vCenter Chargeback Manager is a tool that provides metering and reporting capabilities for vCloud environments. It measures, analyzes, and reports on resource usage to enable cost transparency and accountability. This allows vCloud providers to implement chargeback or showback policies to influence user behavior and identify heavy resource users. The tool has a Windows-based application with load balancing and data collection services that gather usage data from vCenters, vCloud Director, and vCloud Networking and Security. It supports various databases and pricing models to calculate costs based on resource allocation and consumption. Administrators can generate cost, usage, and comparison reports in different formats to analyze resource spending across organization hierarchies.

1. vCenter charge back manager
By Preetam Zarey
For vZare.com
Version 1.0.1
Sunday, October 08, 2013

2. Why vCloud Metering
• To accurately measure consumer usage
• To Shape consumer behavior through
chargeback (for public cloud) or showback Policies (for private
cloud)
• To enable cost transparency and accountability
• Exposes heavy or demanding users who can
monopolize vCloud resources
• When no showback or chargeback in place
▫ Little incentive to change consumption behavior
▫ No Penalties to curb excessive uses
 Remember demanding users asking 32 vCPU,
though they hardly use 4 vCPU)
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3. Introduction
• vCenter Chargeback Manager provides the
metering capability to (MAR)
▫ Measure,
▫ Analyze, and
▫ Report on resources used in private and public vCloud
environments.
• vCloud providers can configure and associate
various pricing models to vCloud Director entities.
• The cost transparency enabled by vCenter
Chargeback allows vCloud providers to validate and
adjust financial models based on the demand for
resources.
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4. Architecture
• Based on Windows Server
• Has three stack (may run separate servers for resiliency, scalability)
▫ Web Application
▫ Load Balancer
▫ Data collector services
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Recommended Specification
CPU 2.0 GHz or faster
Memory 4 GB RAM
Disk Space 3 GB
Network 1 Gbps

5. High Availability
• Can be Clustered using Apache Load balancer
• Apache load balancer is bundle with the product
• Up to three nodes but must be of same version
• Apache Load balancer
▫ Is Active/Active
▫ Balances report processing load by leveraging
internal quartz scheduler
▫ Load balancer cannot be replaced by 3rd Party
load balancer
▫ Load balancer is controlled via windows service
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6. • Load balancer server using stickiness. This
allows session to stick same vCenter Charge
back manager
• If there are multiple sessions
▫ The load balancer selects the worker by checking
the load on the worker by using the number of
requests
▫ Access is distributed according to the lbfactor (it is
the same for all the servers in the cluster) in a
sliding time window.
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7. Database
• Multiple Chargeback environments (separate vCenter
Chargeback Manager & DB) can work with a single vCD
instance, but this increases the load on the vCloud
Director instance.
• The vCenter Chargeback DB stores
▫ Organization hierarchies ( Feeded by data collector)
▫ cost/rate plans, and
▫ Global chargeback configuration data.
• Supported databases include
▫ Microsoft SQL Server Express
▫ Microsoft SQL Server, and
▫ Oracle
• Unsupported Databases
▫ DB2 or PostgreSQL (Part of vCSA)
• Database partitioning helps to improve the performance
of vCenter Chargeback Manager.
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8. Data Collectors
• vCenter Chargeback Manager integration with vCloud
Director is handled through data collectors
• Chargeback Manager Data Collector (CMDC)
▫ vCenter must be registered with CMDC
▫ Talks with registered VCs to gather VMs metrics
▫ All VCs controlled by vCD must be registered with CMDC,till then
VMs are absent
• vCloud Data Collector (VDC)
▫ Connect to vDC via vCloud API to monitor all charge back related
events
▫ VDC populates vCenter Charge back manager’s DB with
organization hierarchies and allocation unit information
• vCloud Networking & Security Manager Data Collector
(vCNSDC)
▫ Connects with vDC’s vShield Manager (vCNS Manager) to collect
network statistics for networks in Organizations hierarchies
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9. • Install additional VDC and or vCNSDC on additional servers for HA
• But multiple data collector works in Active-Passive configuration
only
• One can have multiple data collector but it can connect to only one
vCD instance
vCenter Chargeback Maximums
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Constraint Limits
VCs in a Chargeback system 10
VCs per data collector 5
VMs per data collector 15000
VMs/Entities in a chargeback system 35000
VM/Entities per hierarchy 1000
Hierarchies in a charge back system 5000
Concurrent reports (3000 pages) per
chargeback system
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10. User Roles
• Highest privileged are assigned to Superuser
role
• Administrator role privileges are controlled by
Superuser
• Users created by Administrator A1 is not visible
to Administrator A2 and vice versa
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11. Cost Calculation
• Set allocation units based on parameters of the
allocation model configured in vCloud Director.
• Allocation units are variables associated with
charge back metrics based on the allocated size
of the resource
• Allocation units of organization vDC are not
calculated when you use PAYG model. As units
do not get consumed till we power ON VMs
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12. Pricing Models
• Installing VCDC & vCNSDC creates default cost models
and Billing policies
• Billing Policies
▫ Controls costs based on resources consumed
▫ Charged based on allocation of
 vCPU
 Memory
 Storage
▫ Cost time interval include
 Hourly
 Daily
 Weekly
 Monthly
 Quarterly
 Half-yearly
 Yearly
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13. Pricing Models - Rate Factors
• Rate Factors allow scaling of base cost for
specific chargeable entity.
• Use cases
▫ Promotional rate
 Offering 10 % discount for renewal of contracts.
Then simply modify the rate factor as 0.9 instead of
modifying base cost
▫ Rates for unique configurations
 When customer is requesting off the catalog service
offering
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14. Pricing Models – VM Instance
• VM instance assign fixed price to a hard bundle
of vCPU and Memory
• VM Instance linked with pricing model
• Pricing Model Includes
▫ Hierarchy selection criteria
▫ Fixed pricing table and a
▫ Default fixed price
• VM instance use step function, if the VM is
configured with vCPU & Memory which is not
per the catalog, then charge is based on the
next large instance size
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15. Reporting
• Can generate Cost, Usage and Comparison
(CuC) reports for hierarchies and entities. Match
the hierarchy with appropriate cost model when
generating reports
• Chargeback API can pull results in following
format
▫ PDF
▫ XML
▫ XSL
• Create service accounts with read-only
privileges to run reports from the UI or charge
API
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16. Thank you vZare.com
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