When I tried to write the guide for Cost Profiles I noticed something new to me – Cost Profiles are gone in vRealize Automation 7.
Even though deployed machines have a $0 cost associated with it (by default even without vRB) – now it seems to require vRealize Business Standard.
Here I presume you already deployed the vRB OVA
vRealize Standard is not a standalone product ‘per-se’ – you need a CAFE appliance – aka vRealize Automation. If you want to do more clever (and complicated CIO / CTO stuff) – you need vRB Advanced or Enterprise.
But this is something I have never worked with – so this is about vRealize Business Standard 7 and its integration with vRealize Automation 7.
Anyway, you now deployed it – well done.
Let it deploy, reboot and customize …
You can check the console for progress
Tip: This one here isn’t done yet 🙂
So once the appliance is up – browse to the admin interface https://vrb appliance fqdn:5480
Similar to my other articles, I have changed the VAMI certificate to be a ‘proper’ CA one.
How you can do this, can be found HERE
Anyway, login with root and the password you have specified during the deployment.
First thing you will be greeted with is the vRA integration
As I have signed certificates, I will change it here, too
Enter the certificate details first before doing anything.
And ensure the certificate matches the cert details you expect
Now back to the vRealize Automation tab. Register with vRA
Enter here your details and click Register
It should register successfully
The SSO Status should show here Connected to vRealize Automation
As with any other VAMI appliance – check NTP settings as well as updates.
vRealize Business Standard is now registered with vRealize Automation. At this stage however you won’t see any changes when you login to the vRA interface. You first need to give a user (group) the required permissions.
So login to vRA
Under Administration > Users & Groups > Directory Users & Groups select the appropriate user or user group
Give an admin the permissions for
- Business Management Administrator
- Business Management Controller
- Business Management Readonly User
Here in my lab I give my admin all three.
Click Finish
To see the new tabs, logoff and back in again.
You will now see an additional tab called Business Management
Go to the Business Management tab
First you need to enter the license key and click Save
You will them be greeted with the vRB Dashboard
Next we need to add a vCenter. This is required in order to update the prices.
Go to Administration > Business Management > Manage Private Cloud Connections > vCenter Server
Click 
Enter your vCenter details
Install the certificate. Note: If you select View – it will not show the certificate in the browser but will give you a download.
Click Install
Click Ok
Your vCenter should now be visible
Assuming you have an internet connection – update the database (or click the link on the page to do this manually)
Here I do it manually
When you then browse back to the Business Management Tab – you can see the pretty graphs with costs etc.
I won’t go through the whole vRB product. This would be out of scope of this article (and to be fair, I don’t really have the required experience), but here I want to at least create a cost for a Virtual Machine.
So browse to Business Management > Consumption > Pricing and Charges > Pricing
Click Edit Pricing
Under vRealize Automation – click 
Change the grouping strategy to vRealize Automation Blueprint
It should now provide you with a list of Blueprints
Click the Blueprint you want to assign a cost to. Here I make the prices up .. finger in the air .. random .. and all that.
Click Save
Now when requesting a Bluprint, click Update Price.
It will then give you the daily running cost of this VM
Needless to say – I am not the cheapest provider 😀
When you click View Cost Details – you can then see the total breakdown of the costs
So here I just show a deployment. By default, the price is in Dollar
Here a VM PRIOR installing vRB (which still remains in $0)
But the newly deployed VM has its price in £
You can now create approval policies for VMs based on costs etc. and the list goes on.
As mentioned before – I am not really experienced in vRB but I thought I show at least how to setup a cost for a Blueprint – as vRealize Business 6 had Cost Profiles to do this without vRB.