1.0
Table Of Contents
- vCenter Chargeback User’s Guide
- Contents
- About This Book
- Introduction to vCenter Chargeback
- Installing vCenter Chargeback
- Configuring Administration Settings
- Authenticating and Managing Users, Roles, and Permissions
- Managing Chargeback Hierarchies
- Create a Chargeback Hierarchy
- Manage a Chargeback Hierarchy
- View a Chargeback Hierarchy
- Add a vCenter Server Entity
- Add a vCenter Chargeback Entity
- Rename a Chargeback Hierarchy or a Chargeback Entity
- Delete an Entity from the Hierarchy
- Delete a Chargeback Hierarchy
- Assign Attributes
- Move Entities Within a Hierarchy
- Share Virtual Machine Cost
- View Properties of a vCenter Server Entity
- Creating and Configuring a Cost Model
- Generating Reports
- System Health, Utilities, and Troubleshooting
- System Health
- Events
- Utilities
- Troubleshooting
- Unable to Send Report Through Email
- Storage Syncing Job Fails
- Unable to use Custom SSL Certificates
- Unable to View the vCenter Chargeback Plug-In in the VI Client
- Report Does not Display the Memory Usage Value and the Corresponding Cost
- Report Does not Display the Network Transmitted and Network Received Stats
- Report Does not Display the Disk Read and Disk Write Stats
- Unable to Add vCenter Server in vCenter Chargeback
- Changed Timezone Setting is not Reflected
- Installer Throws the SQL Driver not Found Error
- Status of Failed Data Collector is not Reflected Immediately on the System Health tab
- Non-English Characters are not Correctly Stored in the vCenter Chargeback Database
- Service Temporarily Unavailable Error Thrown when Accessing vCenter Chargeback
- Text and Messages on the vCenter Chargeback User Interface are not Correctly Displayed
- Error Occurs While Importing a Hierarchy from a CSV File
- Changes to Chargeback Hierarchy are not Reflected in the Concurrent User-Sessions
- Changes to the vCenter Server Hierarchy are not Reflected in vCenter Chargeback
- Unable to Fetch the Primary Group of a LDAP User
- Unable to Access the vCenter Chargeback Application
- Index
vCenter Chargeback User’s Guide
10 VMware, Inc.
Achargebacksolutionforavirtualizedenvironmentdefinesahierarchywithdifferenttypesofentitiessuch
asdepartments,divisions,businessunits,costcenters,physicalservers,virtualmachines,andsoon.Foreach
entitytype,acostmodelisdefinedthatdeterminestherateforeachunitofaresourceutilized.The
chargeback
solutiondeterminestheresourceusageeitherusingbyutilization‐basedmeteringorallocation‐based
meteringofvirtualmachines.Themeteredparametersarethenassociatedwiththedesignatedentities,and
thecostmodeldefinedforthatentityalongwithspecificchargebackformulasisusedaspartoftheoverall
chargeback
solution.
Overview of vCenter Chargeback
Determiningtheresourceutilizationandcalculatingthecorrespondingcostforenvironmentsvirtualized
usingVMwarevSpheretypicallyinvolvesVMwareprofessionalservices’workoruseofpartnersolutions,
suchasthoseprovidedbyEvident,Comparex,andIBM/Tivoli.Thesesolutionsarebuiltusingcustom
methodsforVMwarevSphereresourcedatacollectionandchargebackcost
calculationfororganizations.
vCenterChargebackisanend‐to‐endcostreportingsolutionforenvironmentsvirtualizedusingvSphere.
This Web‐basedapplicationinteractswiththevCenterDatabasetoretrieveusageinformation,calculatesthe
costbyusingthedefinedchargebackformulas,andgeneratesreports.Figure 1‐1showshowvCenter
Chargebackinteractswithvarious
componentsofavirtualizedenvironment.
Figure 1-1. vCenter Chargeback in a Virtualized Environment
vCenterChargebackrunsonanApacheTomcatserverinstance.TheuserinteractswiththevCenter
Chargebackapplicationthroughaloadbalancer(ApacheHTTPServer).vCenterChargebackconnectstoa
vCenterChargebackdatabasethatstoresapplication‐specificinformation,suchasthedefinedchargeback
hierarchies,costmodels,
users,roles,andsoon.TheapplicationalsointeractswiththevCenterServerand
vCenterServerdatabasethroughadatacollector.ThedatacollectorcommunicateswiththevCenterServer
usingVIMAPIsandwiththevCenterDatabaseusingJDBC.
WhenyouinstallvCenterChargeback,thevCenterChargebackapplication,theloadbalancer,
andthedata
collectorareinstalledandrunonthesamemachine.AlthoughthevCenterChargebackdatabasecanalsobe
installedonthesamemachine,inareal‐worldscenarioyouwouldinstalltheapplicationandthedatabaseon
separatemachines.
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