Creating chargeback and consumer reports

To help plan capacity purchases and make your organization aware of the cost and the amount of the storage that is used by storage consumers, create chargeback and consumer reports.

Chargeback and storage consumer reports

In chargeback reports, you create reports that show the capacity and the cost of the block and file storage that is used by the types of storage consumers in your storage environment such as:

Applications
Departments
Physical servers

In storage consumer reports, you create reports that show the capacity and cost of the block storage that is used by a single storage consumer, such as the capacity and the cost of the storage that is used by a single application.

To make the owners of the storage consumers aware of the capacity and cost of the storage they use, you schedule and send chargeback and storage consumer reports by email.

To view the capacity and charge for the storage that is used by applications and departments, you must create models of the applications and departments in your business organization and map the storage resources to the applications and map the applications that the departments use to the departments. If you organize an application or department in hierarchies, the chargeback and consumer reports show the capacity and cost of the storage resources that the application and its child applications use and the capacity and cost of the storage resources that the department and its child departments use.

Storage costs

The cost of the storage that is used by storage consumers is included in all reports even if the storage costs are set to zero. If you want to send reports that show the capacity of the storage, but not the cost of the storage that is used, you can exclude the storage costs from the report.

Before you decide how you want to set the costs for the block storage that is used by the storage consumers, you must choose whether you want to charge for the storage that is allocated to the storage consumer or the storage that is assigned to the storage consumer.

By default, block storage is calculated by the amount of storage that is allocated to the volumes that are being used for storage by the consumer. Whether you choose to calculate by allocated or assigned capacity, it doesn't affect the calculation of capacity for standard-provisioned volumes because standard-provisioned volumes are fully allocated when they are created. However, the calculation of the capacity of thin provisioned and compressed volumes is affected depending on whether you choose to calculate capacity by allocated or assigned capacity.

For example, an application has three volumes, two fully allocated volumes with 1 TiB each and one thin-provisioned volume with an assigned capacity of 3 TiB. The thin-provisioned volume is allocated capacity in increments of 1 TiB. If you generate a report that calculates capacity by allocated capacity, and the thin-provisioned volume is currently allocated 1 TiB, the total amount of capacity for the application is 1 TiB + 1 Tib + 1 Tib = 3 TiB. However, if you choose to calculate by assigned space, the total capacity for the application is 1 TiB + 1 Tib + 3 Tib = 5 TiB. The cost is also affected because the cost is the total capacity of the block storage, which is multiplied by the unit cost or the unit cost per tier.

Restriction: If you choose to calculate block storage by used capacity, the block storage for IBM FlashSystem A9000 and IBM FlashSystem A9000R storage systems is calculated based on the provisioned capacity percentage of the volumes. This restriction occurs because used capacity information for volumes is not available from IBM FlashSystem A9000 and IBM FlashSystem A9000R.

Default or custom storage costs

When you create or update a report, you can choose one of the following options:

Use default cost: Set or use default costs per unit and type of storage.; If you choose to use the default costs option, the changes that you make apply to all of the reports that use the default option to calculate the cost of storage. When you exclude costs from reports that use default costs, you exclude costs from all reports that use default costs to calculate the cost of storage.
Set custom cost: Use custom costs per unit and type of storage.; If you choose to use the custom costs option, the costs that you set are used to calculate the cost of storage only for that report.

Tip: If you want to change the configuration of a report, such as how storage costs are calculated, click Reports > Email Reports, select the report, and then click Edit.

Deleted and unavailable reports

If you delete a storage consumer, such as an application, the entry for that storage consumer is removed from all chargeback reports for applications. If you created a consumer report for a storage consumer that was deleted, the report is automatically deleted.

If you organize your applications or departments in hierarchies, the chargeback and consumer reports show the total capacity and costs for the parent application or department and its child applications and departments. However, if you create a consumer report for a specific application or department and then designate the application or department as a child application of another application, the consumer report is deleted.

For example, you create a consumer report for an application called German Online Sales. You then reorganize your sales applications in a hierarchy and the application for German Online Sales becomes a child application of European Sales. To include the capacity and cost of the storage that is used for German Online sales, you must create a consumer report for the application for European Sales.