40 lines
1.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
40 lines
1.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
========
|
|
Overview
|
|
========
|
|
|
|
Objectives
|
|
==========
|
|
|
|
The Ceilometer project was started in 2012 with one simple goal in mind: to
|
|
provide an infrastructure to collect any information needed regarding
|
|
OpenStack projects. It was designed so that rating engines could use this
|
|
single source to transform events into billable items which we
|
|
label as "metering".
|
|
|
|
As the project started to come to life, collecting an
|
|
`increasing number of meters`_ across multiple projects, the OpenStack
|
|
community started to realize that a secondary goal could be added to
|
|
Ceilometer: become a standard way to meter, regardless of the
|
|
purpose of the collection. This data can then be pushed to any set of targets
|
|
using provided publishers mentioned in :ref:`pipeline-publishers` section.
|
|
|
|
.. _increasing number of meters: https://docs.openstack.org/ceilometer/latest/contributor/measurements.html
|
|
|
|
Metering
|
|
========
|
|
|
|
If you divide a billing process into a 3 step process, as is commonly done in
|
|
the telco industry, the steps are:
|
|
|
|
1. :term:`Metering`
|
|
2. :term:`Rating`
|
|
3. :term:`Billing`
|
|
|
|
Ceilometer's initial goal was, and still is, strictly limited to step
|
|
one. This is a choice made from the beginning not to go into rating or billing,
|
|
as the variety of possibilities seemed too large for the project to ever
|
|
deliver a solution that would fit everyone's needs, from private to public
|
|
clouds. This means that if you are looking at this project to solve your
|
|
billing needs, this is the right way to go, but certainly not the end of the
|
|
road for you.
|