The document discusses the management and access of usage data within CloudStack, emphasizing the need for organizations to meter their cloud consumption for monetization and resource planning. It highlights the lack of native usage monitoring in CloudStack, detailing the usage server functionality and various methods to access usage records through APIs and external tools like CloudMonkey and SQL queries. Key integrations and use cases for analyzing usage data are presented, including connections to third-party billing systems and operational intelligence tools.

1. Working with
CloudStack Usage Data
Tariq Iqbal
Senior Consultant
tariq.iqbal@shapeblue.com
Twitter: @TariqIqbal_ @ShapeBlue

2. About Me
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Involved with CloudStack before donation to Apache
Built and deployed CloudStack/CloudPlatform based clouds for
Enterprises and Service Providers globally - SunGard, Ascenty
Specialise in integrating CloudStack with Business Support and
Operational Support systems, which include:
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CloudPortals (including Payment Gateways, Fraud Control solutions)
Ticketing Systems – ServiceDesk, Email
CRM/ERP Systems – SAPB/1, Salesforce.com
Monitoring Solutions – Nagios, Splunk, Zenoss
@ShapeBlue #CloudStack #CCCEU13

3. About ShapeBlue
“ShapeBlue are expert builders of public & private clouds. They
are the leading global independent CloudStack / CloudPlatform
integrator & consultancy”
“ShapeBlue is absolutely one of the top experts on deploying
CloudStack. Great company and very deep skill set”
“First to offer professional 24x7x365 support of
Apache CloudStack”
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4. Overview
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CloudStack Usage
CloudStack Configuration
Usage Data Generation
Usage Data Access
Customer Use Cases
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5. Usage Requirements
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Organisations need to be able to meter their cloud's
consumption to:
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Monetize the cloud offerings by charging for usage
Report on the cloud’s resource usage for monitoring/capacity
planning
Majority of organisations already have existing BSS/OSS and just
need access to the usage data
Organisations tend to have different billing criteria/charging
models and require access to usage data for their specific needs
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6. Usage in CloudStack today
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CloudStack does not offer any
native usage monitoring or
billing/chargeback capability
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Root Admin can view current
System Capacity
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Domain Admin and Users can
view VM statistics
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7. Usage Server
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CloudStack includes a Usage Server:
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Optional Component
Separately installed service called ‘cloudstack-usage’
Runs once a day (Default)
Creates aggregated usage records for the various resources
consumed in CloudStack
The usage records are stored in a separate database called
‘cloud_usage’
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8. Usage Server Configuration
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9. Usage Server Configuration Examples
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10. CloudStack Events
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As CloudStack resources are created, consumed and destroyed,
appropriate Event records are created in cloud.usage_events
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There are 110 different Events.
Full list can be found in the Developers Guide
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11. Usage Record Generation
1) CloudStack events are logged in cloud.usage_event
2) The cloudstack_usage job gets a list of the latest usage events
3) Inserts these events into cloud_usage.usage_events
4) Parses cloud_usage.usage_event and populates Helper tables
5) Helper table data used to populate cloud_usage.cloud_usage
with aggregation range wise data
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12. Usage Types
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13. Usage Types
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14. Usage Records
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Usage Records show the amount of resources consumed by guest instances.
The 8 Usage Record formats are:
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Allocated & Running VMs
Network Usage
IP Address
Disk Volume
Template, ISO & Snapshot
Load Balancer & Port Forwarding
Network Offering
VPN User
Details of the Usage Record formats can be found in the Developers Guide
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15. VM Usage Record Format
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16. Usage Record Example
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To Create, Start, Stop and Restart a VM:
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17. CloudStack Usage Data
Accessing Usage Data
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18. CloudStack API
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The usage records can be accessed through the CloudStack API
This is best done using the authentication port 8080 and requires
both the API Key and Secret Key and for the API request to be
signed
CloudStack provides the following Root Admin API calls and
responds with XML and JSON responses:
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listUsageTypes – lists available Usage Types
listUsageRecords - provides Usage records for a date range
generateUsageRecords - asynchronous usage record generation
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19. ListUsageRecords API
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The base API request is:
http://<HOST>:<8080>/client/api?command=listUsageRecords&startdate=y
yyy-MM-dd&enddate=yyyy-MM-dd&signature
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Optional request parameters:
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20. ListUsageRecords Response
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<listusagerecordsresponse>
<count>1</count>
<usagerecord>
<account>user5</account>
<accountid>10004</accountid>
<domainid>1</domainid>
<zoneid>1</zoneid>
<description>i-3-4-WC running time (Service Offering: 1) (Template: 3)</description>
<usage>2.95288 Hrs</usage>
<usagetype>1</usagetype>
<rawusage>2.95288</rawusage>
<virtualmachineid>4</virtualmachineid>
<name>i-3-4-WC</name>
<offeringid>1</offeringid>
<templateid>3</templateid>
<usageid>245554</usageid>
<type>XenServer</type>
<startdate>2009-09-15T00:00:00-0700</startdate>
<enddate>2009-09-18T16:14:26-0700</enddate>
</usagerecord>
</listusagerecordsresponse>
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21. CloudMonkey CLI
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CloudMonkey is a CLI tool for CloudStack and can be used as an
interactive shell or from within a shell script to call the API
It can output the Usage Data in both JSON and Tabular form to a
file or pipe it to another application for further processing
Filtering can be used to limit the result set
It supports argument passing and shell automation
The host, port, apikey and secretkey can be configured on setup
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22. CloudMonkey list usagerecords
The command to retrieve Usage Records is:
cloudmonkey list usagerecords domainid=7ded1404-d7fc-11e2-a70f080027cfaf0b startdate=2013-06-01 enddate=2013-06-23 accountid=2
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23. SQL
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The usage records can be also accessed by directly querying the
cloud_usage.cloud_usage MySQL table in CloudStack
Usage Data can be exported in a CSV format from a SELECT
query
The SQL query can become complex if the ID fields in the data
need to be de-referenced
Typically multiple passes of the query results may be required to
extract the required information
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24. CloudStack Message Queue
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CloudStack 4.1 started publishing events onto a message queue
Uses RabbitMQ as the message broker, but likely to work with other AMQPbased brokers
Use case: A third-party cloud usage solution can subscribe to CloudStack
events and generate usage data which can be consumed by their billing
software
Great blog from Chip Childers on configuring a CloudStack management
server to publish events, and some sample code that prints each event to the
console as they are received
http://www.chipchilders.com/blog/2013/7/16/tapping-into-apache-cloudstackevents-via-amqp.html
http://cloudstack.apache.org/docs/enUS/Apache_CloudStack/4.1.0/html/Admin_Guide/events.html
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25. Mediation
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Once you are able to access the Usage Data, you will need to
design the mapping between the fields in the CloudStack Usage
Data and the fields of the target system
Considerations:
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Do you actually need all the Usage Data for all Resources?
Any UUID values of the CloudStack resources should also be
imported into the target system for reference purposes
Decide which system will be the master for the user account data
and if synchronisation is required
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26. CloudStack Usage Data
Customer Use Cases
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27. MS Excel
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MS Excel can be used to analyse CloudStack Usage Records
The usage records are imported from the cloud_usage table into
MS Excel via an MySQL ODBC connection
Either PivotTables or reports can be used to present the data
This is convenient and
great for integration
testing between CloudStack
and external systems
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28. Citrix CloudPortal
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Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager tightly integrates with the
cloud_usage database on CloudStack/CloudPlatform
The Usage Data is cross referenced against the utility pricing and
subscription pricing in CPBM
Scheduled Billing and Invoicing jobs generate the invoices in XML
or PDF based on the
users billing cycle
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29. Splunk>
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Splunk> is an operational intelligence tool that was initially used
for collecting and indexing infrastructure logs
We then connected splunk> to the CloudStack Usage database
and automated the collection and indexing of Usage Data
Setup feature-rich dashboards
and the capability to drill down into
the Usage Data for BI reporting
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30. Amysta
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Provides usage visibility, cost control and IT billing for Private and
Hybrid Clouds
Dashboard Integrated in the CloudStack UI
Pricing, Alerting, Reporting, Capacity Mgmt
Amysta consolidates public cloud expenses
e.g. AWS and private cloud consumption in
one dashboard view
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31. Further Information
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Slides: www.slideshare.net/shapeblue
Blogs: www.shapeblue.com/blogs
CloudStack Developers Guide, API Documentation & Wiki:
http://cloudstack.apache.org/
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CloudStack Mailing Lists (Users, Development, Marketing):
http://cloudstack.apache.org/mailing-lists.html
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CloudMonkey:
https://cwiki.apache.org/CLOUDSTACK/cloudstack+cloudmonkey+cli
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How to Use MS Excel to Analyze CloudStack Usage Records:
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX132030
@ShapeBlue #CloudStack #CCCEU13

32. Working with
CloudStack Usage Data
Tariq Iqbal
Senior Consultant
tariq.iqbal@shapeblue.com
Twitter: @TariqIqbal_ @ShapeBlue