Duplicate Billing In Usage Meter Reports Following Appliance Migration

Products

• VMware Usage Meter

Issue/Introduction

vCloud Usage Meter instances may report double billing or overlapping consumption for the same vCenter Server inventory. This behavior typically surfaces when an older Usage Meter appliance is deactivated and a new Usage Meter appliance is activated in the same hour. Bill shows consumption from both the Usage Meter. 

Environment

Usage Meter 9.x

Cause

The vCenter Server was unregistered from the original Usage Meter and re-registered to the new Usage Meter within the same one-hour polling window. Because Usage Meter aggregates and transmits data on an hourly cycle, both the old and new appliances successfully polled the vCenter Server during that overlapping hour, causing duplicate consumption metrics to be recorded.

Resolution

To prevent overlapping consumption data when migrating to a new appliance, adhere to the following sequence:

• Log in to the original (source) vCloud Usage Meter web interface.
• Unregister the target vCenter Server from the Products inventory.
• Wait a minimum of one full hour (60 minutes) to allow the original Usage Meter to complete its final hourly reporting cycle and flush its data.
• Log in to the new (target) vCloud Usage Meter web interface.
• Re-register the vCenter Server to initiate the new polling cycle.

Enforcing this one-hour delay ensures the previous appliance finishes reporting before the new appliance begins, eliminating duplicate billing entries.

Additional Information

Please note that while the duplicate consumption metrics will continue to appear in the reporting interfaces of both Usage Meter appliances for the remainder of the current month, the final consolidated bill generated at the end of the billing cycle will automatically reconcile the data and not include the duplicate charges.