VMware is excited to announce the general availability of Usage Meter 4.1. VMware Cloud Provider Partners utilize the Usage Meter appliance for license metering of hosting environments. This new architecture for metering will help partners in several ways to make metering and reporting much easier each and every month.
Usage Meter has been a part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program for a long time and this new edition marks an important milestone in helping partners license their environments so that they can offer best-in-class solutions to their customers. Usage Meter 4.1 is a huge milestone in supporting more partners globally, as well as making reporting easier than ever before.
Whats New in Usage Meter 4.1:
Photon OS
The Usage Meter appliance is moving to Photon OS. By moving off of SuSE Linux, VMware is able to provide greater support for the application as well as the Operating System.
Application Security
With a focus on security, VMware has strengthened the application to help partners meet security requirements for compliance certifications.
In-Place Upgrades
One of the biggest challenges for Usage Meter was upgrades. Starting in Usage Meter 4, in-place upgrades are now available so that partners don’t need to deploy a whole new appliance when they upgrade.
Usage Meter Agent + Usage Insight Service Model
In Usage Meter 4.1, the bundling and report generation have been moved to vCloud Usage Insight. This allows partners to see all of their metering data in one place, create a single point of view for all metering data.
Scalability
With the bundling and reporting functionality in Usage Insight, the Usage Meter appliance can focus on collecting usage data and sending it to the service for reporting. This helps the Usage Meter appliance take on larger environments within a single appliance.
Historical Data & Data Retention
Partners can view and export their historical usage data from Usage Insight at any time. This also means that partners do not need to maintain older versions of the Usage Meter appliance for data retention, since they can access that data from Usage Insight.
Automatic Reporting
With Usage Insight at the center of this new architecture, partners can take advantage of the service to automatically fill out their monthly reports, while maintaining control over the report.
Flex + Bundles Support
Usage Meter 4.1 supports the Flex Pricing Model and partners that have yet to sign up. This makes the transition to Flex very simple!
Planning and Deploying Usage Meter 4.1:
Products and Bundles Supported
Although Usage Meter 4.1 brings additional collectors to this new major version, it still may not fit every partners needs. As with rebuilding any product from the ground up, there is a bit of a transition period, and that is the case here as well. Take a look at these tables to see which products and bundles are supported by Usage Meter 4.1, and which ones require partners to remain on 3.6.1 for the time being.
The remaining products and bundle support will come in later versions of Usage Meter which will be easier to upgrade thanks to in-places upgrades!
Planning your Usage Meter 4.1 deployment
An easy way to decide if Usage Meter 4.1 is the right choice for you is to use the following decision tree. As Usage Meter updates, we will post additional content and update this decision process to best match partners options for deploying Usage Meter.
Download the new appliance today!
If you looked at the tables above and you are good to go for Usage Meter 4.1, click on this link to go to the download page for the new Usage Meter appliance!
Download the new appliance here!
Not for you? Here is what you can do right now!
If you haven’t already done so, signup for vCloud Usage Insight at https://cloud.vmware.com/vcloud-usage-meter. The service is a necessary part of Usage Meter 4.1 and is extremely helpful with making reporting easier each and every month. You can also take a look at the new Flex Pricing Model that replaces bundles. Read more about it here!
For additional information, check out the following resources!
