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HP SET: Solution Design, Sizing and TCO/ROI Justification

HP SET · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Solution Design, Sizing and TCO/ROI Justification

What this domain tests

Solution Design, Sizing and TCO/ROI Justification tests a repeatable design method and the financial case. You must discover requirements, size with evidence, validate the bill of materials, and compare total cost and return rather than acquisition price alone.

Core rules

  • Discovery captures workload, performance, capacity, growth, availability, compliance, and constraints.
  • Size with current HPE tools and QuickSpecs, then validate against real utilization and headroom.
  • TCO includes acquisition, software, support, power, cooling, floor space, management labor, downtime risk, and refresh.
  • ROI uses payback, NPV, and IRR; state assumptions and sensitivities.
  • Design for the requirement, not the maximum config; overconfiguring weakens the business case.

Worked example

A customer compares a three-year on-premises refresh with a cloud alternative. Reason: model 120 virtual machines, 60 TB usable, 20 percent growth, and 99.9 percent availability. Include server, storage, virtualization licensing, support, power and cooling, rack space, and admin time. The cloud option must include egress, storage transactions, and migration. If on-premises TCO is lower but payback exceeds the customer's threshold, adjust the design or propose GreenLake rather than hiding the gap.

Traps

Capex-only comparisons; ignoring power, cooling, and labor; sizing for peak without growth; using stale tool outputs; omitting software licensing; presenting ROI without assumptions.