Servers are no longer a "Resource Boundary"

One of the hardest concepts for System Administrators new to virtualization to understand is the shared resource management. VMware ESX makes it possible to share resources namely memory, cpu, storage and network not only inside a physical host, but also across multiple physical hosts. The resources are pulled together to create one massive resource pool captured in a concept called a cluster. Even resources inside clusters can be further subdivided into many Resource Pools. For admins who are only used to dealing with physical servers as resource boundaries this can be confusing, especially when it comes to planning and management of capacity. For example when monitoring or determining resource capacity, Admins must now take into consideration how all resource boundaries are affected. Looking just at physical servers is no longer an option!

How to Calculate how much to Chargeback

While most agree that charging departments for computing resources consumed is the way to go, many get stuck with the question of "How do we compute what what we need to charge for Memory, CPU, Storage and Network usage. Since you have many departments that share Virtual Datacenter, how do you go about figuring out how much to charge users per every GB of memory used, or for every Ghz of CPU consumed. This is a real brain cramp!

It took us a little while here at VKernel, but we "cracked the code" on this one. We created a spreadsheet that takes into consideration your ESX hosts, storage and network devices and what you paid for them, how many user departments you have, who is using the resources, cost recovery timeframe, etc and automatically calculates rates that you should be charging your users per day for memory, CPU, Storage and Network.

As you make changes to your infrastructure simply update the spreadsheet and it will recalculate the rates. You can download the Calculator and the White Paper that describes step by step how to use it from

http://www.vkernel.com/resourcecenter/methodology/

Let me know what you think?