Introduction to vCenter Chargeback
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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:
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“What Is Chargeback,”
on page 7
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“Chargeback Solution for Virtual Environments,”
on page 7
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“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.
VMware, Inc.
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