Beside vRealize Operations Manager 7.0 has VMware also released the vRealize Operations Tenant App 2.0 and the vCloud Director Management Pack 5.0. These three releases form together with the NSX Management Pack a great tool for VMware Service Providers and there Tenants. The vRealize Operations Tenant App 2.0 for vCloud Director now delivers beside the known monitoring capabilities now additional pricing tools.
vRealize Operations Tenant App 2.0 - Whats New
I will highlight some of the key enhancements of the latest Tenant App release. You can also check the Release Notes for some additional details.
Deployment and Configuration
The whole deployment and configuration process is completely reworked. In older versions, a lot of configuration had to be done via the CLI.
- OVA deployment wizard now only requires networking details
- SSL certificate can be replaced in Admin UI
- vCloud Director UI Integration can be set up in Admin UI
- Service Status can be monitored in Admin UI
vCloud Director UI Integration
The UI Integration Plugin can now enabled or disabled at Tenant level. Prior Version 2.0 all tenants were able to access the Tenant App login page of the Plugin no matter if they had a valid user.
During my evaluation of the Version 2.0 I stumbled over a new behavior regarding the Access Management:
If the Plugin Access is enabled a new Local User is created in vRealize Operations Manager. This new User is used for the Auto-Login to the Tenant App Plugin.
The Local User is member of a Local Group that has only access to a single the vCloud Director Organization. The Role of all of these Groups (each Organization has its own) is named “VCD Tenant Admin” and is restricted to API Calls and the vCloud Director Tenant Inventory Tree.
My summary of this new behavior is:
- The UI Integration Plugin is only available when access is enabled in the Provider Interface. There is no additional User Login required.
- Otherwise a “Access Denied Page” is shown
- The additional local or imported users can only be used to access the external Tenant App URL directly.
New API Endpoint
In my prior Blog Post about the Tenant App I was wondering about the use of the API Extension Endpoint. With vRealize Operations Tenant App 2.0 the API now responds a Access Token to the API Endpoint of the vRealize Operations Manager API.
With this Token and the Tenant App external URL (tenantapp - response in Body), I am able to access the new vRealize Operations Manager API Endpoint.
My example gathers the latest Alerts in vRealize Operations Manager:
The Headers and Body of the API POST looks like that:
Note:
The Access-Token is extracted via a custom Postman Test:
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var jsonData = JSON.parse(responseBody); postman.setEnvironmentVariable("vRops-Token", jsonData.token);
Provider Reports
Like in vRealize Operations Manager itself, the Tenant App 2.0 gives the Provider a vCloud Director focused Report set.
Out-of-the-box Reports:
- Catalog Items Cost and Price
- Detailed report
- Distribution report
- Organization cost and Price
- Organization to Organization VDC Mapping
- Organization to VM Mapping
- Organization VDC Cost and Price
- Organization VDC to VM Mapping
- Summary Report
- vApp and vApp Templates Cost and Price
- vApp to VM mapping
- vCloud Director to Organization Mapping
- VM Cost and Price
- VM Hierarchy
- Organization VDC to vApp and vApp Templates Mapping
Example of the Cost per Organization Report:
Enhanced Metric Selector
The new Metric Selector has a a new, tidier view and way more filter possibilities. The user has now also the capability to load multiple charts at the same time and even combine multiple Metrics into on Chart.
Metering
The vRealize Operations Tenant App 2.0 for vCloud Director provides now finally metering capabilities. The Provider can define and apply pricing policies to the Organizations in vCloud Director. The calculated costs are visible to the Tenant and the Provider.
Organization Costs:
OrgVDC and vApp Costs:
All the generated metering details are also available in vRealize Operations Manager as new metrics.
VM Metering Metrics:
Edge Gateway Metering Metrics:
As the vRealize Operations Manager now knows about these new metering details, the Metrics can also be consumed by PowerCLI or via the Suite-API.
PowerCLI Example:
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Metering Details
As the metering part is the most important feature in the latest Tenant App release, I will give a little bit more insight to this topic.
Pricing policies
The Provider can define multiple pricing policies and apply them to the vCloud Director Organizations.
A pricing policy can contain a whole bunch of pricing options:
- Base Settings
- CPU Rate
- Memory Rate
- Storage Rate
- Default Rate
- Storage Polica
- Network Rate
- Advanced Network Rate
- BGP Routing
- DHCP
- Firewall
- High Availability
- IP
- IPV6
- IP Sec
- Load Balancer
- L2 VPN
- NAT
- OSPF Routing
- Static Routing
- SSL VPN
- Base rate and fixed costs for Edge Gateway sizes
- Guest OS rate
- VM Tag Rate
- vCD Metadata Rate
All of the consumption base pricing options can have an additional fixed cost:
All of the consumption base pricing options can use the VM Power State as an additional factor of charge:
Moreover, even the charge period and the sub metric can be chosen:
Base Settings
CPU Rate
You can charge the CPU Rate based on GHz or vCPU Count.
Advanced Network Rate
Beside the rates for Distributed Firewall and Edge Services, (See the full list above) also the Edge Gateway Size can be charged.
VM Tag and vCD Metadate Rate
Both pricing options are targeting VMs. The Metadata can be defined in vCloud Director and Tags in native in vSphere. They are not visible vice versa.
Bills
The Provider has also the capability to generate Bills for the Organizations based on a specified Pricing Policy (needs not to match the actually applied one). The Tenant and the Provider are able to see these Bills.
Enhancement Requests
- Using a single User in multiple Tenants (Import and Local) should be possible
- Using existing (already imported) user from a Authentication Source should be possible
- API Documentation is needed
- Currency is missing in Tenant App Views
- Pricing Policies and Pricing Options Documentation is needed
- Documentation enhancement regarding the new Plugin Access behavior
- Appliance Upgrade Process (instead of Redeployment)
- More detailed View into the cost calculation of a single object
- Example: Is the Guest OS Rate applied to a VM?
My test environment
I have used the following product version to evaluate the vRealize Operations Tenant App 2.0 for vCloud Director:
- VMware vRealize Operations Manager 7.0.0.10098133
- Management Pack for vCloud Director 5.0.10154291
- Management Pack for NSX-vSphere 3.5.2.8185708
- vRealize Operations Tenant App for vCloud Director 2.0 Build 10118743
- VMware NSX 6.4.0.7564187
- VMware vCloud Director 9.1.0.8825784
- VMware vSphere 6.5 Update 2