Before virtualization came around, IT departments typically had a process in place to account for department chargebacks when it came time for billing departments for computer resource consumption. Now, many of those systems just don't make a whole lot of sense. Because virtualization consists of pooled resources, it becomes difficult to track and determine how these resources are really being used over time and Before virtualization came around, IT departments typically had a process in place to account for department chargebacks when it came time for billing departments for computer resource consumption. Now, many of those systems just don’t make a whole lot of sense.Because virtualization consists of pooled resources, it becomes difficult to track and determine how these resources are really being used over time and thus how to account for them. In a recent survey conducted by IDC’s Industry Insights Information Technology Management Service (ITMS), results revealed that respondents view their existing IT chargeback (i.e., the IT expenses that are charged back to individual business units) processes as moderately effective and fair. While the majority of companies report having begun deploying virtualization, only 50 percent are factoring virtualization resources into their chargeback methodologies. Of those who do, less than half (40 percent) believe it adds to business user confusion, while the balance (10 percent) report it enhances the process by more tightly mapping resources to business units. To answer this problem, VKernel introduces what it calls the world’s first capacity and chargeback virtual appliance which includes the operating system, MySQL and Apache wrapped up in a 400MB VM package. Drop the appliance into your VMware ESX Server environment and begin generating reports that show your virtual machine resource (CPU, Storage, RAM and network) consumption. Its reporting also helps you understand total resource consumption by groups of virtual machines that support business application such as email, CRM and other systems. And it generates chargeback reports that are based on actual consumption of resources in your environment.You can download and try the V-Kernel Beta, here. Software Development