03-16-2005, 04:09 PM
Malakar,Mar 16 2005, 07:49 AM Wrote:If they're referring to anything other than the ISP costs, that sounds like utter BS to me. I see no major legitimate costs for running servers after the hardware is bought and the system is fine tuned.[right][snapback]70930[/snapback][/right]Mal, that's the funniest thing I've heard in the last week! I run these numbers for a living. You're talking about servers that are running 24x7 in a high stress environment under loads that stagger the software and bring it the systems to their knees. Minimum support costs are probably around 1/16th a head (figure $100000 cost per head count) per system, with a substantial internal cost multiplier because of the 24x7 support.
And that's before you factor in any engineering costs. Servers don't support themselves. Ones under the kinds of loads we're seeing on the high pop WoW servers, even more so. Every server roll out I've done in the last four years had far more costs in support/expense than they did in capital.
The hardware cost is the cheap part. Especially when you capitalize it over four years anyway.