What is VMware Cloud Foundation?
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offers cloud providers a VMware hybrid cloud platform. It goes beyond VMware vSphere capabilities with integrated software-defined storage, networking, and security that can be consumed either on-prem or in the public cloud. With the integrated cloud management capabilities of VCF, it can span private and public environments, offering a consistent operational model based on vSphere tools and processes and the freedom to run applications anywhere.
How is VMware Cloud Foundation metered?
As part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program, VCF is available to providers on a subscription model. The way to utilize VCF on-prem and pay as you grow is to install Usage Meter in your data center and start the VCF metering.
VMware Cloud Foundation is configured by adding a vCenter server part of the VCF deployment. After adding the vCenter IP and user credentials, specify if the vCenter Server is managed by VCF. If that is the case, select the type of VCF license edition. The reporting of the VCF usage is based on the selected license type. For VCF with SDDC manager license, the usage will be reported based on averaged capped vRAM, while for the rest of VCF editions, the metric will be average used CPU cores throughout the month.
When metering VMware Cloud Foundation, Usage Meter performs two types of usage collections: event-based collections and inventory collections. What is reported are the host core CPUs and vRAM. Host core CPUs are collected from vCenter event-based collections and inventory collections. vRAM is collected from vCenter usage collections.
How is VMware Cloud Foundation reported?
VCF usage is reported as average capped billed vRAM or average host CPU cores per month based on the selected VCF license type.
The VCF licenses that are metered based on the average host CPU cores throughout the month are:
• VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Standard
• VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Advanced
• VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Enterprise
• VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Standard without vSAN
• VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Advanced without vSAN
• VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Enterprise without vSAN
The VCF license that is reported by Usage Meter based on the average capped billed vRAM is VMware Cloud Foundation for SDDC Manager.
Calculating VMware Cloud Foundation usage
The following information helps you calculate the VCF usage shown in the VM History Report based on a VCF edition.
Host Core Reporting
Usage is calculated at an ESXi host level for the duration the host is in use.
Avg number of Cores = (sum of cores consumed per-hourly collections) / (hours in month)
The logic applies to editions with or without vSAN. The following rules apply when calculating VCF usage based on CPU cores:
• If at least one VM is running on a host (VM is in a powered-on state), the host cores are reported for the duration of the VM is powered-on.
• If a host, whether it’s been modified, added, or placed into migration mode (i.e., host state changes)
• If a host is running with no powered-on VMs, the host cores will not be reported whether storage is consumed.
Important: VCF license edition is applied to all host cores for the duration the edition is configured. When the VCF edition changes, the new edition is immediately applied to all host cores.
vRAM Reporting
Usage is calculated as an average of the hourly vRAM usage over a month on vSphere instances marked as Rental (the same as vCenter).
Avg Capped Billed vRAM (GB) = (sum of consumed GB per-hourly collections) / (hours in month) Hourly GB = min(max(memorySizeMB/2,reserved-memoryReservation),memory cap)
Where memory cap = 24 * 1024 (24 GBs)
The rules that apply to vRAM reporting of VCF usage are:
• Only powered-on VMs are reported.
• Only the VCF SDDC Manager edition will be reported based on vRAM usage. It is an add-on product separate from the host core metering. It is not bundled with any other product.
Understanding VCF usage in Usage Insight reports
Monthly Usage Report
The Usage Insight Monthly Usage Report (MUR) shows the aggregated VCF usage based on a license edition. The metric used to calculate the usage is bound to the used VCF license edition.
As mentioned earlier, if the VCF license type changes during the month, there will be 2 lines in the MUR showing the usage per the used license types.
Here is an example of aggregated VCF Usage shown in Usage Insight. The following information is the same as the information in the Monthly Usage Report. To check the latter, you need to click Download All Reports and open the mur.tsv report of the Usage Meter instance.
VM History Report
When calculating VCF usage from the VM History Report, select the VCF edition from the VCF column. For example, the VCF edition marked as “E” means that the used VCF edition is VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Providers Enterprise.
If you haven’t changed the VCF edition during the month and the VCF edition that you use is reported based on vRAM, the way to calculate your VCF usage is:
- Filter the VCF edition by the VCF column
- Get the MB-Hours sum for all VMs managed by the VCF edition
- Divide the SUM(MB-Hours)/24/31/1024, where 24 is the hours in the day, 31 is the days in the month, and 1024 is to calculate the vRAM usage in GB
- Round down the result to the nearest whole number
Here is the Excel Formula: ROUNDDOWN(SUM(MB-Hours)/24/31/1024;0)
Customer Monthly Report
The Customer Monthly Usage report can only include usage information about VMware Cloud Foundation for SDDC Manager edition. The customer monthly usage report does not provide usage information per a customer for VCF editions metered based on CPU cores.
Resources
Usage Meter Product Documentation
Usage Meter 4.5 Product Detection Guide
Have more questions?
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