What’s New in Chargeback Manager 2.7.3

In March 2017 VMware released vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.7.3. The main reason why to upgrade to the new release is that it adds full support for vCloud Director 8.20.

So what is new? From the security standpoint TLS 1.2 is now supported and also Java and Tomcat are updated with the latest security patches. There is a new way of collection of network resources consumption. It the pre-8.20 releases of vCloud Director, the configuration of network services was stored in vCloud Director audit table and available via vCloud API used by Chargeback Cloud collector. Chargeback vShield collector was used only for collection of external network transfer using vShield API against vCNS/NSX Manager.

When advanced networking services are configured in vCloud Director 8.20, these changes are no longer tracked by vCloud Director audit table. Chargeback thus relies on NSX API to collect the status of the services. This also means, that if these services are enabled directly in NSX, Chargeback will track them.

The following networking services are tracked by Chargeback:

New networking services:

• Dynamic routing (OSPF/BGP)
• L2 VPN
• SSL VPN
• Distributed firewall (enabled at Org VDC level)

Legacy networking services:

• DHCP
• Edge Firewall
• Edge Gateway High Availability
• NAT
• Static routing
• Enabled IPSec VPN Tunnel Count
• Load Balancer

Metering of external networks is unchanged.

vCenter Chargeback Manager Notes

This blog post summarizes up-to-date (July 2016) information related to vCenter Chargeback Manager.

Chargeback Manager (CBM) is available only for service providers. Although in past its end of support was announced it was extended until end of 2017. The reason for extension is to provide more time to service providers to migrated to its successor – vRealize Business for Cloud Advanced (vRB)

Both CBM and vRB were removed from all but standard vCloud Service Provider Bundles (with the exception for current users) and can be licensed separately. The reason was to give partners more choice which metering tool to use.

• The latest CBM version is 2.7.1 and is downloadable from here. Note that this version has following support limitations:
  • vSphere 6 is not supported – this is due to new storage APIs introduced in vSphere 6
  • Both vCloud Networking and Security and NSX are supported (in the vCloud Director context)
  • vCloud Director 8.10 is not supported (see the next bullet point)
• CBM patch for vCloud Director 8.10 was released in the following KB: https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2146041. It replaces one JAR file of the vCloud Director data collector to properly identify new vCloud API versions. It is also backward compatible with older vCloud Director versions.
• vSphere 6 support is expected in the next release of CBM later this year

In case you are upgrading from CBM 2.7.0 to 2.7.1 here are some notes and considerations:

• CBM 2.7.0 and older was 32 bit application. CBM 2.7.1 is 64 bit application.
• There are two ways how to upgrade CBM. You can either do in-place upgrade, or you can uninstall CBM and install fresh binaries while using the same Chargeback database
  • In-place upgrade:
    • Make sure you shut down all services before running the installer (vCenter-CB.exe)
    • Always run the installer with the Run as administrator option.
    • Even though CBM 2.7.1 is 64 bit application it will still be located in the default 32bit Program Files (x86) folder.
  • Fresh install:
    • Uninstall CBM by running Uninstall.bat located in the …\VMware vCenter Chargeback\Uninstall_VMware vCenter Chargeback folder. If non-embedded collectors were used, uninstall them in similar way as well.
    • Reboot and install new binaries while pointing to the same CBM database. Remember to use Run ad administrator option when executing the installer (vCenter-CB.exe)
    • The installer does not remove old collectors from the database. Wait a few minutes until they will be identified as failed (red X in CBM System Health, Data Collectors UI), note their IDs and then manually remove them from CBM database – CB_DC_STATUS table. You can locate them by their ID in the DC_ID column.
      
    • CBM 2.7.1 will be located by default in the 64 bit Program Files folder.