5.6 vRealize Business for Cloud
vRealize Business for Cloud is a consumption metering, analysis, and reporting tool for both private and public cloud costing. While it can connect and meter multiple solutions, in the vCloud Director context it collects usage data from resource group vCenter Server nodes and NSX Manager nodes and from vCloud Director.
Figure 14. vRealize Business for Cloud
vRealize Business for Cloud is a virtual appliance based with internal PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases and optional external Data Collectors (also virtual appliances). The authentication is provided by a VMware Identity Manager virtual appliance. Alternatively, for non-production use, local authentication can be used.
As of version 7.3, vRealize Business for Cloud still did not achieve full vCenter Chargeback Manager feature parity. Therefore, the service provider must evaluate if the missing features are necessary for the provider use cases. Some of the missing features are as follows:
• External network I/O traffic pricing
• Storage policy pricing
• Allocation pool overage pricing
• API only for report generation
• Does not support clustered deployment
vRealize Business for Cloud supports up to 10 vCenter Server nodes and 20,000 virtual machines.
