VMware Tanzu is part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program and is at the heart of the VMware Developer-Ready Cloud. With Tanzu, developer productivity and agility increase – applications and Kubernetes clusters are deployed rapidly across clouds and on-prem. Tanzu helps personas like Devs and DevOps automate the provisioning of Kubernetes clusters and develop and launch apps quickly.
As part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program, Tanzu helps providers offer native Kubernetes experience on top of vSphere to their customers. The VMware Cloud Provider program helps cloud providers expand their service offerings with the VMware portfolio of services and gain a competitive edge against their competitors.
How do Tanzu metering and reporting work?
Tanzu works with vSphere 7.0 or later, and it has been metered by Usage Meter since version 4.3.
Currently, only Tanzu Basic usage is automatically reported in the VMware Commerce Portal. The usage of other Tanzu editions needs to be manually submitted in the VMware Commerce Portal. Refer to the VCPP Product Usage Guide to learn how to do it.
Tanzu Basic is metered as a Flex Add-on at no additional cost for cloud providers. What is being reported is the Tanzu Basic VMs vRAM or CPU core usage.
The Tanzu usage based on vRAM is calculated by computing the average billable vRAM of all VMs part of the Namespace resource pool in a supervisor host cluster. The CPU core usage is calculated by summing the number of physical cores across all hosts running at least one powered-on Tanzu-managed VM.
Note: Tanzu usage does not include vSphere and other product usages. Tanzu usage is reported separately.
What does the metering process look like?
To start metering the Tanzu usage in your data center, you must first add the vCenter Server, which has Tanzu enabled, in the Usage Meter web application. For Tanzu, you need to select its license edition and what metric will be used to measure usage. The options are vRAM or CPU cores.
Note: After adding the vCenter Server that has Tanzu enabled, in the “associated products” column on the vCenter page even, it will not show up if detected by Usage Meter.
You can switch between the vRAM metric and CPU cores metric at any time during the metering period. If the metric changes during the month, then the Monthly Usage Report will appear with two lines, each with the Tanzu license edition, the used metric, and the units detected for the period in which the metric was in effect.
Note: A single Usage Meter instance is recommended to meter a single Tanzu edition. For datacenters using different Tanzu editions, there should be a separate Usage Meter installation for each used Tanzu edition.
How does the Tanzu reporting work?
After Usage Meter detects that Tanzu is enabled for a vCenter, it starts collecting usage data. The data that Usage Meter collects is the Tanzu edition enabled on the vCenter and the Tanzu-related usage based on the selected metric in the Usage Meter web application.
Note: With Usage Meter 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5.0.1, only Tanzu Basic usage is automatically reported.
Tanzu Basic usage is reported by Usage Insight and appears on the Cloud Partner Navigator portal under the Usage tab. The reported usage is aggregated by month, and a report bundle can be downloaded to check how usage has been calculated.
The reports that include information for Tanzu Basic usage are the Monthly Usage Report and Virtual Machine History Report.
Monthly Usage Report
The Monthly Usage Report shows the Tanzu usage for the reporting period. It includes information about the metric used to measure the usage and the actual usage in units. The Tanzu Basic usage is always reported as a standalone line item in the Monthly Usage Report.
The report below shows two lines with Tanzu Basic usage calculated based on vRAM and CPU cores. This means that the Usage Meter administrator has registered a single Tanzu Basic-enabled vCenter and switched between the vRAM metric and CPU core metric during the metering period.
Virtual Machine History Report
To check if your Tanzu Basic vRAM usage is correctly shown on the Monthly Usage Report, you can refer to the Virtual Machine History Report (part of the Usage Insight report bundle)
The following VMs are reported in the Virtual Machine History Report: supervisor VMs, POD VMs, and TKG VMs.
The column “vmType” in the Virtual Machine History report indicates the VM types that are Tanzu-related.
| vmType | Translation |
| SUP | Supervisor VM |
| POD | POD VM |
| TKG | VMs created by vSphere Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service |
| OTHER | VMs that are not categorized as SUP, POD or TKG |
See an example below:
Calculating the Tanzu Basic usage based on vRAM
The way to calculate your Tanzu usage with the vRAM metric is:
- Filter the vmType column in the VM History Report to include only Tanzu-related VMs (exclude Other).
- Sum up all the entries in the MB-Hours column in the VM History Report.
- Convert the sum to GB by dividing it by 1024.
- Finally, divide the result by the total hours in a month.
- Round down the result to the nearest whole number.
You can now compare the result with the one shown in the Monthly Usage Report.
Here is the Excel formula for calculating the Tanzu Basic vRAM usage for a reporting month with 30 days:
ROUNDDOWN(SUMIF(vmType column;”<>OTHER”;MB-Hours)/24/30/1024;0)
See an example below of Tanzu Basic vRAM usage for April.
Calculating the Tanzu Basic usage based on CPU cores
The host CPU core usage is captured by Usage Meter from vCenter. That information appears aggregated in the Monthly Usage Report but is currently unavailable by a VM in the VM History Report. A workaround is to go to vSphere and compute all physical CPU cores of all hosts with at least one powered-on Tanzu Basic-related VM for the metering period.
Here is the formula for the aggregated Tanzu usage by CPU cores:
Time-based average of host CPU core count = Host CPU Cores *Number of Days in the Month (for which the host had at least one Tanzu-related VM that was turned on)
For example, if there is at least one powered-on VM running on a host with 12 CPU cores for any of the 15 days in 30 days, this host will be billed with an average host CPU core count of 6 (12 * (1/2) = 6).
Note: Even if there is a modified or added/placed into migration mode host, the host is metered for the duration where there is at least one powered-on Tanzu Basic-related VM.
Conclusion
Although Usage Meter 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5.0.1 can only report Tanzu Basic, more Tanzu editions will be reported in the future. Stay tuned for what’s next for Tanzu metering with Usage Meter!
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Resources
Usage Meter Product Documentation
