Tag Archives: Cloud Director

VMware Cloud Director Charge Back Explained

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VMware Chargeback not only enables metering and chargeback capabilities, but also provides visibility into infrastructure usage through performance and capacity dashboards for the Cloiud Providers as well as tenants.

To help Cloud Providers and tenants realise more value for every dollar they spend on infrastructure (ROI) (and in turn provide similar value to their tenants), our focus is to not only expand the coverage of services that can be priced in VMware Chargeback, but also to provide visibility into the cost of infrastructure to providers, and billing summary to organizations, clearly highlighting the cost incurred by various business units. but before we dive in further to know what’s new with this release, please note:

  • vRealize Operations Tenant App is now rebranded to VMware Chargeback.
  • VMware Chargeback is also now available as a SaaS offering, The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering will be available as early access, with limited availability, with the purchase or trial of the VMware Cloud Director™ service. See, Announcing VMware Chargeback for Managed Service Providers Blog.

Creation of pricing policy based on chargeback strategy

Provider administrator can create one or more pricing policies based on how they want to chargeback their tenants. Based on the vCloud Director allocation models, each pricing policy is of the type, Allocation pool, Reservation pool, or Pay-As-You-Go

NOTE – The pricing policies apply to VMs at a minimum granularity of five minutes. The VMs that are created and deleted within the short span of five minutes will still be charged.

CPU Rate

Provider can charge the CPU rate based on GHz or vCPU Counts

  • Charge Period which indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Charge Based on Power State indicates the pricing model based on which the charges are applied and values are: Always, Only when powered on, Powered on at least once
  • Default Base Rate any base rate that provider want to charge
  • Add Slab providers can optionally charge different rates depending on the number of vCPUs used
  • Fixed Cost Fixed costs do not depend on the units of charging

Memory Rate

  • Charge Period which indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Charge Based on indicates the pricing model based on which the charge is applied, values are: Usage, Allocation and Maximum from usage and allocation
  • Charge Based on Power State indicates the pricing model based on which the charges are applied and values are: Always, Only when powered on, Powered on at least once
  • Default Base Rate any base rate that provider want to charge
  • Add Slab providers can optionally charge different rates depending on the memory allocated
  • Fixed Cost Fixed costs do not depend on the units of charging

Storage Rate

You can charge for storage either based on storage policies or independent of it.

  • This way of setting rates will be deprecated in the future release and it is advisable to instead use the Storage Policy option.
  • Select the Storage Policy Name from the drop-down menu.
  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Charge Based on indicates the pricing model based on which the charge is applied. You can charge for used storage or configured storage of the VMs
  • Charge Based on Power State This decides if the charge should be applied based on the power state of the VM and values are: Always, Only when powered on, Powered on at least once
  • Add Slab you can optionally charge different rates depending on the storage allocated

Network Rate

Enter the External Network Transmit and External Network Receive rates.

Note: If your network is backed by NSX-T, you will be charged only for the network data transmit and network data receive.

  • Network Transmit Rate select the Change Period and enter the Default Base Rate as well as using slabs, you can optionally charge different rates depending on the network data consumed
  • Network Receive Rate select the Change Period and enter the Default Base Rate. as well as using slabs, you can optionally charge different rates depending on the network data consumed. Enter valid numbers for Base Rate Slab and click Add Slab.

Advanced Network Rate

Under Edge Gateway Size, enter the base rates for the corresponding edge gateway sizes

  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Enter the Base Rate

Guest OS Rate

Use the Guest OS Rate to charge differently for different operating systems

  • Enter the Guest OS Name
  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Charge Based on Power State This decides if the charge should be applied based on the power state of the VM and values are: Always, Only when powered on, Powered on at least once
  • Enter the Base Rate

Cloud Director Availability

Cloud Director Availability is to set pricing for replications created from Cloud Director Availability

  • Replication SLA Profile – enter a replication policy name
  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Enter the Base Rate

You can also charge for the storage consumed by replication objects in the Storage Usage Charge section.This is used to set additional pricing for storage used by Cloud Director Availability replications in Cloud Director. Please note that the storage usage defined in this tab will be added additionally to the Storage Policy Base Rate

vCenter Tag Rate

This section is used for Any additional charges to be applied on the VMs based on their discovered Tags from vCenter. (Typical examples are Antivirus=true, SpecialSupport=true etc)

  • Enter the Tag Category and Tag Value
  • Charge based on Fixed Rate or
  • Charge based on Alternate Pricing Policy – Select the appropriate Pricing Policy
  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Charge Based on Power State This decides if the charge should be applied based on the power state of the VM and values are: Always, Only when powered on, Powered on at least once
  • Enter the Base Rate

VCD Metadata Rate

Use the VCD Metadata Rate to charge differently for different metadata set on vApps

NOTE- Metadata based prices are available in bills only if Enable Metadata option is enabled in vRealize Operations Management Pack for VMware Cloud Director.

  • Enter the Tag Category and Tag Value
  • Charge based on Fixed Rate or
  • Charge based on Alternate Pricing Policy – Select the appropriate Pricing Policy
  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
  • Charge Based on Power State This decides if the charge should be applied based on the power state of the VM and values are: Always, Only when powered on, Powered on at least once
  • Enter the Base Rate

One Time Fixed Cost

One time fixed cost used to charge for One time incidental charges on Virtual machines, such as creation/Setup charges, or charges for one off incidents like installation of a patch. These costs do not repeat on a recurring basis.

For values follow VCD METADATA and vCenter Tag section.

Rate Factors

Rate factors are used to either bump up or discount the prices either against individual resources consumed by the Virtual Machines, or whole charges against the Virtual Machine. Some examples are:

  • Increase CPU rate by 20% (Factor 1.2) for all VMs tagged with CPUOptimized=true
  • Discount overall charge on VM by 50% (Factor 0.5) for all Vms tagged with PromotionalVM=True
  • VCD Metadata
    • enter the Tag Key and Tag Value
      • Change the price of – Total, vCPU, Memory and Storage
      • By applying a factor of – increase or decrease the price by entering a valid number
  • vCenter Tag
    • enter the Tag Key and Tag Value
      • Change the price of – Total, vCPU, Memory and Storage
      • By applying a factor of – increase or decrease the price by entering a valid number

Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters

This section will be used to charge for Tanzu K8s clusters and objects.

  • Cluster Fixed Cost
  • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
    • Fixed Cost Fixed costs do not depend on the units of charging
  • Cluster CPU Rate
    • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
    • Charge Based on this decides if the charge should be applied based on Usage or Allocation
    • Default Base Rate(per ghz)
  • Cluster Memory Rate
    • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
    • Charge Based on this decides if the charge should be applied based on Usage or Allocation
    • Default Base Rate(per gb)

Additional Fixed Cost

You can use Additional Fixed Cost section to charge at the Org-VDC level. You can use this for charges such as overall tax, overall discounts, and so on. The charges can be applied to selective Org-VDCs based on Org-VDC metadata.

  • Fixed Cost
    • Charge Period indicates the frequency of charging and values are: Hourly, Daily Monthly
    • Fixed Cost
  • VCD Metadata – enter the Tag Key and Tag Value
  • VCD Metadata One Time – enter the Tag Key and Tag Value

Apply Policy

Cloud Director Charge Back provides flexibility to the Service Providers to map the created pricing policies with specific organization vDC. By doing this, the service provider can holistically define how each of their customers can be charged based on resource types.

Bills

Every tenant/customer of service provider can see/review their bills using the Cloud Director Charge Back app. Service Provider administrator can generate bills for a tenant by selecting a specific resource and a pricing policy that must be applied for a defined period and can also log in to review the bill details.

This completes the feature demonstration available with Cloud Director Charge back. Go ahead and deploy and add native charge back power to your Cloud.