Cost analysis discrepancy for virtual machines in multi-tenant VMware Cloud Director environments

Products

• VCF Operations
• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• A significant cost analysis discrepancy is observed in Aria Operations 8.18 between virtual machines that are part of VMware Cloud Director (VCD) and those that are not.
  
  • Examples include:
    • Configured rate card:
      CPU: $X per GHz
      Memory: $Y per GB RAM

• • • Observed VM pricing:
      The cost for VCD virtual machines was displayed as $50 * (X+Y). This deviated substantially from the expected value, resulting in a significant cost analysis discrepancy for these virtual machines.

• This inconsistency impacts financial reporting and tenant chargeback visibility across the Organization Virtual Data Center (OVDC) environment.
  
  
• Additionally, tenant users are unable to view pricing metrics under Summary > Metering within the Aria Operations tenant interface.

Environment

• VMware Aria Operations 8.18
• VMware Cloud Director (VCD)

Cause

This issue is a result of desynchronization between resource management systems due to the following conditions:

1. Incorrect Pricing Policy Mapping: Pricing policies were incorrectly applied at the vCenter Resource Pool level instead of the VMware Cloud Director Organization Virtual Data Center (OVDC) level.
2. Allocation Model Mismatch: A mismatch exists between the 'Allocation Pool' and 'Pay-As-You-Go' allocation models configured across Aria Operations and VMware Cloud Director.

Resolution

Follow these resolution steps to address the identified issue within the environment.

1. Synchronize Allocation Models

Ensure the same allocation model is configured in both VMware Cloud Director and Aria Operations. To change the allocation model in Aria Operations refer the document How to Enable Allocation Model.

2. Correct Pricing Policy Mapping 

Assign pricing policies directly to Organization Virtual Data Centers (OVDCs) and Target VCD virtual machine objects. Refer the Configure Policies for a VMware Cloud Director Organization documentation for details on mapping policies.

Note: Do not assign pricing policies at the vCenter Resource Pool level. 

3. Enable VCD-Based Multitenancy Chargeback 

The service provider must enable:

1. 1. VCD-focused Multitenancy: Consult the Configuring VCD Pricing Details guide for instructions on setting up multitenancy within VCD.
   2. Tenant Chargeback Implementation: To integrate chargeback features for tenants, see the documentation on Activating Chargeback Capabilities in VMware Aria Operations.

This enables tenants to access metering and pricing information through the Aria Operations plugin in the VMware Cloud Director tenant portal. For enabling Multitenancy chargeback refer the document Performing VMware Cloud Director (VCD) Based Multitenancy Operations in VMware Aria Operations.

4. Validate chargeback summary

After enabling Tenant chargeback and VCD-based multitenancy, verify that tenant users can access the chargeback summary by navigating to Cost => Chargeback => Summary in Aria Operations.