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Mastering VMware VCSP Licensing: Avoiding Overages & Optimizing Usage

Mastering VMware VCSP Licensing: Avoiding Overages & Optimizing Usage

Avoiding Overages: The Case for Proactive License Management

With VCSP licenses, the Premier or Affiliate partner is able to generate as many licenses as required, sometimes spiraling without proper monitoring. This could then lead to unwanted overages and subsequently more spending. Following is some of the best practices that can be followed to better manage your licenses.

1. Understanding your contract

1. Understanding your contract

a. Some partners have multiple contracts, due to various reasons. So, it is essential you know what your entitlements for each contract are.
b. It is important to make sure that you understand and document this.
c. Tip: refer to the ESD email for full information.

2. Generating and tracking licenses

2. Generating and tracking licenses

a. Licenses are generated from the Consumption Portal based on your requirement for each contract. This will be available in My Entitlements >> Consumption Portal.
b. The best practice is to generate one license key for each cluster or each vCenter, instead of generating a single license key for the entire entitlement of your contract. This way, the usage can be tracked more efficiently.
c. Create an excel sheet with the details and keep them updated whenever a license key is created or removed from usage. This is a customizable sample which you can use to start with.
d. Note: You cannot delete a license key in Consumption portal once generated, but it is not taken into account unless it is applied and used.

3. Overage

3. Overage

a. Overage is triggered when the usage for each contract is above the total number of cores committed.
b. Overage can be tracked manually by generating the HUR Report from Cloud Console.
c. The HUR report is originally in TSV format which is displayed in an Excel csv format.
d. The HUR report in its original format is not very useful, but with some formatting and formulas, it can be easily understood.

4. Analyzing HUR Reports

4. Analyzing HUR Reports

a. We have created a custom Excel automation script which instantly transforms the HUR report into an easy-to-read format with the calculations applied automatically.
b. You then need to key in the generated or committed value for each license key (which can be found in the tracking file you generated in step 2) to check if there is an overage and the cost.
c. Attached is a video and instructions on how to run the script.

How to use the Automation Script:

How to use the Automation Script:

1. First open the text file containing the script – HUR Report Automation v2.
2. Then open the HUR report (in tsv format) in Microsoft Excel.
3. The save the file as a .xlsx file to preserve the formatting.
4. Next, go to the Automate tab in Excel and select New Script.
5. This will then open the Script Editor on the right side of the page.
6. Now, select all and delete the existing content and replace it with the content from the HUR Report Automation v2.txt file (copy and paste the content).
7. Next, click on Save Script to keep this script stored for future use. You then don’t have to repeat the steps above to use the script again.
8. Then, click on the Run button to execute the script.
9. Once executed, the file should be formatted properly and a new table will be created from Column L to N.
10. In Column M (highlighted in yellow), enter the committed cores per contract to see the approximate overage cost.
11. When you have multiple license keys per contract, split the commit between them and ensure the total committed cores does not exceed your actual commit to get a more accurate overage value.

Disclaimer: This calculation is based on estimation from the HUR Report only. For actual overage, you will need to refer to the invoice and consumption report from Broadcom.

How to use HUR Automation Script

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