Chargeback or at least showback is an important thing for any cloud environment. Cisco UCS Director can provide cost information back to managers but you need to create a UCS Director cost model. This cost model will define how all the costs are calculated.

Add a Cost Model

To create a cost model, go to the Policies drop down and select Virtual/Hypervisor Policies –> Service Delivery. Then select the Cost Model tab.

Either edit the default cost model if it will be used throughout the environment or create a new one by clicking the add button.

Give the Model a name and description. Then select “Standard” for the model type unless advanced cost structures are to be defined. Advanced cost structures would be things like tiered models for CPU. (Example being 10-20 CPUs are at one rate but 21-30 CPUs are at a different rate.) Select the charge duration. This determines the nearest whole unit that charges will be billed against. Reports will show weekly or monthly but not hourly. The costs though, will be calculated based on this setting. From here, fill out how the costs will be assigned per hour for each of the parameters. Each parameter will need a value and this must be calculated by hand.

One Time Cost: A fixed one time cost for a virtual machine being provisioned.

Active VM Cost: A per-hour cost of the virtual machine while running.

Inactive VM Cost: A per-hour cost of the virtual machine while not running.

CPU Charge Unit: CPU Cores or GHz

Provisioned CPU Cost: CPU costs per hour as a percentage of CPU provisioned

Reserved CPU Cost: Reserved CPU costs per GHz

Used CPU Cost: Actual CPU Usage if the CPU charge unit is in GHz

Provisioned Memory Cost: Cost for memory in GB per hour

Reserved Memory Cost: Reserved memory costs per hour

Used Memory Cost: Used memory costs per hour

Received Network Data Cost: Incoming network bandwidth in GB per hour

Transmitted Network Data Cost: Outgoing network bandwidth in GB per hour

Committed Storage Cost: Storage costs for actual storage used in GB per hour

Uncommitted Storage Cost: Storage costs for provisioned but unused GB per hour

Tag Based Cost Model:

There are also costs for physical servers which is outside the scope of this post. I think you’ll get the idea of how they work from this post though.

Repeat this process for additional cost models.

Summary

A cost model is an absolute necessity in the cloud age. Cisco UCS Director gives you a good way to track these costs but does take some work on your part to calculate how much these costs should be. Determining how much each of the units will cost is usually not a simple process.