vCenter Chargeback Data Collector

[Theovd]

Hi,

I am setting up Chargeback to collect data from vCloud director. In the user manual for Chargeback, is written:

If you are integrating vCenter Chargeback with VMware Cloud Director by installing the VMware Cloud Director Data Collector and vShield Manager Data Collector, then you must install and run more than one instance of the vCenter Chargeback data collector. This ensures that the inventory and statistics information for the vCenter Server instances added to VMware Cloud Director and vCenter Chargeback is synchronised and available in the vCenter Chargeback database even if a data collector instance fails.

From this, I deduce that I should install 2 vCenter data collectors. Has anyone an idea about:

• Should these 2 data collectors run on seperate servers?
• I have only one vCenter running, should both data collectors connect to this once vCenter instance (and vCenter DB interface). Seems a little bit scary to me. How is prevented that both data collector do not collect the same data.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Theo.

[HemanthPannem]

Hi

When there is more than one instance of vCenter Chargeback Data Collector, the failover happens automatically. This is mainly for high availability. (Load balancing comes as an added advantage because sync jobs will distributed among the Data Collectors)

• Should these 2 data collectors run on seperate servers?

Not necessarily, if you have enough resources in one server. But if you do, it protects from a server failure.

• I have only one vCenter running, should both data collectors connect to this once vCenter instance (and vCenter DB interface). Seems a little bit scary to me. How is prevented that both data collector do not collect the same data.

No. This will never happen. Two Data Collectors won’t work on the same jobs at any time. As I told above, if one Data Collector dies, the jobs would be reassigned to the another Data Collector automatically.

Hope this helps. Please let us know if you face any issues.

Regards,

Hemanth

[Theovd]

Hi,

Thanks for your clear explanation. This should help.

Regards,

Theo.

[HemanthPannem]

Hi

                If your question is answered, could you please mark it as answered so that it goes off the open questions list?

Regards,

Hemanth