The Question

As customers are starting to adopt and consume VMware products through subscription, it becomes increasingly important to understand how many billable resources each product is counting.

In this blog, we will talk about how Aria Automation customers discern this information from the product.

What is counted?

With Aria Automation being a multi-cloud management offering, two types of environments should be considered, Native Public Cloud (NPC) and VMware Clouds.

NPC resources include native resources in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Engine (GCE) and Azure.

VMware resources include both on-premises and VMware SDDC solutions, including: VMC on AWS, Azure VMware Services (AVS), Google VMware Cloud Engine (GCVE) and Oracle Cloud VMware Services (OCVS).

Resources of each type are quantified in similar, but slightly different manners.

NPC resources are quantified by Operating System Instance (OSI). As of this posting, the only NPC resources counted for billing are Virtual Machines (VMs) at a one-to-one ratio. One VM counts as one OSI.

When viewing consumption of vSphere resources, one has to consider the licensure or method of consumption. There is a difference in how vSphere resources are quantified when using Aria Automation through Aria Universal Suite (formerly vRealize Cloud Universal) licensing versus standalone.

When Aria Automation is purchased as part of a bundle, for example, Aria Universal Suite, vSphere resources are quantified as above, by core.

Otherwise, when Aria Automation is purchased separately, each VM is considered as an OSI, similarly to the NPC resources. No matter the VM size, each VM will only count as one billable OSI.

At time of posting, resources counted toward billing include only those VMs either Deployed or Onboarded within Aria Automation. Deployed or Onboarded resources count toward billing whether they are running or not (VM State of On or Off).

To reduce the number of billed Onboarded resources, there is a Day 2 action to unregister onboarded resources: Remove Onboarded Resources.

Neither Discovered nor Missing resources count toward billing.

Counting NPC VMs

For all NPC, quantification of resources is simple. Within Aria Automation Assembler under Resources, choose Virtual Machines on the left and click on the filter icon, highlighted below.

Choose one or more NPCs under Cloud Types and Deployed and Onboarded under Resource Origin. If you have no Deployed or Onboarded VMs, those options will not appear under Resource Origin.

The resulting VMs are the ones that are counted toward billing within Aria Automation. Note that the example above would only count as one OSI as the Missing resources are not counted toward billing.

Counting vSphere Cores and VMs

As noted above, when counting vSphere billable resources, how Aria Automation is purchased must be considered.

When Aria Automation is purchased as part of a bundle, vSphere billable resources are counted by looking at the Cloud Zone. To see this data, the Aria Operations to Aria Automation integration must be configured. The documentation to make that connection is here: Connecting Aria Operations to Aria Automation.

To quantify the usage, choose a vSphere Cloud Zone and click on the Insights tab. The usage is the number of cores displayed in the CPU tile, as below. All cloud zones where VMs are provisioned must be considered to quantify the total billable number.

To quantify VMs for Aria Automation standalone, the process is the same as NPC VMs. Within Aria Automation Assembler under Resources, choose Virtual Machines on the left and click on the filter icon, highlighted below.

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Choose vSphere under Cloud Types and Deployed and Onboarded under Resource Origin. If you have no Deployed or Onboarded VMs, those options will not appear under Resource Origin.