vCloud Usage Meter is a virtual appliance that you deploy by using the vSphere Web Client. To set up the virtual appliance, you must set the required passwords, configure your network, and add a vCenter Server instance for metering.

To manage who can use the application, you can set up an LDAP authentication.

The size of your data set and the vCenter Server inventories that vCloud Usage Meter meters affect the speed of a consumption data collection. For large data sets and vCenter Server inventories, consider deploying more than one vCloud Usage Meter appliance. You can consolidate the reported data from multiple virtual appliances in monthly reports to your Partner Connect Program aggregator.

To avoid configuration problems and ensure accurate metering of products, you must synchronize the vCloud Usage Meter date and time with the date and time of the metered products. As a best practice, use the same NTP server for the vCloud Usage Meter appliance and the metered products.

Offline Reporting

By default, to report automatically the collected product consumption data, vCloud Usage Meter requires an outbound-only HTTPS connectivity to vCloud Usage Insight. In environments with isolated networks, to run vCloud Usage Meter without using outbound internet connectivity, you must run the appliance in an offline mode. As a result, you enable vCloud Usage Meter to collect product consumption data. Using the vCloud Usage Meter Web interface, at the end of the reporting month, you must manually download the product consumption report and upload it to vCloud Usage Insight.