We just started the first webinar in the “Whats new in Cloud Provider Pricing, Metering, and Reporting” series. In this blog we’ll visit what was discussed and as well as provide the action items that partners can perform today to plan ahead or make monthly reporting easier. We’ll cover what’s new in the Product Usage Guide, any news relating to pricing, Usage Meter + Usage Insight updates, best practices for metering, and changes in the commerce portal.
June 2020 Update!
Contents
Pricing Updates:
- Standard Bundle is now Officially End-of-Life
- Now that the 5pt bundle is EOL, partners should transition their license keys on their hosts to vSphere Enterprise Plus. If you need some guidance, we’ve made a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7D-Ry6Z4B4
- NSX Feature Updates
- There are some updates to NSX where certain features moved to lower or higher editions. Take a look at the latest Product Usage Guide for more information!
- Please note that new NSX Feature mapping is only metered by Usage Meter 4.2. All older Usage Meter’s still use the old feature mapping.
- NSX Advanced Load Balancer
- The NSX Advanced Load Balancer is now available, and partners are able to use a certain amount as part of the Flex Core bundle.
- SDDC Manager (Flex Add-On)
- Partners can now build-their-own VCF edition. By using SDDC Manager on Flex, plus Flex Core, vSAN and NSX, they can utilize the feature based metering and editions of the products they choose. When it comes together, partners get the full advantage of VCF, with the vRAM pricing model.
- VMware Cloud Foundation (Cores Pricing)
- VCF as a whole product, all of the SDDC Products as an “all you can eat” price based on physical cores in the host. This is
- HCX for Cloud Providers (Flex Add-On)
- This is a vRAM based model for HCX as a standalone add-on for Flex Pricing Model!
- Cloud Provider Pod EOA and EOL
- vSAN for Hyper-converged Infrastructure update
- This update is to align the vSAN HCI pricing with the general vSAN pricing. If you didn’t know, vSAN was reduced for Cloud Providers by 50%!
Metering Updates:
- Usage Meter 4.2 was just released!
- Closer to feature parity with UM 3.6.1: Added Cloud Director collector. This means that using similar bundles to before are completely supported.
- New collectors: NSX-T with feature based metering, vRealize Network Insight, VCF on Cores model (SDDC Manager on vRAM coming later), and Horizon DaaS 9!
- Usage Insight
- With UM 3.6.1 end-of-life coming, partners will need to adopt UM 4.X soon, and with that Usage Insight since the service is required to for metering to work. If you need help getting started, head over to the product website to learn more: https://cloud.vmware.com/cloud-provider-metering
Reporting Updates:
- 5pt Bundle Reporting
- If you still see “Standard Bundle” showing up in your monthly report, we’ve added a temporary transition SKU called “Standard Bundle EOL (Charged as Advanced Bundle)”. Use this for now while you change your host license keys. Eventually after changing the host licenses you won’t see that bundle appear on your Monthly Usage Report.
- UX Enhancements
- Some enhancements to the MBO and Contract tables
- Contract Download
- Retain and Reset filters
- VeloCloud MSP now available
- Partners can join the VeloCloud MSP program and through the help of white glove service, order hardware and ship it. Hardware and service charges will appear on the appropriate MBO’s after that for them to report. Its not 100% self-service, but with a representatives help, they can get order outs.
- Flex Add-Ons restricted to Flex Partners
- Small bug in the Commerce Portal fixed. For a period of time, bundle partners could see Flex Add-Ons. This has been corrected.
Recommendations for Partners:
With all of these updates, there are two actions that Partners can do right now to prepare for the future.
First is Onboarding into Automatic Reporting with Usage Insight. If a partner is using UM 3.6 and higher, they are supported. Also, in Usage Meter 4.X the UM appliance requires the service to function. So onboarding into the service takes away some of the necessary tasks.
Second, sign up for Flex Pricing Model. The new pricing model is not required yet, but is if you try to adopt UM 4.X. On top of this, the Bundles will eventually go end of life. The reason partners can perform this now is because the only partners that have yet to sign up, are ones that would receive price protection, so there is ZERO difference in price. The only partners that should wait on this is partners with custom bundling or custom pricing. Please reach out to your sales rep for assistance with moving to Flex as soon as possible.
Thats all for June 2020! We’ll do another update in August as the next Product Usage Guide is published!
