Understanding vRealize Operations Metering and Reporting

As part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program, Usage Meter provides automated metering of VMware products that are used on-prem and paid based on a pay-as-you-grow basis. One of the products that are part of this program is vRealize Operations.

vRealize Operations brings intelligent operations management with high visibility on application to storage across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. By utilizing its policy-based automation, operations teams can automate key processes and improve the overall IT efficiency of their organizations.

How does Usage Meter work with vRealize Operations?

Usage Meter used to auto-detect vRealize Operations after a monitored vCenter Server was added for metering. The good news is that this is now over! vRealize Operations is no longer auto-detected. It is now added for metering in the same way as the rest products supported by Usage Meter.

Why is this important? Because we aim to improve the user experience by allowing partners to register the right vRealize Operations instance associated with a vCenter Server.

Usage Meter supports several vRealize Operations (vROps) deployment scenarios:

• A managed vRealize Operations server monitoring a single tenant.
• A hosted vRealize Operations server for multiple tenants.
• A hosted vRealize Operations server that manages VMs hosted by SP or hosted on customer’s premises.
• A vRealize Operations server configured with multiple vCenter servers.

Which are the supported vRealize Operations Manager versions?

Usage Meter 4.5 now supports vRealize Operations 8.6 and later and has a granular approach to metering the managed VMs. Although, Usage Meter 4.4 and 4.5 both support vRealize Operations version. 8.6 or later, only Usage Meter 4.5 provides granular metering of VMs part of license groups. We will expand on that in the following paragraphs.

Here is a glimpse of the vRealize Operations versions supported by the currently available Usage Meter 4.4 and 4.5.

How is vRealize Operations metered?

vRealize Operations usage is metered after the vRealize Operations instance is added for metering in the Usage Meter web application.  The vRealize Operations license edition is retrieved by Usage Meter from the vRealize Operations server during each data collection.

Usage Meter automatically detects the following vRealize Operations editions:

• vRealize Operations Standard
• vRealize Operations Advanced
• vRealize Operations Enterprise

vRealize Operations metering is based on Virtual Machines monitored by a vRealize Operations instance.  Providers are responsible for reporting usage for monitored VMs and OSI Instances (which represent non-virtualized servers). Check out the Product Usage Guide for instructions on how to do this.

Usage Meter 4.5 does not track OSI instances monitored by vRealize Operations or add-on packages such as Blue Medora.

Metering of vRealize Operation version 8.6 or later

Usage Meter 4.5 checks the version of vRealize Operations once it establishes the connection to the instance. If the detected vRealize Operations version is 8.6 or later, Usage Meter checks for VMs part of license groups. If there are such, Usage Meter 4.5 reports them against the highest vRealize Operations edition assigned to that license group. In case there is a VM part of multiple license groups, then Usage Meter will report the highest edition of the first license group it queries.

For vRealize Operations instances with versions prior to 8.6, Usage Meter 4.5 will only report the monitored VMs against the highest vRealize Operations edition that has been associated with the product.

How to optimize vRealize Operations metering?

Usage Meter connects to a vRealize Operations server using the account provided by the Usage Meter administrator.  Usage Meter will meter all VMs that are visible through the provided account.

To meter only a subset of monitored VMs, for example, to divide monitoring by Tenant, vRealize Operations should be configured to filter the monitored virtual machines to include only a subset of the VMs deployed to the monitored vCenter instance.

This is accomplished by creating a new account in vRealize Operations and configuring Role Base Access Controls to restrict the view of the account to the desired Virtual Machines.  The RBAC restricted account and credentials are provided to Usage Meter when the vRealize Operations server registration is completed. 

Check the following information on how to perform metering on a subset of VMs monitored by vRealize Operations: Metering a subset of VMs monitored by vRealize Operations.

How is vRealize Operations usage reported?

Usage Meter reports both managed and unmanaged vCenter servers. Managed vCenter servers are metered by Usage Meter. The unmanaged vCenter servers are which are not metered by Usage Meter.

The unmanaged vCenter servers can be associated with only one vRealize Operations instance if monitored by multiple instances. This will be the vRealize Operations instance with the highest edition. VMs part of unmanaged vCenter servers will be reported once no matter how many vRealize Operations instances are monitoring them.

vRealize Operations is reported by Usage Meter 4.5 as either Flex Add-on or standalone. When vROps usage is reported as a Flex Add-on, the metric is the Avg Capped Billed vRAM, while reported as standalone, the metric is the Average Number of Virtual Machines monitored by vRealize Operations during the reporting month.

The following rules apply to the reporting of vRealize Operations:

• vRealize Operations Standard, Advanced and Enterprise editions are reported as a Flex add-on or standalone depending on the provider’s preference.
• vCenter servers using vRealize Operations will always be reported as a standalone line item on the monthly usage report as (unmanaged) if they are not added to vCloud Usage Meter.
• When vRealize Operations edition is reported as standalone, and the vCenter servers monitored by it are added to Usage Meter 4.5, then the monthly usage report will include a single line vRealize Operations edition (managed).
• Unmanaged vCenter Servers are associated with only one vRealize Operations instance if monitored by multiple vRealize Operations instances. The VMs of those unmanaged vCenter Servers will be billed once based on the vRealize Operations instance with the highest edition.

vRealize Operations in vCloud Usage Insight reports

In the Virtual Machine History report, you will find information about what vROps license edition has been associated with a VM. This information is available under the vROps column in the report. The abbreviations used are E (Enterprise), A (Advanced), and S (Standard).

As we previously mentioned, Usage Meter 4.5 will check for license groups in vROps and report the highest license edition detected for a VM if vROps is version 8.6 or later.

In the Monthly Usage Report, vRealize Operations is reported as an Add-on or standalone. Unmanaged vCenter Servers are also reported as a standalone line.

Resources

• Usage Meter 4.5 Download Page
• Usage Meter 4.5 Product Detection Whitepaper
• Usage Meter 4.5 Official Documentation
• VMware Interoperability Matrix

Have more questions?

Contact us at: [email protected] or on Slack.