Virtual machine custom pricing mismatch due to stale Aria Automation price cards

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• Pricing discrepancy between Aria Automation managed and unmanaged virtual machine's when using custom pricing.
• Executing the GET /internal/metering API call via Aria Ops Swagger UI displays a stale VMware Aria Automation price card. Refer to Using the API with VMware Aria Operation

Cause

This issue occurs when VMware Aria Automation pricing policies are altered, removed, or incompletely configured. These actions can leave orphaned or 'stale' price card definitions in the VMware Aria Operations database. Since the Operations engine prioritizes these outdated vRA-managed definitions, the native pricing engine is unable to accurately calculate costs for unmanaged virtual machine's, resulting in pricing discrepancies across the environment.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, perform a manual cleanup of the orphaned VMware Aria Automation price cards.

Note: System snapshots are mandatory before executing API commands that alter database configurations. Execute offline snapshots of all VMware Aria Operations cluster nodes.
Refer to: How to take a snapshot of VMware Aria Operations nodes.

Capturing the stale ID

Confirm the presence of stale entries using the internal Suite-API Swagger UI.

1. Navigate to the Suite-API Swagger UI endpoint (/suite-api/doc/swagger-ui.html).

2. Click Authorize.

3. Set Auth Source to Local.

4. Input the administrator credentials.

5. Locate the Select a definition dropdown in the top-right header and select Internal APIs.

6. Expand the metering section, then expand Internal metering.

7. Expand the GET /internal/metering endpoint.

8. Click Try it out, then click Execute.

9. Review the JSON output under Responses. Locate metering policies referenced from VMware Aria Automation that are no longer active.

10. Record the ID of the stale entry.
    
    

Deleting the stale ID

Remove the identified stale definition.

1. Navigate to the DELETE /api/metering/cards/{id} endpoint within the Swagger UI.

2. Click Try it out.

3. Input the ID recorded during Step 1 into the id field.

4. Click Execute.

5. Verify the server returns a Response Code of 204 (No Content) or 200 (OK).
   
   

Verification

Initiate a cost recalculation to initialize the native Pricing Engine.

1. Navigate to Administration > Global Settings > Cost Settings > Recalculate within the VMware Aria Operations UI.

2. Allow 24 to 48 hours for the subsequent collection cycle to complete.

3. Navigate to the VM > Metering tab to verify that CPU, Memory, and Storage metrics are actively populating.

 

Additional Information

How to use Pricing Cards in VMware Aria Automation