Monitoring Chargeback with CloudForms Management Engine

The chargeback feature enables you to calculate monetary virtual machine charges based on owner or company tag. To use this feature you must be collecting capacity and utilization data.

Enabling Capacity and Utilization Collection

1. Navigate to Configure -> Configuration, then click the Settings accordion.
2. Select Region, then click the C & U Collection tab.
3. In the Clusters area, select Collect for All Clusters.
4. In the Datastores area, select Collect for All Datastores.
5. Click Save.

Chargeback Rates

CloudForms Management Engine provides a default set of rates for calculating chargeback costs using a set formula based on hourly cost per unit and hourly usage. For example, calculating the Memory Used Cost in dollars ($) for a day can be expressed in the following ways:

• Memory allocation per hour (in MB) * Hourly Allocation cost per megabyte * Number of Memory Allocation metrics available for the day
• Sum of Memory allocation for the day (in MB) * Hourly Allocation cost per megabyte
• Sum of Memory allocation for the day (in MB) * Daily Allocation cost per megabyte / 24

In a scenario where 9.29 GB of memory is used in a day with the chargeback rate set at one dollar ($1) per megabyte per day, the Memory Used Cost would be $396.42.

• 9.29 GB = 9514.08 MB
• 9514.08 MB * $1 (per MB per day) = $9514.08
• $9514.08 / 24 = $396.42 Memory Used Cost

Creating Custom Chargeback Rates

1. Navigate to Cloud Intelligence -> Chargeback.
2. Click the Rates accordion and select either Compute or Storage.
   • Use Compute to set chargeback rates for CPU, disk I/O, memory, network I/O, and fixed items.
   • Use Storage to set chargeback rates for fixed and storage items.
3. Click Configuration, Add a new Chargeback Rate to create a new chargeback rate.
4. Enter a Description for the chargeback rate.
5. Enter a rate and time option for each item.
6. Click Add.

Assigning Chargeback Rates

1. Navigate to Cloud Intelligence -> Chargeback.
2. Click the Assignments accordion, and click either Compute or Storage.
   • Use Compute to assign a compute chargeback rate. You can assign compute chargeback rates to The Enterprise, Selected Clusters, Selected Infrastructure Providers, or Tagged VMs and Instances.
   • Use Storage to assign a storage chargeback rate. You can assign storage chargeback rates to The Enterprise, Selected Datastores, or Tagged Datastores.
3. In the Basic Info area, use the Assign To list to select a type of assignee to assign the rate set to.
4. Select the chargeback rate for each item.
5. Click Save.

Creating Chargeback Reports

1. Navigate to Cloud Intelligence -> Reports.
2. Click the Reports accordion.
3. Click Configuration, Add a new Report.
4. On the Columns tab, complete the Basic Report Info area.
   • Enter a Menu Name for the report to appear in the menu list.
   • Enter a Title for the report.
5. Add fields in the Configure Report Columns area.
   • From the Base the report on table list, select Chargebacks.
   • Select the fields that you want in the report from Available Fields, then click Move selected fields down. In addition to the fields, you can also select tags that you have created and assigned.
   • Change the order of the fields in the report by clicking Move selected fields up or Move selected fields down.
6. Click the Formatting tab to set the size of paper for a PDF and column header format.
   • From the PDF Output area, select the page size from the drop-down list.
   • From Specify Column Headers and Formats, type the text you want displayed for each field. For each numeric field, you can also set the numeric format.
7. Click the Filter tab to set filters for the data displayed in the report.
   • From Chargeback Filters, select how you want the costs to show, the tag category, the tag, and how you want the items grouped.
   • From Chargeback Interval, select the time interval. You must have a full interval worth of data in order to select an option other than Partial in the Daily Ending With list.
8. Click the Preview tab, then click Load to preview the report.
9. Click Add to create the new report.

Note

When viewing chargeback reports, there is a number of CPUs rate for virtual machines. This chargeback is only calculated for running virtual machines. If a virtual machine is not running, then it is not charged for CPU allocation.

Adding Reports to Report Menus

Make the chargeback report accessible by adding it to the Report menu.

1. Navigate to Cloud Intelligence -> Reports.
2. Click the Edit Report Menus accordion.
3. Click the role whose menus you want to customize.
4. Select the subfolder where you want to put the report using the file tree.
5. Add the report by selecting it from the Available Reports area on the right, and click Move selected reports left.
6. Click Commit report management changes.
7. Click Save.