NimsoftUsage Metering and Billing Reporting Guidefor

NimsoftCustomers

Using usage_meteringand billing v2.x probes

DocumentVersion:2.4

Last Update: Dec 03, 2012

Copyright© 1998-2012, Nimsoft Corporation

Table of Contents

Overview...... 3

Nimsoft ‘usage_metering’ Probe...... 4

Nimsoft Billing Subscription...... 4

Nimsoft ‘billing’ Probe...... 4

Nimsoft Usage Reporting...... 5

Installing and Configuring the Probes...... 5

Running the Probes...... 6

Performing an Ad-Hoc ‘usage_metering’ Scan...... 6

Generating a Nimsoft Billing Report...... 6

Submitting Nimsoft Usage Report...... 7

Conclusion...... 7

Overview

Nimsoft provides Unified Management solutions for Modern IT that includes virtualized data centers, hosted and managed services, cloud platforms, and SaaS resources. The Nimsoft Usage Metering and Billing solution provides detailed usage metering and reporting of Nimsoft monitored IT resources. Billing reports of the usage items gathered during a time period can be generated using a Nimsoft subscription to define the billing packs and probes.

A graphical representation of the Usage Metering and Billing solution is shown below. The usage_metering probe scans the Nimsoft Monitoring environment for device usage in a scheduled basis. The billing probe communicates with the usage_metering probe for usage data to generate billing usage reports referencing a billing subscription for generating billable items.

Nimsoft Usage Metering and Billing Components:

The Nimsoft Usage Metering and Billing solution includes the following:

Nimsoft ‘usage_metering’Probe

The usage_metering probe captures a probe’s device monitoring usage in a Nimsoft environment. For local-device probes, the referenced device is the robot (e.g. ‘cdm’ and ‘processes’). For remote-device probes, the devices being monitored are the device reference list (e.g. the devices configured in ‘net_connect’, ‘sqlserver’, etc. are referenced). During a scan, each probe’s referenced devices are stored locally and available to the billing probe when needing to determine usage for a given time span (e.g. month).

The usage scans should be configured to execute on a scheduled basis. Reference the usage_metering Help documentation for configuration specifics.

NimsoftBilling Subscription

A billing subscription defines a customer’s billing packs and probes used during billing report generation. The billing probe must be configured with a customer’s billing subscription in order to successfully generate a billing report.

A customer-specific offline subscription file should be received via email from Nimsoft Sales Operations. Upon importing this offline subscription file, the Nimsoft Subscription ID and billing pack information is stored and referenced for future billing calculations. The billing probes and packs included in the subscription can be viewed for reference purposes through the subscription export capability within the billing probe.

Please contact Nimsoft Sales Operations if an updated subscription file is needed for any reason.

Nimsoft ‘billing’ Probe

The ‘billing’ probe communicates with the ‘usage_metering’ probe to retrieve device usage item data for a specified time span. The usage data is analyzed against the billing probes and packs defined in the subscription to generate billable items. A billable item is an entity containing a device reference, billing pack, and a list of all probes that were matched from the usage environment for the device reference/billing pack match.

The generated billing report displays a summary of billable items per billing pack, a listing of device references, and the individual billable items for reference purposes.

NimsoftUsage Reporting

A billing report representing Nimsoft monitoring usage over a month’s time span is required to be generated and sent to Nimsoft Sales Operations on a scheduled basis. After the probes have been configured, usage scans and reports can be initiated to generate the requisite documents for Nimsoft Sales Operations.

Installing and Configuring the Probes

1.Download the latest versions of usage_metering and billing probes from the support archive.

a)Using Infrastructure Manager, log into the robot where usage_metering and billing probes are to reside. Please note that these probes are not required to reside on the same robot. Additionally, you will need to install usage_metering and billing probes into a robot for each Nimsoft domain, meaning if your monitoring environment contains multiple Nimsoft domains, then usage_metering and billing will need to be installed into each domain and the billing probe configured to access at it’s domain usage_metering.

b)Navigate to the robot’s ‘Archive’ node and select the ‘Service’ node.

c)Scroll through list of probes and highlight ‘usage_metering’ and ‘billing’ probes. Both these probes can be selected by holding Ctrl key down and left-clicking.

d)Right-click and select ‘Download’. The latest GA versions of the probes will then be downloaded to the local archive.

2.Distribute the probes from the local archive to the target robots by dragging and dropping or selecting the probe, right-clicking, and selecting the ‘Distribute’ menu item.

3.Configure ‘usage_metering’ probe.

a)Reference the probe’s Help documentation for specifics relating to features and configuration steps.

b)It is recommended to perform usage scans on a daily basis at off-peak usage times, such as midnight. To configure the probe for these example settings, perform the following:

  • double-click the usage_metering probe
  • Navigate to the ‘Device Metering’ tab, and in the ‘Setting’ sub-tab check the ‘Perform device metering on schedule’.
  • Select ‘Daily’ radio button and enter ‘1’ days for frequency.
  • Check the ‘Start at’ check box and enter today’s date and time of ‘00:00’. An example input would be: 11/01/2012 00:00. This date/time represents the next scheduled execution of a scan and all subsequent scans will be performed ‘1’ day after this first scan on a continuous scheduled basis.
  • Click ‘OK’ to save changes.

4.Configure the ‘billing’ probe

a)Pre-requisites

  • A subscription file should have been mailed by Nimsoft Sales Operations. Save that subscription file (likely named ‘nms_offline_setup.subscription’) to a location that can be referenced from Infrastructure Manager.

b)Reference the probe’s Help documentation for specifics relating to features and configuration steps. Especially, reference the section for ‘How to Configure Offline Subscription’.

c)If the billing probe resides on the same robot as the usage_metering probe, then no further configuration is required relating to usage_metering probe configuration; otherwise, reference the Help documentation for specifics on how to update the ‘usage_metering_probe_address’ to reference the remote location.

d)Activate the probe.

e)Open the billing configuration and navigate to the ‘Subscription’ tab.

f)Click the ‘Configure Offline Subscription File’ button and select the subscription file stored to disk in earlier pre-requisite steps and click ‘Open’. After a period of time, a success message should be displayed and the GUI refreshed with the offline subscription information.

Running the Probes

A scan needs to be performed before billing results can be generated. The following steps show how to run an ad-hoc scan and generate a billing report. The ad-hoc scan is not required if the usage_metering probe is configured to run scans on a scheduled basis, as specified above in the usage_metering configuration section.

Performing an Ad-Hoc ‘usage_metering’ Scan

1.Open ‘usage_metering’ configuration dialog.

2.Navigate to ‘Device Metering’ tab.

3.Click the ‘Run Scan Now’ button.

4.You can view the scan status in the ‘Status’ tab. When the scan has completed, proceed to the next steps below for generating a billing report.

Generating a Nimsoft Billing Report

1.Pre-requisites:

a)At least one ‘usage_metering’ scan run for the billing month of interest needs to have been performed to completion in order to generate a billing report. Verify at least one scan exists by opening the ‘usage_metering’ configuration and selecting ‘Device Metering->Status’ tab. Verify details exist for ‘Last Status’ and the date information is a match for the billing month of interest. Alternatively, navigate to the ‘Device Metering->Report’ tab, enter the month start date and end date into the ‘Start Time’ and ‘End Time’ fields and click ‘Report’ button. Navigate through each day’s results by clicking the ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons under the list.

2.Open ‘billing’ configuration dialog.

3.Navigate to the ‘Calculations’ tab.

4.Enter today’s year and month into the ‘Billing Calculation’ fields and click the ‘Run’ button.

a)A calculation will proceed in the background.

b)The amount of time it will take for the calculation to complete is dependent upon the amount of input data from usage_metering; therefore, no time specifications can be provided but check after 2-5 minutes to see if completed.

5.Click the ‘Refresh’ button after a period of time (e.g. 3 minutes). If another record entry is not shown in the ‘Results’ list, then wait a period of time and click the ‘Refresh’ button again.

6.Once a calculation result is available, select the calculation in the list view and click the ‘Export’ button. Store the file to a local disk location. The exported report is in HTML format and viewable within a web browser.

Submitting Nimsoft Usage Report

1.Please email the billing usage report exported in steps above to Nimsoft Sales Operations and fulfillment teams to report your Nimsoft usage on a monthly or agreed upon periodic basis per your Nimsoft purchase agreement.

a)Please do not submit the same file twice to Nimsoft Sales Operations.

Conclusion

Please refer to both ‘usage_metering’ and ‘billing’ probe Help documentation if having an issue or for specifics regarding configuration and usage of these probes. If an issue exists and unable to resolve via the Help documentation, please contact Nimsoft Support for resolution.

Thank you for using the Nimsoft Usage Metering and Billing solution.