Cloud Director Availability Metering and Reporting #

vCloud Usage Meter 4.6 detects configured for protection or migration of virtual machines using VMware Cloud Director Availability, where the source or destination is a replication-enabled VMware Cloud Director or a dedicated VMware vSphere cloud.

Configuration #

VMware Cloud Director Availability Management Appliance or vCenter Replication Management Appliance instance must be registered with Usage Meter by providing the appliance IP address, or hostname and root credentials. If the VMware Cloud Director Availability Management Appliance or vCenter Replication Management Appliance is registered over the Internet, then “Allow admin access from anywhere” should be enabled.

Feature Detection #

Usage Meter collects the number of all replications (migrations and protections) during the month. The collection is performed on an hourly basis. Replications for both powered-on and powered-off VMs are counted. At the end of the month, the report shows the number of all unique migrated and protected VMs. Replications are reported in the following cases:

• Cloud-to-Cloud migrations and protections, where the registered VMware Cloud Director Availability is the destination.
• vCenter-to-Cloud migrations and protections, where the registered VMware Cloud Director Availability is the destination.
• Cloud-to-vCenter migrations and protections, where the registered VMware Cloud Director Availability is the source.
• vCenter Cloud-to-vCenter Cloud migrations and protections, where the registered VMware Cloud Director Availability is the destination.
• vCenter-to-vCenter Cloud migrations and protections, where the registered VMware Cloud Director Availability is the destination.
• vCenter Cloud-to-vCenter migrations and protections, where the registered VMware Cloud Director Availability is the source.

Note: For vCloud Usage Meter versions prior to Usage Meter 4.6, the new vSphere-to-vSphere disaster recovery and migration use cases will be mapped to the supported cases by the respective Usage Meter version in the reports. For example, vSphere-to-vSphere migration and protection will be mapped to vSphere-to-VMware-Cloud-Director migration and protection for Usage Meter 4.4 and Usage Meter 4.5.0.1. When Usage Meter fails to connect to a registered VMware Cloud Director Availability Management Appliance or vCenter Replication Management Appliance instance, the following actions are taken:

• The failure is logged in the Usage Meter log files.
• An error message is shown on the Notifications page in the Usage Meter web application.
• An email is sent to the defined Usage Meter admin email account.
• If the metering fails due to VMware Cloud Director Availability not being available or Usage Meter not functioning, Usage Meter will report the last known “Protected VMs” count. This can lead to some replications not being reported in the total number of unique replications for the month.

If there is no successful collection during the month, VMware Cloud Director Availability usage will not be reported.

Reporting #

A sample Monthly Usage Report for VMware Cloud Director Availability can be seen below.