VMware Aria Operations can provide both Costing and Pricing metrics, we've discussed VM Costing previously, but this blog will focus on VM Pricing. Let's first establish the difference:
VM Costing - the cost of a VM, what it costs to build and run a VM, often times called showback. The best explanation of Aria Operations Costing is from VMware Staff Technical Marketing Architect Brandon Gordon and can be found on the VMware Cloud Management YouTube channel.
VM Pricing - the price of a VM, what you might be charging your customers, often times called chargeback. This might include VM setup charges, recurring costs, OS costs, service fees, and more.
VM Pricing can be established based on Cost or Rate via the Pricing Card found in Configure - Cost Settings - Pricing.
Cost based Pricing will use the Costs provided by the Aria Operations Cost Engine and allow you to configure a premium on top of that, say for example 2x CPU Cost.
Rate based Pricing will ignore the Aria Operations provided cost metrics and use the Rates you provide instead. Here I've listed CPU, Memory, and Storage Rates.
I'm pricing my VMs with Basic Charges as listed:
$1000/vCPU/Month, do this always, not just when the VM is powered on.
$500/GB Memory/Month, do this always.
$100/GB Storage/Month, do this always.
Next, I've added Guest OS Prices, which are based on the OS provided by VMware Tools, as shown in Aria Operations.
Next, you can use vCenter Tags to add charges. For example, backup fees, additional storage charges, and more. Here I've added fees around Backups and Archives.
Overall Charges allow you to add setup fees and recurring charges, for example VM build fees and monthly services charges. VM setup charges are added at VM creation time, while Recurring fees are added immediately.
Finally, you can assign your new Pricing policy to vCenters and/or Clusters.
Once complete, you just have to wait for a calculation, which takes place every 24 hours. Costing calculations are made at 4 PM CST and Price calculations are made at 7 PM CST. Costing calculation timing can be adjusted via Administration - Global Settings - Cost/Price.
Let's explore a VM I've configured Rate based Pricing on.
Price Metrics are shown under Metrics - Summary - Metering. Here you can see CPU Price, Memory Price, and Storage Price.
Let's confirm the CPU Price. In this case, the VM has 12 vCPUs, which are being charged at $1000/CPU/Month. 12 x $1000 / 30 = $400 for CPU charges so far this month, which is one day. Check.
Let's confirm the Memory Price, which uses the Consumed Memory metric. This VM Consumed Memory is 63.74GB, which we're pricing at $500/GB/Month. So, 63.74 x $500 / 30 = $1062.5 for RAM charges so far this month, which is one day, as shown below. Check.
This VM has 97.66GB of Storage (Metrics - Configuration - Hardware - Disk Space (GB)). We charge at $100/GB/Month, which gives us 97.66 x $100 / 30 = $325.52 for Storage so far this month, which is one day. Check.
Finally, the Recurring Fees of $10/month, or $.33/day is added, giving us a total Price for our VM, shown below. Check.
You now have Cost and Price metrics for VMs you can use in Dashboards, Views, Reports, and more. For more information on Aria Operations see the VMware Apps and Cloud Management Tech Zone!
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