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Showback

The showback toolset reports resource usage cost, and allows the integration of chargeback and billing platforms. The toolset generates reports using the information gathered from HyperCloud.

Setting the cost

Each VM Template can optionally define a cost (see table below for attribute syntax descriptions). The cost is defined as cost per CPU per hour, and cost per memory MB per hour. The cost units are abstract and their equivalence to monetary units or other cost metrics require definition on a per deployment case.

Attribute Description Mandatory
MEMORY_COST Cost of each memory MB (or GB) per hour NO
CPU_COST Cost of each CPU per hour NO
DISK_COST Cost of each disk GB per hour NO

Cost Input

Using this cost schema allows the users to resize the Virtual Machine instances.

Cost VM

There is a default cost that will be applied to VM Templates without a cost defined. It can be found and modified in the `/etc/one/oned.conf` file.
#*******************************************************************************
# Default showback cost
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# The following attributes define the default cost for Virtual Machines that
# don't have a CPU, MEMORY or DISK cost. This is used by the oneshowback
# calculate method.
#*******************************************************************************

DEFAULT_COST = [
    CPU_COST    = 0,
    MEMORY_COST = 0,
    DISK_COST   = 0
]

# Should showback calculation count only running VMs.
# If 'no' showback will include also reserved CPU and MEMORY, e.g. VM states
# POWEROFF or SUSPENDED
SHOWBACK_ONLY_RUNNING = "no"

Calculate monthly reports

If order for standard users to view the cost reports, an administrator will need to generate them. To create the monthly cost reports, use the hypercloud showback command:

$ hypercloud showback calculate -h
Usage: hypercloud showback [options]
    -s, --start TIME                        First month of the data
    -e, --end TIME                          Last month of the data

Once the command is executed, the HyperCloud core will read all the accounting records, and calculate the total cost for each month. The records include the total cost of the month, and basic information about the VM and its owner. This information will be stored in the database and can be accessed via the hypercloud showback list command.

The monthly cost of each VM is calculated as the sum of:

  • CPU_COST * CPU * HOURS
  • MEMORY_COST * MEMORY * HOURS
  • DISK_COST * DISK_SIZE * HOURS

The number of hours is calculated as the total number of hours that a VM has been running. The time a VM occupies another state; such as, pending, poweroff, or stopped does not count towards the cost calculus.

If the time range includes the current month, HyperCloud will calculate the cost up to today's date. Depending on your reporting requirements, administrators may choose to leave the current month out of the showback records, or to update it daily, or hourly. Either way, the records will need to be recalculated when the month ends, in order to display that month's total costs. This operation can be performed easily via a cron job.

The hypercloud showback command can only be executed by the oneadmin user.

A few examples of using the command:

To calculate all records, starting from March up to today:

$ hypercloud showback calculate --start "03/2023"

To calculate only the month of August:

$ hypercloud showback calculate --start "08/2023" --end "08/2023"

Warning

This operation is resource intensive. For larger deployments, it is recommended to use the --start option to process only the last missing months.

Existing records can be recalculated. This can be useful to update old records when a VM is renamed, or the owner is changed. In this case, the cost of previous months will also be assigned to the new user.

Retrieve monthly reports

Administrator and standard user accounts have access to view their monthly showback reports via the dashboard CLI or web GUI.

## USAGE
list
        Returns the showback records
        valid options: start_time, end_time, userfilter, group, xml, json, verbose, help, version, describe, list, csv, user, password, endpoint

## OPTIONS
    -s, --start TIME            First month of the data
    -e, --end TIME              Last month of the data
    -u, --userfilter user       User name or id to filter the results
    -g, --group group           Group name or id to filter the results
    -x, --xml                   Show the resource in xml format
    -j, --json                  Show the resource in json format
    -v, --verbose               Verbose mode
    -h, --help                  Show this message
    -V, --version               Show version and copyright information
    --describe                  Describe list columns
    -l, --list x,y,z            Selects columns to display with list command
    --csv                       Write table in csv format
    --user name                 User name used to connect to HyperCloud
    --password password         Password to authenticate with HyperCloud
    --endpoint endpoint         URL of HyperCloud API frontend

Disable showback in dashboard GUI

Showback reports can be disabled in any of the dashboard web GUI views by modifying the yaml file of those views. These files can be found on the path /etc/one/sunstone-views. Simply set the showback feature to false, as seen in the snippet below:

...
features:
    # True to show showback monthly reports, and VM cost
    showback: false

Tuning and extending

In order to easily integrate the showback results with external tools, the formatting of the CLI output can be requested as xml, json, or csv. 

$ hypercloud showback list -u cloud_user --list YEAR,MONTH,VM_ID,COST --csv
YEAR,MONTH,VM_ID,COST
2015,10,4258,1824279.62
2015,10,4265,433749.03
2015,11,4258,34248600