VCAP6-CMA Deploy - Objective 8.2: Configure vRealize Business Standard Costing and Reporting

VMware VCAP6 VCAP6-CMA

Published on 15 March 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 1213. Reading Time: 6 mins.

Objective Overview

Objective 8.2 - Configure vRealize Business Standard Costing and Reporting

Knowledge:

Configure cost drivers according to a deployment plan:
- Assign cost for operating system licensing
- Edit cost for server hardware, storage, and network
- Create a monthly cost for facilities and maintenance
Configure CPU and memory utilization costs
Configure Consumption Analysis:
- Edit consumer hierarchy
- Edit price value according to a deployment plan
- Edit/Import budget to estimate your cost
Generate vRealize Business vCenter Server report
Generate a vRealize Automation Report
Select and export the appropriate report
Filter and Search for specific reports based on customer requirements

IMPORTANT NOTE: The steps in this guide utilise vRealize Business for Cloud. This is because vRB Standard does not support vRA 6.2.5, and this is required because I am running VMware vSphere 6.5. The steps will be similar but not identical in vRealize Business Standard.

Objective Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are assumed for this Objective:

A fully deployed vRealize Automation Solution.
VMware vRealize Business for Cloud is installed and configured ( Objective 7.1 )

Objective Breakdown

Configure Cost Drivers according to a Deployment Plan:

Navigate to the vRealize Tenant Automation Portal (https://vra.fqdn/vcac)

Click Business Management.

Click Private Cloud (vSphere).

Click Edit Expenses.

Assign cost for Operating System licensing:

Click the Licensing Tab.

Click Edit (pencil) next to the Licensing cost that needs changing.

Update the license cost as required, then click Save.

(If prompted) Click Yes to refresh.

Note: This changes the value for all Data Centres. If you wish to affect only one DC then you can choose the DC by clicking < or >.

Edit cost for server Hardware:

Click the Hardware Tab.

Click Edit.

To enter CAPEX cost of hardware, click Purchased Servers and then click Add(+)

Select the Purchase Date, type the Number of Servers and Cost Per Server.

Click Save.

(If prompted) Click Yes to refresh.

To enter OPEX cost of hardware, click Leased Servers.

Click Add (+).

Select the Lease Date and then enter the Number of Servers and the Rent Cost per Server.

Click Save.

(If prompted) Click Yes to refresh.

Edit cost for Storage:

Click the Storage On Demand tab.

For price per GB based on Storage Category, select the Storage Category option and update the Monthly Cost Per GB value.

For price per GB based on storage type, select the Storage Type option, update the Monthly Cost Per GB.

Click Save.

Edit cost for Network:

Click the Network Tab.

For price per 1GbE/10GbE ensure that the Edit the total monthly cost per Network Interface Card (NIC) option** **is selected and then enter the new values for 1GbE and 10GbE.

Click Save.

(If prompted) Click Yes to refresh.

To provide a Network cost, select the Enter the monthly expense of all networks associated with the cloud option.

Update the value within the Network textbox and click Save.

(If prompted) Click Yes to refresh.

Create a monthly cost for Facilities and Maintenance

Click the Facilities Tab.

Select the Enter detailed cost of facilities option and then update the Rent/Real Estate and Power and Cooling textboxes.

Note: You can also select the Enter the total monthly cost for facilities option, enter a cost into the Total monthly cost for facilities textbox.

Click Save.

(If prompted) Click Yes to Refresh.

Click the Maintenance Tab.

(if required) Update the Hardware Maintenance and **OS Maintenance **percentages.

Click Save and click Back to Expenses.

If no other changes are required, click Logout.

Configure CPU and Memory utilization costs

Navigate to the vRealize Tenant Automation Portal (https://vra.fqdn/vcac)

Click Business Management.

Under Operational Analysis, click Private Cloud (vSphere)

Click Edit Utilization.

Select the Set a fixed utilization percentage option and enter the values for CPU and Memory.

Click Save.

Click Back to Operation Analysis.

Note: There is no visible change as I’m obviously not over utilizing my platform!

If finished making changes, click Logout.

Configure Consumption Analysis:

Navigate to the vRealize Tenant Automation Portal (https://vra.fqdn/vcac)

Click Business Management.

Under Consumption, click Business Unit List.

Edit Consumer Hierarchy

Click Edit >** Business Hierarchy**.

Under vRealize Automation, click on Edit (pencil).

Note: Here you can enable or disable the configuration of the Business Heirarchy for vRealize Automation. There is no other option other than Business Group for the Compute Grouping Strategy.

Click Cancel.

Click on vRealize Automation to expand the information available.

Note: Here you can change the Logical (Display) Name for each Business Unit Name.

Click on vRealize Automation to minimize this and expand vCenter.

Note: You will see the Business Unit name is currently using the vCenter Folder to group the VMs.

Under vCenter, click Edit (pencil).

Note: here we can change enable/disable the groups and also change the way in which vRB groups the VM based on things like Tags, Machine name, folder name or folder heirarchy.

Click Cancel.

Click the Business Services tab.

Click vRealize Automation to expand.

Note: Here you will see that the Business Services are group by Blueprint.

Click Back to Business Unit List.

Edit price value according to a deployment plan

Click Pricing.

Click Edit > Edit Pricing.

Click vRealize Automation to expand.

Add / Update the values for vCPU daily price and GB RAM daily price.

Click Back to Pricing Overview.

Edit/Import budget to estimate your cost

Click Edit > Edit Budget.

Check the Enable consumer budgeting (figures entered in £) checkbox.

You can now select Monthly, Quarterly or Yearly budget options and edit the values in each field by clicking on the cell.

Finally, from this screen you can also:

Click Get Template to save a XLS document that can be updated offline.
Click Export to export the current budget to a XLS document which can be edited offline and re-imported.
Click Import and then select a XLS file to import a budget that has been updated/created offline.

Click Save to save any changes.

Click Back to Pricing Overview to make further changes or Business Management to return to the home page.

Generate vRealize Business vCenter Server report

Navigate to the vRealize Tenant Automation Portal (https://vra.fqdn/vcac)

Click Business Management.

Under Reports, click vCenter Server > Virtual Machines.

Note: You can also choose: Servers, Datastores, vSAN Datastores and Clusters

Click Edit to make changes to the report.

Check or uncheck the columns/values to include.

Click the Grouping and Charts tab.

(optional) You can choose to group the results by a Column or create a chart to be provided with the report.

Click the Filters tab.

(optional) You can filter the results by adding a filter.

Click OK.

Click Save.

Type a Custom Report Name into the text box and then click Save.

The process for creating a vRealize Automation Report is identical to creating a vCenter Server report.

Select and export the appropriate report

To Export an report, select the report and click the Export button and save the subsequent XLS document.

Filter and Search for specific reports based on customer requirements

As shown above, within a pre-generated or Custom report, you can filter the results based on a number of items from the Edit screen.

Published on 15 March 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 1213. Reading Time: 6 mins.

Blog Categories: VMware Certification VCAP vRealize Business