VMware VCENTER CHARGEBACK 1.5 - API User manual
vCenter Chargeback User’s Guide
vCenter Chargeback 1.5
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vCenter Chargeback User’s Guide
2 VMware, Inc.
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Contents
About This Book 5
1Introduction to vCenter Chargeback 7
What Is Chargeback 7
Chargeback Solution for Virtual Environments 7
Overview of vCenter Chargeback 8
2Installing vCenter Chargeback 11
Hardware Requirements 11
Software Requirements 12
Prerequisites for vCenter Chargeback 13
Download and Extract the vCenter Chargeback Installer 15
Install vCenter Chargeback 15
Create a vCenter Chargeback Cluster 19
Install vCenter Chargeback with an Existing Database Schema 22
Upgrading vCenter Chargeback 25
Services Related to the vCenter Chargeback Application 28
Accessing the vCenter Chargeback Application 29
Data Collector 29
Uninstall vCenter Chargeback 37
3Configuring Administration Settings 39
Activate the Application 39
Configuring Generic Settings 39
Managing LDAP Servers 42
Managing vCenter Servers 44
Managing Data Collectors 48
Managing the Application License 54
Manage Report View 55
Managing Attributes 57
Manage System Health Thresholds 58
4Authenticating and Managing Users, Roles, and Permissions 59
Resource Based Authorization in vCenter Chargeback 59
Permissions Defined in vCenter Chargeback 60
Managing Roles 61
Managing Users 66
vCenter Chargeback User Authentication 73
5Managing Chargeback Hierarchies 75
Creating a Chargeback Hierarchy 75
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Managing a Chargeback Hierarchy 78
6Managing and Configuring vCenter Chargeback Cost Elements 87
vCenter Chargeback Cost-Related Elements 87
Managing Cost Models 92
Managing Fixed Costs 96
Managing Cost Templates 99
Managing Billing Policies 101
Configuring Cost at the Entity Level 103
Physical Infrastructure Costing 105
7Generating Reports 107
About Reports 107
Generate a Cost Report 109
Generate a Usage Report 110
Generate Cost Comparison Report 112
Scheduling Report Generation 113
Managing Reports 118
Managing Archived Reports 121
Report Dashboard 124
8Monitoring System Health 127
vCenter Chargeback Events 128
9Administration Utilities 129
Database Password Change Utility 129
vCenter Chargeback Database Management Scripts 130
10 Troubleshooting vCenter Chargeback 133
Troubleshooting Utility 133
Troubleshooting Issues in vCenter Chargeback 134
Index 147
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About This Book
The vCenter Chargeback User's Guide provides information about configuring and using the chargeback solution
for virtual environments that use VMware Infrastructure or VMware vSphere.
Intended Audience
This book is intended for anyone who wants to install, upgrade, or use vCenter Chargeback. The information
in this book is written for experienced Windows or Linux system administrators who are familiar with virtual
machine technology and datacenter operations.
VMware Technical Publications Glossary
VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For definitions
of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation, go to
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.
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feedback to [email protected].
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VMware Education Services courses offer extensive hands-on labs, case study
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Services provides offerings to help you assess, plan, build, and manage your
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certification programs, and consulting services, go to
http://www.vmware.com/services.
vCenter Chargeback User’s Guide
6 VMware, Inc.
Introduction to vCenter Chargeback 1
vCenter Chargeback is an end-to-end cost reporting solution for virtual environments using vSphere. Before
you install and start using vCenter Chargeback, an understanding of what chargeback is and about chargeback
solution for a virtual environment would be helpful.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n“What Is Chargeback,” on page 7
n“Chargeback Solution for Virtual Environments,” on page 7
n“Overview of vCenter Chargeback,” on page 8
What Is Chargeback
Chargeback is a mechanism to account for the operational costs involved in providing and maintaining an
IT infrastructure, including the costs for IT services and applications. Measuring resource utilization and
calculating the corresponding IT operational cost enables you to account for the IT resources utilized and bill
for the services provided.
In a non-virtual environment, a physical server and the associated resources like the applications running on
it can be easily mapped to the department using them, making the billing for such resource utilizations
relatively easy. Also, costs incurred due to maintenance and licensing can be directly associated to a
department, thereby enabling you to calculate the complete IT operational costs.
In a virtual environment, however, the task of calculating the IT operational cost for each department becomes
very difficult. Multiple virtual machines run on a physical server, which might be shared across different
departments or cost centers in an organization. As a result, resource utilization for this server and, therefore,
the cost incurred cannot be directly associated to any single department or cost center. The difficulty in
accounting gets further compounded when applications and services get shifted over time to different servers,
based on the load and available infrastructure resources.
Chargeback Solution for Virtual Environments
In a virtual environment, a chargeback solution requires a flexible metering system that can account for the
utilization of resources shared across the organization.
These measurements can be based on allocation or actual usage of individual servers and resources. In the case
of VMotion, DRS, or HA being enabled, the measurements could be based on the allocation or actual usage of
resource pools.
To support chargeback, the virtual environment and the chargeback solution must provide ways to measure
resource usage and associate the usage with a specific costing model. The chargeback solution must also
support the use of different costing models so as to charge the various departments or cost centers differently.
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A chargeback solution for a virtual environment defines a hierarchy with different types of entities such as
departments, divisions, business units, cost centers, physical servers, virtual machines, and so on. For each
entity type, a cost model is defined that determines the rate for each unit of a resource utilized. The chargeback
solution determines the resource usage by using either utilization-based metering or allocation-based metering
of virtual machines. The metered parameters are then associated with the designated entities, and the cost
model defined for that entity along with specific chargeback formulas are used as part of the overall chargeback
solution.
Overview of vCenter Chargeback
Determining the resource utilization and calculating the corresponding cost for a virtual environment that uses
VMware vSphere typically involves VMware professional services’ work or use of partner solutions. These
solutions are built using custom methods for VMware vSphere resource data collection and chargeback cost
calculation for organizations.
vCenter Chargeback is an end-to-end cost reporting solution for virtual environments that use VMware
vSphere. This Web-based application interacts with the vCenter Server Database to retrieve usage information,
calculates the cost by using the defined chargeback formulas, and generates reports. Figure 1-1 shows how
vCenter Chargeback interacts with various components of a virtual environment.
Figure 1-1. vCenter Chargeback in a Virtual Environment
vCenter
Chargeback
database
vCenter
Server
database
vCenter Server
VIM APIJDBC
Data Collector
vCenter Chargeback
Load Balancer
ESX
host02
ESX
host03
ESX
host01
vCenter Chargeback
UI
vCenter Chargeback runs on an Apache Tomcat server instance. The user interacts with the vCenter
Chargeback application through a load balancer (Apache HTTP Server). vCenter Chargeback connects to a
vCenter Chargeback database that stores application-specific information, such as the defined chargeback
hierarchies, cost models, users, roles, and so on. The application also interacts with the vCenter Server and
vCenter Server database through a data collector. The data collector communicates with the vCenter Server
using VIM APIs and with the vCenter Database using JDBC.
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8 VMware, Inc.
When you install vCenter Chargeback, the vCenter Chargeback application, the load balancer, and the data
collectors are installed and run on the same machine. Although the vCenter Chargeback database can also be
installed on the same machine, in a real-world scenario you would install the application and the database on
separate machines.
vCenter Chargeback retrieves the virtual infrastructure inventory and the resource usage information for each
virtual machine from the vCenter Server database through the data collector. The data collector replicates this
information in the vCenter Chargeback database. vCenter Chargeback uses this information from the vCenter
Chargeback database along with the cost model and chargeback cost calculation formulas to generate the cost
reports. A single data collector instance can communicate with multiple vCenter Server instances and vCenter
Server databases and replicate the relevant information in a vCenter Chargeback database.
vCenter Chargeback also lets you create a cluster of vCenter Chargeback instances that share a single load
balancer. Each user request is routed through the load balancer. The load balancer forwards the request to a
vCenter Chargeback instance in the cluster based on the number request currently being serviced by each
instance in the cluster. All the vCenter Chargeback instances in a cluster are connected to the same vCenter
Chargeback database.
Chapter 1 Introduction to vCenter Chargeback
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vCenter Chargeback User’s Guide
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