I'm a student in a project management class. We are simulating the management of a complex project and my partner and I have chosen to build a data center. I'm trying to estimate labor hours for hardware installation and was wondering if there are any resources available for this. I've already searched the Internet and found nothing. I also have a couple books (Administering Data Centers, for example) but they don't discuss labor.
Our project consists of a small data center (200 servers), switches, load balancers, SAN, switching panels, etc. The point isn't to accurately design a data center but to manage a complex project, however I'd like to have realistic estimate of the hours required to install everything.
Can anyone suggest a place to find detailed estimates for building a data center in terms of labor hours? I should point out that we've chosen this project because we're interested in IT PM as a career so this info might be of use after the class is over.
I've never seen statistics on hardware installation, but you could work up a good estimate using a simple work breakdown structure -- that way you'd be clear on the exact scope (racks, cabling (network, SAN, KVM...), power, base OS, etc.). Your other option would be to talk with HP, IBM or Dell and find out how they calculate their price for installing hardware for a customer.
Labor estimates
