Page 141 - Cloud Essentials

Server 2012; this is a logical approach for a cloud provider.

Enterprise server software licensing is often tied to the

number of processors (or processor cores) in the machine. With virtual
servers, often the licensing model works similarly in that licensing is
tied to the number of virtual processors assigned to the virtual server.

When provisioning new virtual servers, some IaaS providers allow you
to specify the number of virtual processors—think about how this might
affect your software licensing.

CERTIFICATION OBJECTIVE 6.02

Explain the Implications for Direct Cost and Cost

Allocations

Traditional IT departments operate on yearly budget cycles. Budgets
translate into IT capacity, which under a specific demand translates to a
particular business value. The chargeback of IT costs to departments also
works in this budget cycle. Elastic IT resources change the basic
assumptions of this model. For example, an increase from 10 to 1,000

server equivalents contracted with an IaaS provider, or from 100 users of a
SaaS solution to 5,000 users, can happen overnight, so to speak. This “pay-
as-you-go” model is incompatible with a yearly budget cycle.
There are a number of possible management measures to consider to
reduce the problem of unpredictable cost, for example:

Set limits on total cost, which means that any uncertainty in usage can

only be downward.
Make sure the cost is related to revenue; after all, elastic revenue was
probably one of the reasons for having elastic cost.

Another finance- and capacity-related risk is that the success of the
application may depend on the possibility that it can scale rapidly.
However, there is a risk of service denial from the cloud provider, which

141