VMware supports its partners to host and sell cloud services built on VMware technology using VMware Cloud Director (VCD), also known as Cloud Director Service (CDS) in the SaaS environment. VMware Cloud Director provides constructs to segment the virtual infrastructure and offers it as a service to tenants of these partners.

There are several variants of infrastructure that are sold by these partners such as, 'Pay as you go', 'Raw capacity' also known as 'Allocation based', 'Raw capacity with minimum guarantee' also known as 'Reservation based'. The combination of these can be offered to same tenants and it becomes challenging to track usage over a period and charge appropriately. It becomes critical for the cloud service providers as the tenants demand transparency in billing, and the cloud service providers must offer it. Chargeback addresses this by accurately metering the infrastructure. It provides options to configure different models for pricing this metered infrastructure.

Note: The Chargeback capabilities are available only when you have VMware Cloud Director configured in VMware Aria Operations.
This chapter provides information about configuring Chargeback for VMware Cloud Director.
Note: VMware Cloud Director (VCD) is known as Cloud Director Service (CDS) in the SaaS environment.