The Importance of Chargeback in Virtual Infrastructure: Do it Early

This isn't another product pitch, nor is it another plea for needing an elaborate tool to track virtual machine usage metrics and calculate how much you should charge a business unit for X usage of a system.  Instead, my purpose here is to discuss exactly why you need to consider a chargeback strategy early when deploying virtual infrastructure.

Virtual infrastructure, whether deployed on an old standby like VMware or on an up-and-coming platform like Hyper-V, has costs associated with it just like all IT assets.  In most organizations, business units that require server infrastructure to support an application will typically pay for that hardware as part of the project.  The Business Owner will request a new system from IT and supply the software vendor's recommended hardware requirements for the system.  IT will then procure the hardware required for the system and charge the business unit for the assets as part of the project.