VMware vCenter Chargeback
Gain Cost Visibility and Accountability for Your Infrastructure and Operations

Overview:

VMware® vCenter Chargeback Manager™ enables accurate cost measurement, analysis and reporting of virtual machines. With vCenter Chargeback Manager, line-of-business owners and IT teams can gain visibility into the actual cost of the virtual infrastructure and operations required to support business services. vCenter Chargeback Manager provides the ability to map IT costs to business units, cost centers or external customers—enabling a better understanding of how much resources cost and what can be done to optimize resource utilization. vCenter Chargeback Manager also allows organizations to support policy-driven accountability for selfservice environments so that businesses can "pay as they go" for IT resources.

Key Benefits

• Improve resource utilization by gaining accurate visibility into the true costs of virtualized workloads.
• Enable line-of-business owners to have full transparency and accountability for self-service resource requests and vCenter operations.
• Model infrastructure costs in a flexible way that fits organizational processes and policies.

How Is vCenter Chargeback Manager Used?

vCenter Chargeback Manager enables administrators to deliver IT as a service with a simple, flexible and accurate chargeback model. Using vCenter Chargeback Manager, administrators can

• Create customized cost models and metrics to suit organizational needs – Flexible cost models allow IT to measure fixed costs, allocated costs, actual utilization or a mix of all three, tracking costs by business unit or group.
• Gain accurate visibility into virtualization costs – vCenter Chargeback Manager captures accurate cost metrics for virtual environments, giving you insight into the true costs of provisioned systems. vCenter Chargeback Manager takes into account many different factors, ranging from hardware costs (CPU, memory, storage, etc.) to additional elements such as power and cooling.
• Enable the delivery of IT as a service – vCenter Chargeback Manager provides a charging foundation for enabling cloud computing. Used in conjunction with a self-service catalog, business owners can now have complete transparency and accountability for the services they are consuming.
• Manage costs for integrated operations – Provide operational decision support using cost information to better manage and optimize resources and enable operations managers to better justify, plan and budget.

How Does vCenter Chargeback Manager Work?

Chargeback Hierarchy Makes It Easy to Manage Chargeback Models

Administrators create a chargeback hierarchy that provides the basis for determining cost structures and delivery of reports. The hierarchy can span multiple VMware vCenter™ Server instances for organization-wide chargeback. Cost templates simplify and standardize the process of adding costs for virtual machines to the chargeback hierarchy. Any number of cost templates can be created to support different cost structures across the organization.

Multiple Cost Models Provide Flexibility in Measuring Costs

vCenter Chargeback Manager supports three cost models:

1. Fixed cost – Specific per–virtual-machine-instance costs such as floor space, power and cooling, software, or administrative overhead
2. Allocation-based costing – Variable costs per virtual machine based on allocated resources, such as the amount of memory, CPU or storage allocated or reserved for the virtual machine in vCenter Server
3. Utilization-based costing – Variable costs per virtual machine based on actual resources used, including average memory, disk and CPU usage, network I/O, and disk I/O Cost models can be combined in a cost template, making it easy to start with a simple chargeback model and align with organizational requirements.

Flexible Cost Accounting Allows Costs to Be Captured Accurately

Administrators can define base rates associated with metered elements (e.g., CPU, memory, disk, disk I/O or network I/O). Rate multipliers can be applied to different costing models at runtime, allowing IT organizations to account for use of higher-end storage or servers, or higher SLAs (e.g., disaster recovery or backup included, production vs. development systems). Metered elements that are not needed can also be easily disabled.

Key Features:

vCenter Chargeback Manager allows administrators to gain visibility into infrastructure costs and deliver IT as a service with a simple, flexible and accurate chargeback model.

Create Customizable Cost Models

Administrators can customize their chargeback models with unique cost information and flexible cost models. vCenter Chargeback Manager

• Supports allocation-based costing, utilization-based costing or a combination of both to fit an organization's unique costing policies
• Maintains reusable cost templates that allow the process of adding cost models to virtual machines to be standardized
• Allows for entry of base costs, fixed costs, one-time costs, multiple rate factors and overage fees to model true costs

Report Infrastructure Costs Accurately

vCenter Chargeback Manager automatically creates detailed reports that can be submitted to business units within an organization or used by IT for decision making and planning. This gives organizations a clear view of resources consumed and their associated costs, eliminating the perception that virtual machines are "free." vCenter Chargeback Manager

• Generates cost reports that can provide comparison of cost models and resource usage for specified periods of time
• Includes customizable report templates enabling reports to contain a unique header, footer, logo, title and other style elements to fit company or business-unit brand standards.
• Reports on the most used and most expensive virtual machines, allowing organizations to gain visibility into the largest contributors to datacenter costs, which in turn makes it easier to drive and prioritize efficiency efforts.

Drive Accountability in Cloud Environments

Administrators now have a key building block for delivering IT as a service. vCenter Chargeback Manager

• Meters resources managed in VMware vCloud® Director™, including broadband network traffic, public IP addresses, and other services such as DHCP, NAT and firewalling
• Automates creation of vCloud Director chargeback hierarchies based on vCloud Director organization virtual datacenters and vApps
• Supports vCloud Director resource-management models and enables pay-as-you-go, reservation-pool and allocation-pool charging for resources

How to Buy:

VMware Chargeback Manager
Includes a license for 25 managed virtual machines. Support and subscription sold separately.

VMware Chargeback Manager Requirements

VMware Chargeback Manager requires an adequate number of vSphere Standard, Advanced, Enterprise or Enterprise Plus licenses and one instance of vCenter Server Standard.

Learn more about VMware vCenter Server Standard licensing and VMware vSphere licensing.

Support:

VMware Production Support & Subscription

Technical Support, 24 Hour Sev 1 Support -- 7 days a week.

Focused, 24-Hour Support For Production Environments

• Global, 24x7 support for Severity 1 issues
• Fast response times for critical issues
• Unlimited number of support requests
• Remote Support
• Online access to documentation and technical resources, knowledge base, discussion forums
• Product updates and upgrades

Overview

VMware Production Support is designed with your production environments in mind. Our global support centers are staffed around the clock to provide you access to our industry-leading expertise in virtualization and years of experience supporting virtual infrastructure products in real-world customer environments. We are committed to delivering enterprise-class, worldwide support with a single objective in mind: your success.

VMware Basic Support & Subscription Service

Technical Support, 12 Hours/Day, per published Business Hours, Mon. thru Fri.

Weekday Support for Test, Dev and Non-Critical Deployments

• Global, 12x5 access to support
• Unlimited number of support requests
• Remote Support
• Online access to documentation and technical resources, knowledge base, discussion forums
• Product updates and upgrades

Overview

VMware Basic Support is designed for non-critical applications and platforms that require support during normal business hours. Our global support centers have been strategically placed to provide you with fast and efficient access to the support center in your region. Each center is staffed with engineers that can provide industry-leading expertise in virtualization and years of experience supporting virtual infrastructure products in real-world customer environments. We are committed to delivering enterprise-class, worldwide support with a single objective in mind: your success.

Feature	Production Support	Basic Support
Hours of Operation	24 Hrs/Day 7 Days/Wk 365 Days/Yr 1	12 Hrs/Day Mon–Fri 1
Length of Service	1 or 3 Years	1 or 3 Years
Product Updates	Yes	Yes
Product Upgrades	Yes	Yes
Products Supported	All Products (excluding VMware Fusion and Player)	All Products (excluding VMware Fusion and Player)
Method of Access	Telephone/ Web	Telephone/ Web
Response Method	Telephone/ Email	Telephone/ Email
Remote Support	Yes	Yes
Access to VMware Web site	Yes	Yes
Access to VMware Discussion Forums and Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes
Max Number of Support Admins per Contract	6	4
Number of Support Requests	Unlimited	Unlimited
Target Response Times Critical (Severity 1 Major (Severity 2) Minor (Severity 3) Cosmetic (Severity 4)	30 minutes or less: 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours	4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours 12 business hours
Business Hours North America and Latin America Alaska, Hawaii South America (NASA) Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA Asia, Pacific Rim, Japan (APJ) Australia/New Zealand	Monday - Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (local time zone) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (EST/EDT) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (GMT/GMT+1) 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Singapore Time) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Sydney AET)	Monday - Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (local time zone) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (EST/EDT) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (GMT/GMT+1) 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Singapore Time) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Sydney AET)

1Hours of operation for Gemstone are Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (PST/PDT) globally. 1Hours of operation for VMware Go Pro and vCenter Protect products are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (CST/CDT), except holidays. 1Hours of operation for VMware IT Business Management and IT Financial Management are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EST/EDT/GMT) except holidays. 1Hours of operation for Socialcast are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT).

Documentation:

Download the VMware vCenter Chargeback Datasheet (PDF).