Gain Business Level Cost Visibility
Organizations implement virtualization to reduce the cost of IT operations. Without proper management, however, virtualization costs can increase due to VM sprawl or over-allocation of resources. In addition, as organizations look to implement private cloud initiatives, cost visibility is a must-have requirement. VKernel provides cost visibility solutions to maximize ROI for virtualized environments.
Related Products
Whitepapers
Video: Chargeback Product Overview
Case Studies
Reasons for Chargeback or "Showback"
While chargeback was originally listed as a must-have capability for early virtualization projects, simply getting basic virtualization capabilities operating eclipsed the need for more advanced functionality like chargeback. In addition, practical considerations such as internal agreement on cost allocation, integration with cost accounting systems, and the needed cooperation between disparate groups conspired to stop many chargeback initiatives.
However, as organizations are now entering the more advanced stages of virtualization, chargeback requirements are returning to the enterprise either as pure chargeback initiatives, or softer "show"-back initiatives providing cost visibility to IT decision makers.
There are three main drivers to these initiatives: Curbing VM sprawl, reducing over allocation of resources, support for cloud initiatives.
Curbing VM Sprawl
VM sprawl continues to be a major challenge for many organizations. Without the ability to report by customer the cost of their VM deployments, there is no internal incentive to curb sprawl or eliminate it. VKernel offers solutions to curb VM sprawl through both cost visibility and through identification of abandoned, orphaned and zombie VMs.
Reducing Over-Allocation of Resources
VMs are many times over-allocated with resources due to conservatism on the part of application managers and the belief that applications need the same resource levels from the physical world mapped into the virtual world. The result is wasted resources, extra hardware purchases and a poor ROI.
VKernel offers two approaches to solve the problem. The first is through technical analysis of memory, cpu, and storage usage to spot under-utilization. However, this technical evaluation many times won't be as effective as simply showing the cost difference. VKernel's Chargeback product reports on the costs two ways- both allocated and actually used. By showing the difference, VM admins can make a simple business case for reducing over allocated resources.
Supporting Cloud Initiatives
Finally, private cloud initiatives are taking hold in many enterprises. Especially when these initiatives are designed around self-service portals, the ability to chargeback for services is critical. VKernel's Chargeback product is ideally designed to support private cloud initiatives especially in heterogeneous Microsoft and VMware environments.