Usage and Billing Update 7 release enables key new scenarios and features such as configuring user level credits to support pre-paid plans, view usage by grouping subscriptions at the user level, support for custom formula for computing usage of metered resources, generating invoice PDF documents, and the *hot new* capability to implement custom usage collectors using C# extensions.

Does your business have Windows Azure Pack based private or hybrid Cloud deployed, but was limited by the set of Usage details captured by it for billing? Here is hot release with new feature additions to our 'Usage & Billing' solution, which enables simple C# code and Powershell script extensions to capture and inject custom Usage details into our Cloud Assert Billing pipeline, provide visibility in Windows Azure Pack Tenant Portal and leverage all the goodness of Cloud Assert Usage and Billing Solution.

While it is obvious for most of us who dealt with Azure Pack or Azure in the past, for some it may be puzzling how to give access to resources created by one user to another user. In Azure Pack and in traditional Azure the way to accomplish this is by adding someone as co-admins to the existing user subscription. This help center article in support.cloudassert.com shows where and how to accomplish it from Windows Azure Pack admin portal.

Cloud Assert VConnect integrates VMWare vCenter clusters and datacenters with Microsoft Windows Azure Pack.

VConnect provides many ways to extend functionality and customize. Combining those with external tools like Microsoft’s System Center Orchestrator brings lot of flexibility for the Administrators, System Integrators and Power Users. In the following sections, we will go through the steps to invoke an Orchestrator Runbook from VConnect Operations Templates.

Cloud Assert Usage and Billing pulls and aggregates data from Windows Azure Pack and System Center Usage data pipeline frequently in order to provide up-to-date metered resource / consumption based usage to end users.

This underlying usage pipeline has many moving parts and more often users are left with no usage data shown for System Center Virtual Machines. This post provides steps and tricks to troubleshoot and fix various components in the Windows Azure Pack, System Center and Operations Manager.

Cloud Assert will be present in upcoming Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference #WPC15, Orlando, Florida from July 12th to 16th. Come see us at booth # MC18 in Microsoft Cloud Partner Pavilion.

Usage and Billing solution for Windows Azure Pack is a platform for enterprises and service providers to address the need to provide a simple, straight forward Windows Azure Pack resource utilization across various services over time. Usage and Billing solution enables Windows Azure Pack administrators to configure pricing for more than 100+ resources, maintain multiple Pricing Profiles, integrate with billing systems and generate invoices automatically based on real usage from the end users.

Latest VConnect 1.5 includes bug fixes and improvements for robust VM Deployment flow and visiblity for admins into provisioning steps for Virtual Machines.

VConnect v1.0 Update 3 adds following features and improvements

 

- VConnect IP Address Pool Management

- Virtual Machine Backups for both VMWare and System Center

- Polished User Experience for setting up VConnect

- Auto discover datacenters and clusters on vCenter

- Validate and warn administrators on potentially incorrect configurations

- Step by step guided Wizard for creating VConnect Templates

 

VConnect VM Templates support customizing the VM startup configuration. Administrator user can determine if the VM should join a specified domain and can also provide the values needed to join a domain.