Chargeback: Format Issues and How to Implement Minimal Utilization Charge

[xyhs2003]

Hi,

We have tested the VMware Chargeback 1.6 for a while,  all looks fine except the following issues,  we do appreciate if anyone can give some ideas.

No. 1.  Is there any way we can remove the row of 'dummy parent entity' in setting panel?

No.2.   We installed Chargeback on Windows 2008R2 Chinese version,  but why only the 'month' in report showed in Chinese while the rest of report still in English?   How to fix it ?

No.3.   How we can define the number of decimal digits by round-off

No.4.   The report sample in Chargeback official overview (http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-chargeback/overview.html) looks like this, the format  differs from ours obviously, anyone know the cause ?

No.5.   We intend to setup a policy that if customer's actual utilization charge below a pre-defined so-called 'minimal charge', we would like to charge customer the minimal charge, otherwise,  the charge will be based on the actual utilization.  We didn't find a way to setup this policy,  any one has this experience or similar requirement ?

[derekf]

We definitiely have the same requirement as you for number 5 and are struggling to think how to do this without manual intervention...

[xyhs2003]

anyone can share some advices for the questions above ?

[maxel]

You could define little fix costs per month for that entity..

derekf schrieb:

We definitiely have the same requirement as you for number 5 and are struggling to think how to do this without manual intervention...

[dprabhakaran]

Hi xyhs2003,

    No.1:  Is there any way we can remove the row of 'dummy parent entity' in setting panel?

    ==> We have a internal tracker to track this issue. In the mean time you can try the following work around. Please note that this work around will just change the label and will not remove the row:

        Step#1: Stop Chargeback services.

        Step#2: Edit TOMCAT_INSTALL_FOLDER\apache-tomcat-6.0.29\webapps\vCenter-CB\WEB-INF\classes\vCenterCBLabels.properties

        Step#3: Modify

                        vcenter.chargeback.reporting.dummy.parentEntity = Dummy Parent Entity

                        To

                        vcenter.chargeback.reporting.dummy.parentEntity = Root Entity

        Step#4: Save the file and restart Chargeback.

        No.2. We installed Chargeback on Windows 2008R2 Chinese version,  but why only the 'month' in report showed in Chinese while the rest of report still in English?   How to fix it ?

        ==> This is a documented known issue (in release notes under 'Internationalization issues' section).

        No.3.   How we can define the number of decimal digits by round-off

        ==> Currently we do not have any provision to achieve this.

        No.4.   The report sample in Chargeback official overview (http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-chargeback/overview.html) looks like this, the format  differs from ours obviously, anyone know the cause ?

        ==> Thanks for pointing it. We will follow it up and fix it at the earliest.

        No.5.   We intend to setup a policy that if customer's actual utilization charge below a pre-defined so-called 'minimal charge', we would like to charge customer the minimal charge, otherwise,  the charge will be based on the actual utilization.  We didn't find a way to setup this policy,  any one has this experience or similar requirement ?

        ==> Currently, there is no provison to achieve this based on the 'minimal cost', but to a greater extent you can achieve this using allocation (which is based on usage though). Please do not use this if you use Chargeback with vCloud Director.

        Step#1: Create a custom billing policy with the expression MAX(usage, allocation).

        Step#2: Create a cost model using the billing policy created in Step#1.

        Step#3: Go to the 'Manage Hierarchy' tab, select the VM you are interested in, right click and "set allocation units".

        Step#4: Fill in the allocation units for the computing resources you are interested.

        Step#5: Generate a report for that VM using the cost model created in Step#2.

Thanks & Regards

Diwakar

[xyhs2003]

thanks a lot, dprabhakaran !

looking forward to these features could be included in 1.7.