What is the average cost per megabyte to purchase SAN or NAS storage and what is the annual average cost per megabyte to manage it? I realize that prices vary but I'm just looking for an average.

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Depending on who you ask, you will find that the average cost for purchasing storage for a SAN is around eight cents per megabyte and for NAS it's about five or six cents per megabyte. The trend is that these prices are still decreasing.

Annual management costs also differ not only between industries but also between companies. For example, fewer administrators are needed to manage 20 TB of huge media files stored on a SAN or NAS than to manage the same amount of data filled by multiple single user files stored on DAS. Between companies, the costs will vary depending on the policies and procedures a company has developed to run its storage operations. However, you should calculate at least with 10 to 20 times the purchasing cost as an annual average.

That means you probably will end up with a managing cost between 66 cent and $1.5 per megabyte annually management cost.


This was first published in October 2003

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