budget configuration to track cost/price against that budget
• Track burn down of any pre-payment
• Differentiate Migrated VMs from newly created VMs from budget perspective
• View Total Cost of Ownership reflecting status with respect to planned budget

Conclusion

In conclusion, as organizations increasingly rely on IT infrastructure to support their business operations, effective cost planning and upfront cost management become critical to ensure scalability, performance, and optimal utilization of resources.

The use of a comprehensive solution such as VMware Aria Operations can assist in planning for infrastructure cost while maintaining transparency through Total Cost tracking mechanisms. By implementing structured approaches to cost planning for infrastructure, workload, and migration planning, businesses can make informed decisions about their IT investments.

Note: The screenshots used are all from VMware Aria Operations that helps with Multi-Cloud Operations (Observability, Availability, Performance, Capacity, Cost, Compliance and Sustainability). Reach out to me (Soumya Kapoor) or Kameswaran Subramanian, Sajan Liyon to know more about Aria Operations.