GUIDE TO STORAGE CHARGEBACKS WITH DATADVANTAGE

Transcription

1 GUIDE TO STORAGE CHARGEBACKS WITH DATADVANTAGE OVERVIEW Chargebacks let companies allocate costs to internal corporate users and departments or cost centers. Simply put: a chargeback is a bill from the shared services to the revenue-generating business areas. While there are various methodologies to implementing chargebacks, it s been long understood that usage-based storage chargebacks are far fairer and more transparent than other models. Unfortunately, usage-based chargeback has been difficult to implement. But thanks to Varonis Metadata Framework Technology, it s possible now to obtain granular information on data storage. In the following guide, we ll show you how to use DatAdvantage create reports to tell you how much file storage is being used by your organization s business units.

2 Step 1. Create Tag Structure You ll first need to develop relevant tags to mark folders with the appropriate chargeback cost center. You can find DatAdvantage s tag configuration under Tools Follow Up Configuration. In the simple example to the right, we ve created tags to represent business units in three different cities Atlanta, New York, and Denver. Of course, your organization will have its own cost center categories. If you don t know which cost center to charge, DatAdvantage can help with identifying data owners, too. Step 2. Mark Folders with Tags Once the tags have been added, you then return to DatAdvantage s Work Area to begin the tagging process for the folder hierarchy. You should start at the highest-level folder that can be associated with a cost center, as it makes the reporting process easier. Right click on a folder, and select the appropriate tags under Follow Up. And remember to select Apply to all child

3 objects to account for the subfolders. In our example, we ve used the Atlanta tag to mark one of the folders. In practice, you ll want to work with the data owners to ensure that the appropriate chargeback area is being assigned to each folder. Step 3. Create Chargeback Report Now you re ready to set up a template for your chargeback report. For this you ll need to click on the Report button, just below the menu bar. Choose the 4f option, File System Objects. We ll work with a pre-defined template provided by DatAdvantage, and then modify it. Under the pre-defined template source, pick the first one, File System Objects List. After the template report creator comes up, you must adjust the filter options. For our purposes, remove the File Server filter we want the chargeback report to cover the entire file system. You re ready to filter on the tags you created in the previous step. To do that, click on New Filter, click on Access Path on the left side of the filter expression, and then select Follow Up. Finally, click on the Tags on Access Path and then finish the filter by choosing all of the chargeback tags-- clicking on the small

4 box on the right brings up the tags. The next part involves adjusting the columns for the report. So click on the columns tab. On the right side are the column fields that are currently selected. You ll want to remove most of the columns to leave only, say, Assigned Owner, Directory Name and Shared Path, by using the left arrow button in the middle. Turn your attention to the left side, because here s where you ll add two new fields: Size of Folder and Subfolders (in MB), and Tags on Access Path by using the right arrow button. We finally have the correct filters set up to create the chargeback report. Click on Run to generate the results in the Table Viewer, as you would normally do when creating new reports.

5 You re ready to take advantage of DatAdvantage s group feature. Drag the Tags on Access Path column header into the area just below the search box. This instantly organizes all the file size data under the appropriate tags. You ll notice as you explore the data that you have byte counts for each folder along with the name of the cost center. You have all the information to do usage-based chargeback! To see the actual report that users will receive, click on preview and notice the storage size information is organized for each tag. Remember to save the report you created. To make this information available to your chargeback billing system, DatAdvantage lets you export to an Excel spreadsheet.