Successful next-generation designers are able to quickly triage true requirements from wants and wishes. Much of the truth is drowned by emotions, agendas, hype, marketing, and other forms of distracting noise. Simplify, then build. Quickly get to the lowest and simplest common denominator and add where truly needed. Every server and GB of storage requires monitoring, administration, management, and all other care-and-feeding type activities. Poor choices at basic infrastructure levels can dramatically affect economics as all of the other requirements are piled on.

A single server is not as simple as it sounds. The following diagram shows a set of basic options that can be applied to any server. There are a number of options for each attribute, of which one is chosen. The chart shows almost 6.3 billion potential combinations for this single server. Considerations for other attributes, such as external storage, port configuration, software, patch level, and so on, have not been accounted for. The potential combinations can quickly reach into the trillions for a single server when all attributes are considered. Add in additional combinations when adding in additional servers, licensing options, additional devices, additional potential locations, potential providers, pricing options, business models, consumption rules, deployment rules, and the many other nuances that permeate every solution design.

In the following example, we see three different term options. This may equate to 12-, 24-, or 36-month terms, with only one term being chosen. We see that cores, in this example, can be any number between 1 and 12. RAM could be anything between 1 and 16. Obviously, there are many other options and add-ons, such as monitoring, management, licensing, and so on. But just basic server configuration choices already place this single server into the 6+ billion combination range: