Patent ID: 7644046

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of estimating storage system cost comprising: modeling a storage system design in operation under a workload by employing a hierarchical model to determine location of retrieval points, the hierarchical model having levels corresponding to each of a primary storage location and a plurality of secondary storage locations, the primary and secondary storage locations serving as sources for retrieval points of successively lower levels of the hierarchical model, and the retrieval points providing sources for primary storage recovery for a plurality of failure scenarios; and for a particular failure scenario, a computer performing: finding a most recent retrieval point relative to a target recovery time that is available for recovery; determining a difference between the target recovery time and a retrieval point creation time for the most recent retrieval point, the difference indicating a data loss time period; determining a recovery time for propagation of the most recent retrieval point to primary storage; and determining a storage system cost comprising outlay costs for the storage system design and penalty costs for the data loss time period and the recovery time.