vCenter Chargeback provides you a rich set of cost configuration capabilities.
To understand the concepts and to effectively use various controls, the user is required to go through User's guide or other training material. This post is supposed to supplement the training by helping the naïve users to generate their first report.
We will be covering the following basic workflow in course of this discussion.
1) Login -> 2) Add a VC -> 3) Create Hierarchy -> 4) Add Fixed Cost to an entity -> 5) Generate Report
I am assuming that you have the Chargeback server ready, a user created (during installation) and the license key is fed in.
Step #1: trivial, only that you need to feed in the license key before coming to login page. Use the super user login/password you entered during installation phase.
Step #2: Settings -> vCenter Servers -> add ...
You will need your VC credentials as well as the VC DB credentials. The VC DB credential is required to pull out the stats data. The Chargeback server talks directly to the VC DB, thereby avoiding extra load on the VC server.
You can leave the last two checkboxes unset ("Register as VI Vlient Plugin" and "Enable stats replication"). Leave the view as "Host and Cluster"
Step #3: Manager Hierarchy -> Create Chargeback hierarchy
Create a hierarchy synchronized with your VC. This will create a hierarchy with an exact one-to-one mapping of the VC inventory.
Note that synchronization process might take a few minutes. You can check the status of this job from Settings -> Data Collector. If you see a row entry having "Job Type" = "inventory syncing job" and "Job state"= "finished", that means you have success till this phase!
Step #4: Configure Cost -> Select your hierarchy (from drop down) -> left click/select the top node -> "Edit Entity Cost Config"
This is an interesting screen with lots of functionalities, so just a one liner explanation of the jargons.
Cost Model: is a set of base rates (eg. $2/GB of n/w RX) and a billing policy (eg. reservation based billing). Go and check the details of "Default Chargeback Cost Model" in the tab Manage Cost->Cost Models
Fixed Cost: as the name suggest, it iss a static cost irrespective of the usage pattern. For example: you can set $1 per VM per day as administrative cost.
OK! coming back to the business of generating report ..
For the sake of this demo, just add a (local) fixed cost of let"s say $1/day. Save this configuration.
Step #5: Reports -> Create Reports -> right-click the top node of your hierarchy -> "generate report on this hierarchy" -> and you should see a "Create Report" input box.
Explore the options in tab #1 "General" - name, description are trivial. Cost Model: you know by now. Computing resources are the counters against which you compute cost (used in step #4 above)
Tab #2 "Cost Info" is for customizing your reports. Do you want a summary only, or detailed cost of each VM - this can be configured. Read the inline help for if you want to explore this option.
Tab #3 "Scheduling" gives you all possible ways of auto generating reports in future.
We will start with this in tab #1:
- enter a name and decription of your choice
- in the "generate this report now" field, set effective period (from) to anything about a month back, and set the "to" field as today"s date ..
- and generate the report. It might take a few minutes and then you should see a HTML report in the window.
- export it to PDF and save a copy locally.
- enjoy your first report 
, and now go back to read the inline help documentation to read more on all the options/controls will have missed or gazed through!