Google Cloud VMware Engine Cost Management

IT teams spend on purchasing infrastructure from Google Cloud VMware Engine. Now they can transfer these expenses (CPU, Memory, and Storage) to the application teams using Google Cloud VMware Engine cost allocation. The cost allocation mechanism lets you view the expenses related to the CPU, memory and storage for a single virtual machine (VM), this helps you to determine the overall cost associated with your cloud infrastructure.

Google Cloud VMware Engine - Points to Remember

• To use the Google Cloud VMware Engine costing feature you must set the Billing Enabled option in the Advanced Settings section of a Google Cloud VMware Engine adapter to true. If it is set to false, the costing is based on the reference cost. Similarly, if any project of the Google Cloud VMware Engine adapter instance is configured without the CSP Refresh token, then costing is based on reference cost. For more details about the Billing Enabled and CSP Refresh token options, see Configuring a Google Cloud VMware Engine Instance in VMware Aria Operations..
• The GCVEBill object type is associated with multiple projects of the Google Cloud VMware Engine adapter instance. All projects under the GCVEBill object type need to be configured in VMware Aria Operations to ensure accurate costing.
• If a project does not have any GCVEBill object type associated with the adapter instance, then costing is based on reference costing.
• You can create and use a single service account JSON that is common, similar to a super user account, for all the projects. For more details about configuring single service account JSON, see Configuring a Google Cloud VMware Engine Instance in VMware Aria Operations.
• The bill expenses or reference based costs are divided into CPU : memory : storage ratios, you can edit ratio, region, and discount from the Cost Settings for Financial Accounting Model topic.
• The bill expenses are allocated to clusters based on the region to which the cluster belongs.
  Note: Some of the bill expenses (co-related to component resource objects in VMware Aria Operations ) are divided across all the clusters, since at present VMware Aria Operations does not have an understanding of all the types of expenses.
• If the Google Cloud VMware Engine bills currency format is different from VMware Aria Operations currency format, then the Google Cloud VMware Engine bills are converted to VMware Aria Operations currency format and published on clusters and VMs. You can find the conversion factor as a property under Google Cloud VMware Engine adapter instance resource objects.
• The reference based costs that are picked are always on-demand. For example, add Google Cloud VMware Engine vCenter directly to VMware Aria Operations. For Google Cloud VMware Engine, if you set the cloud type as Google Cloud VMware Engine, then the reference costs of US east (N. Virginia) is picked by default.

The following are some important points to consider when you select reference based costing and bill based costing.

• In case of reference based costing, we consider the Host as Production host and host type as On Demand, and get the base rates for cost Allocation. Even if the host type is Subscription based, we still do costing treating it as On Demand Host Type.

• When you have some unconfigured Private Clouds in the organization, VMware Aria Operations might not list all the hosts in the organization. So, if you use bill based costing which uses the list of hosts to calculate the cost, we might not be able to calculate the correct base rates.
• Expenses from the bills of your Google Cloud VMware Engine are distributed using a fair allocation algorithm to CPU, memory, and storage at the VM level. For accurate cost numbers, all the Private Clouds must be configured in the given Organization.
• Ability to carry out workload planning with Google Cloud VMware Engine as the destination cloud using the new calculated base rates, based on your bills.

How Does Google Cloud VMware Engine Cost Allocation Work

Google Cloud VMware Engine cost allocation works as per the following sequence of events defined in VMware Aria Operations .

• Discover inventory of Google Cloud VMware Engine using vCenter and Google Cloud VMware Engine adapters.
• Acquire bills for Google Cloud VMware Engine from VMware Cloud Services Platform (CSP) using the Google Cloud VMware Engine native adapter.
• Identify the expenses per cluster using approximate values.
• Using the Total Cost Value, determine CPU, Memory, and Storage base rates.
• Apply base rates on VMs for allocation or utilization depending on the capacity model.