Introduction

VMware Aria Hub Subscription (formerly vRealize Cloud Subscription Manager) is a cloud based service offered by VMware to help manage on-prem license and SaaS based subscription usage and consumption. New subscriptions can be purchased via VMware Aria Subscription Manager as well.

Organizations today using VMware Aria Management products that are installed on-prem may have ambitions to move these to the SaaS versions of those products over time. As companies adopt SaaS products more and more it is becoming increasingly complex to manage licenses and overages. VMware Aria Hub Subscription aims to help with these challenges by providing license and overage visibility and management for both VMware Aria on-prem and SaaS management products. 

With simple activation and onboarding of VMware Aria Universal Suite (formerly vRealize Cloud Universal Suite) subscriptions, VMware Aria Hub Subscription makes it easy to onboard subscriptions so you can start using products. 

When you login to VMware Aria Hub Subscription you are presented with a Usage dashboard that contains information such as alerts, average current usage, on-prem vs cloud environment snapshot and product mix. 

In this blog I will go over how to use VMware Aria Hub Subscription to get visibility into usage and overages in regards to VMware Aria Management products.

Onboarding SaaS and On-Prem Environments

If you have onboarded VMware Aria Cloud Universal (formerly vRealize Cloud Universal) or if you have access to the VMware Cloud Services portal, then you can request access to VMware Aria Hub Subscription which is available as a complimentary service. VMware Aria Hub Subscription allows organizations to onboard both cloud and on-prem version of the cloud management portfolio. There are strategies within the product to accomplish the onboarding that are discussed below.

• On-Prem Management Products use a Aria Cloud Proxy to connected to VMware Aria Hub Subscription
• SaaS Management Products will show up in VMware Aria Hub Subcription when activated via a Subscription

vRealize Cloud Connect allows for the migration of the management plane (on-prem to SaaS). For instance, after the purchase of VMware Aria Cloud Universal an email invitation is sent out to activate the various services such as VMware Aria Operations, VMware Aria Automation etc.

vRealize Cloud Connect helps to onboard the VMware Aria Suite (on-prem) to cloud services by automating the onboarding process.

Managing licenses involves importing and activating VMware Aria Cloud Universal licenses to on-prem VMware Aria Suite licenses and/or importing on-prem products with activated VMware Aria Cloud Universal licenses. Once the licenses are imported they will be monitored for consumption usages.

Managing licenses also involves either purchasing and managing existing VMware Aria Cloud Universal suite licenses.

For more information on how to connect and import licenses please refer to the Getting Started documentation here.

Managing Licenses & Subscriptions with VMware Aria Hub Subscription

VMware Aria Hub Subscription helps organizations manage SaaS subscriptions and VMware Aria Cloud Universal licenses for on-prem VMware Aria Management products. The main dashboard will show subscription and license usage that are currently being managed by VMware Aria Hub Subscription.  

The product contains a Usage page with widgets that can help with getting visibility into license usage. If you would like more information on the home page widgets please refer to the documentation here. 

The Usage Widget provides a graph showing the current usage per day. Overages are also shown and are calculated based on customer subscription limits shown by the red line. The green line is an average. The usage shown in the graph will be based on the product which is consuming the most SaaS and on-prem combined licenses.

The Product Widget shows the maximum usage of any service for both on-prem and SaaS combined per day.

The Environment Widget provides a graph that shows the data consumption for active subscriptions and on-prem licenses. The red line on the graph represents the purchased subscription quantity.

In the figure above The Alert widget mentions a threshold, the threshold represents total quantity of redeemed subscriptions to the current organization and any subscription that is not onboarded will not add to the sum of the threshold value. Also when you add additional subscriptions it will add to the overall threshold starting from the date you added the new subscription to VMware Aria Hub Subscription. 

Subscriptions visibility is possible in the Subscription section of the product. You can view how many subscriptions are being managed by VMware Aria Hub Subscription. VMware Aria Hub Subscription will show details for both CPU and Core based subscriptions. If you determine the quantity is less than what you should have, then you may have subscriptions that are not yet onboarded to VMware Aria Subscription.

Subscriptions for VMware Aria SaaS services such as VMware Aria Operations Cloud or VMware Aria Automation Cloud can be purchased from within VMware Aria Hub Subscription. When purchasing you can choose the service, various pricing plans and the quantity.  

Licenses can also be managed from the license section. You can Apply licenses to on-premise products and then monitor usage. When clicking Apply License you will pick the license you want to apply to the on-premise products and then choose the appropriate Cloud Proxy. If you have existing on-premise instances of VMware Aria management products then you can import them in as well to start monitoring usage.

Overage Overview

The overage section displays license usage overages for the last 13 fiscal months. The tool provides a fiscal months calendar for reference. Data is collected from both SaaS and on-prem products and sent to VMware Aria Hub Subscription and stored in a database. The data in the database is encrypted at rest by default and additional encryption for sensitive data using AES-256 encryption. The license and subscription usages are collected 4 times a day. Collection for on-prem license usage is via a cloud proxy or via vRealize Lifecycle Manager which sends data over HTTPS TLS 1.2. 

Overages are calculated by calculating daily and monthly averages. The daily usage is the max of the sums of the cloud and on-prem usage for each product. The Daily overage is calculated by subtracting the license committed quantity from the license daily average (>0 – overage). The Monthly average is the average of the daily overages.

Alerts are sent when thresholds are reached as well. The Alerts Widget on the Usage dashboard will display various alerts in regards to usage and more.

Stay tuned for additional blogs on the topic of subscription and license management using VMware Aria Hub Subscription!