AuctionAds.com (a real company), had a modest web server setup that took up about a third of a standard 42U rack in 2009.

AuctionAds.plc (a fake company very similar to AuctionAds.com, with an identical setup) expects to grow by a factor of five this year, and perhaps more later

AuctionAds.plc have hired you to make a cost analysis of three possible options

Replace their current system with a modern equivalent that's five times as large, hosted by AuctionAds.plc in their building*

Replace their current system with modern equivalent that's five times as large, using a co-location facility*

Drop their current system, and purchase an equivalent amount of processing power from Amazon AWS/EC2*

* Assume they are buying 5 each of an equivalent hardware item, or one new item with 5x the capability

Your assignment is to write a 3-section paper by next Monday

Cover sheet is a one-paragraph ExSum, including a supporting table that summarizes your findings

First section discusses hardware costs (important for options 1 and 2)

Second section discusses data and processing costs (important for option 3)

Third section discusses costs for which we have no data - staff, cabling, backup, insurance, etc

Sections 1 and 2 should have tables that support your findings. You can recycle parts of them for the ExSum

There's no set page length, but I'd guess it would be hard to cover all of these topics in less than four or five pages.

Include references to where you found the data. I don't need details, "NewEgg", or "Rackspace website" will do