Billing Charge Back Report
This report calculates the charges associated with the primary and secondary
storage entities in the CommNet domain, within a specified time range and length of
time. From these calculations, for example, you can determine the charge
of protecting the data of a department in your company.
Secondary storage calculations are based on the
Activity Qualifier Window
for a CommCell. Primary storage calculations for
QSMCell(s)
or SRM components in CommCell are
based on the time range and length of time specified on the local time of the CommNet Server. For CommCell specific information, regardless of what is set in the Cell Configuration
dialog box, this report always considers weekend days as separate days.
The Billing Detail Report can be generated through the Charge Back report and
displays, for a particular cell or client, a detailed view of the charges. This
report is derived by clicking on the Number of DP operations, total price, Data
size, or the Price for data protection or price for storage.
Costing Methods
The report calculates charges based on fixed or category costing methods.
Fixed Costing
Fixed costing allows you to generate the report based on a fixed storage
price. Note the following:
- Is based on fixed parameters set from the
General tab of
the Cell Configuration dialog box.
- For primary storage, it is based on the parameters set in the
Price per MB of Data field.
- For secondary
storage, it is based on the parameters set in the Price Per Data
Protection and Price Per MB of Data fields.
- For each storage option, you can temporarily set a new price for
each of these parameters from the Override Configured Price section of the
filter before generating the report. Such a change will not affect the settings
in the Cell Configuration dialog box.
Category Costing
Category costing generates the report based on pricing for primary or
secondary storage entities. The costs for these storage entities are defined in the
Cost Category dialog box.
Client or Billable Entity Selection
You can generate the report for a particular client in a CommCell and/or
QSMCell. You can also generate the report based on a billable entity, which can
include multiple clients, such as clients within a department in
your organization.
Regardless of client or billable entity:
- You can include charges for primary and/or secondary storage.
- Completed jobs are charged for the day they are started, regardless of the
time and day for which they are completed.
- The cost categories and billing departments that are associated with a job
at the job's completion are used to calculate the charges for the job.
- For secondary storage:
- You can include or exclude data from uninstalled
clients. Including these clients in the report calculations ensures that the data will still be charged, because they have already stored and/or
have used storage resources in data protection operations. (Note that this
report will not include the data from QSM clients or SRM components in
CommCell.)
- You can include or exclude pruned/tombstoned data. Including pruned/tombstoned data
protection operations ensures that pruned/tombstoned data protection
operations will still be charged because these operations have also used
storage resources.
- All copies used for data protection operations
will be charged. If a data protection operation residing on a primary copy is
then copied to a secondary copy, the protected data is counted twice. (For
inline auxiliary copies, the number of the DP operations will be counted
once although storage price will be counted twice.) If
the copies use different cost categories, the data protection operation will
be charged according to the cost category associated with the storage resource
used by each copy.
- Synthetic full operations
are charged.
- Incomplete operations (stopped, pending, running, waiting), killed, or failed operations
are not charged.
- Express Recovery Backups are not charged.
- Snap Vault data protection operations are not charged.
- Calculates the cost of protecting the data of subclient even after that subclient is deleted.
- Quick Recovery volumes are charged for the total data amount in gigabytes
for the day, no matter how many times a snapshot was taken of that volume in
that day.
- For single instance magnetic libraries, charges will be calculated based
on the total job data size. Hence, even if a single instance hardware does
not write all of the job data to the disk, the job, since it attempted to
write the data to the disk, will be charged with the total data size.
For example, on a single instancing library, if you do a data protection
operation of 100 GB. and out of which only 10 GB of data is written by the
hardware (since it is a single instance hardware), the software will
calculate a charge back amount on the entire 100 GB.
- For data secured using SnapVault, there is no way to
determine the actual size of the data. Hence, the Charge Back report will not charge or consider SnapVault data.
- The billing/costing for replication pairs assigned to billable entities
is not counted on the report.
- For primary storage:
- A QSM Agent for Windows File System must first be installed in a
QSMCell
before cost categories can be assigned to primary storage resources.
However, the QSM Agent for Windows File System does not have to be installed
for cost categories to be assigned to NAS volumes.
- When cost categories for Oracle are assigned, the appropriate QSM Agent
for Windows File System or the SRM Windows File System Agent must first be installed on the Oracle Server.
- When cost categories are assigned for the QSM Agent for Unix File
System or SRM Unix File System Agent , it is recommended that these cost categories are assigned to logical
volumes in the QSM Console or the CommCell console, not to disks.
- When a subclient is deleted from QSM or SRM component in CommCell, it will not be included on the
Charge Back report because the history for the subclient has been deleted
from QSM or CommCell, and is no longer available.
- When this report is run against a QSM Exchange client or SRM Exchange
client, it will be based
on the configured subclients for primary storage.
Client Based Report
If the report is generated by client, the following sections are displayed in
the report:
Summary for All Selected Cells
- Cost Categories Aggregate
table lists the cost categories, the total price for that
cost category, a ranking of how expensive that cost category is in relation to
the others, and the total price to store data on the associated storage entity
type of that cost category.
- The Cells Aggregate table lists the cells in the CommNet domain, the
cell type (if it is a CommCell or
QSMCell), the total price of that cell, how
expensive that cell is, the number of data protection operations performed, the
price for each data protection operation, and the total data size.
- The Clients Aggregate table lists the name of the client, the client's
CommCell or QSMCell name, that client's ranking in terms of how expensive that
client is, the number of data protection operations performed for that client
(if that client is part of a CommCell), the total data size of the client, and
the total cost of that client.
<n> CommCell
- The Cost Categories Aggregate table lists the same information, but
for a particular client.
- The Cell Information table includes granular information for that
client, including information about subclients for secondary storage
and volumes for primary storage.
Billable Entity Based Report
If the report is generated by billable entity, the following sections are
displayed in the report:
Summary for All Selected Cells
- The Cost Categories Aggregate table lists
each cost category, the total price for each category, and how that cost
category ranks in terms of relative expense as per the other cost categories
that are configured.
- The Billable Entity Aggregate table lists each billable entity defined
in the CommNet domain, along with the charge for each entity, how expensive that
entity is in relation to other billable entities, the number of data protection
operations for each entity (if that entity represents a CommCell object),
average price per data protection operation, the size of all the data within the
entity, and the total cost for the entity.
<Billable Entity Name>
- The Cost Categories Aggregate table lists the same information, but
for a particular billable entity.
- The Billable Entity Information table includes specific information
about the billable entity, such as the number of data protection operations or
the data size of the entire entity.
NOTE
- For reporting purposes, the Data Size field value is a rounded number,
and may not reflect the actual storage data size. However, that actual size can
be displayed if users hover over the data size values. The calculations for
determining the cost of storage will use the actual data size value. The Price for Storage field value represents the actual cost and is calculated
using the actual storage data size.
For Virtual Server iDataAgent jobs that were suspended or resumed, the
actual storage data size will reflect the larger value in the Data Size
field. Thus, the Price for Storage
field value will represent a higher cost of
storage than was actually used.
- Cost categories associated with a QSM Exchange subclient or SRM Exchange subclient only calculates
the data size information from the Exchange mailboxes and public folders;
calculations do not include the transaction logs. In previous releases, cost
categories were associated with the storage groups where the transaction
logs were calculated in the total space occupied. Therefore, take note that
calculations for Billing Charge Back reports would differ for the upgraded
clients.