We’ve just finished the third webinar in our quarterly series on updates to the VCPP Pricing, Metering and Reporting! We discussed what partners needed to know now, and what they needed to prepare for down the road. In this blog, we’ll take a look at what we covered and point you to relevant documentation in case you need it!

Pricing Updates:

  • Product Usage Guide for Q4 is now available!
  • NSX DC SP Professional price dropped!
    • For partners that are using the equivalent to Standard with Networking or Advanced with Networking, the cost for NSX DC SP Professional is now lower! It actually means that Standard with Networking no longer needs price protection, and Advanced with Networking is now 1 point cheaper. To take advantage of this, partners only need to sign up for the Flex Pricing Model. The new pricing goes live on the December monthly billing order for all Flex Partners.
  • Bundles End-of-Life Date Updated
    • The older Bundles will officially go End-of-Life on July 31, 2021. This means partners NEED to upgrade to UM 4.X before that time. Preferably before UM 3.6 goes EOL on March 28, 2021.
  • Tanzu Basic
    • Pricing for Tanzu Basic is now available in the Q4 PUG. This is part of VMware’s effort to provide cloud providers with pricing and availability of our Kubernetes solutions. There is still so much on the way and we’ll see more products and editions coming down the road.
  • VMware Cloud Foundation (Cores Pricing)
    • You might have noticed that the core pricing is not listed in the PUG anymore. No worries, we still offer the product. If you are interested in VMware Cloud Foundation based on licensing per physical Core, then reach out to your sales rep or Aggregator. For those interested in vRAM based pricing, its still available through Flex and all you need to do is deploy vSphere, NSX and vSAN from VCF, and meter SDDC Manager through the Usage Meter 4.3 vCenter Collector.
  • Cloud Provider Pod EOL
    • This was discussed last time, but its a general reminder that Cloud Provider Pod is officially End-of-Life this month. We are working to replace Cloud Provider Pod with a tool that works alongside VMware Cloud Foundation.
  • vRealize True Visibility Suite
    • Although we offered BlueMedora TVS in VCPP in the past, VMware officially acquired the product and it’s now offered under the vRealize Product Line. This doesn’t change pricing, but it makes it more readily available for partner to deploy and use. vRealize TVS should be available in your entitlement accounts on my.VMware.com to start consuming!

Metering Updates:

  • Usage Meter 4.3 released!
    • Officially collector parity with UM 3.6.1. Partners can begin moving over to UM 4.3 today! 
    • New collectors:
      • vRealize Automation 7 (8.x coming later once API’s are available)
      • Site Recovery Manager (Including one sided metering!)
      • vSAN
    • Upgrading!
      • For those already on UM 4.X, you can perform an in-place upgrade
      • For those on UM 3.6.1, deploy the new UM 4.3 appliance and get started
  • Usage Meter 3.6.1 End of Life!
  • Usage Meter 4.1 End of Life
    • With the updated architecture, comes faster releases. Partners running Usage Meter 4.1 should update to 4.2 now. $.1 went End-of-Life in September
    • Check Product Lifecycles on this PDF
  • Usage Insight
    • With UM 3.6.1 end-of-life coming in March 2021, partners will need to adopt UM 4.X soon, and with that Usage Insight since the service is required for metering to work (Also requires Flex). If you need help getting started, head over to the product website to learn more: https://cloud.vmware.com/cloud-provider-metering

Reporting Updates:

  • Deal Registration
    • Deal Registration is a function performed by aggregators on the Commerce Portal. On Monday, this feature became available on the Commerce Portal on Monday, and training content for Aggregators will be available on VMware Learning Platform soon.

Recommendations for Partners:

With all of these updates, there are Three actions that Partners can do right now to prepare for the future.

  1. Adopt the Flex Pricing Model. If you don’t report against a custom point per unit product, or a custom bundle, then there is no reason to wait. All pricing matches. Partners with custom pricing need to work with their VMware Sales Rep to help migrate to Flex Pricing Model.
    1. If you report on any custom SKU’s or SKU’s with custom Points Per Unit, please make sure to reach out to your VMware Sales Rep before proceeding to signup for Flex!
  2. Adopt Automatic Reporting. Usage Meter 4.X requires Usage Insight. With the UM 3.6.1 End of Life right around the corner, it would be best to start using the auto-reporting service right now! Usage Insight has no effect on price. It just helps you automatically fill out your Monthly Billing Order in Commerce Portal.
  3. If you see “Standard Bundle” (not Standard Bundle with X) on your Monthly Usage Report from Usage Meter, then you need to replace the license keys you use on your physical ESXi hosts! Follow this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7D-Ry6Z4B4
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That’s all for December 2020! We’ll do another update in early 2021 as the next Product Usage Guide is published! If you want to join us live or get notified about the recording, make sure that you have access to the Commerce Portal at vcp.vmware.com! We send all invitations to Commerce Portal users.

Happy Holidays and we’ll see you all next year!

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