Integration of Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator with external billing solutions is accomplished using the API. The most suitable API call to use is largely dependent on which roles are to be performed by Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator and which are to be performed by the external billing solution. This page is intended to provide a guide to selecting the most appropriate API call for your chosen integration scenario. For more information, see the scenarios below.

The following terms are used in the scenarios:

• Resource usage metering - the measurement of resource usage, for example amount of disk I/O or bandwidth used, amount of RAM in use, or total storage space used.
• Metered usage rating (units) - the cost of the metered resource usage in Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator's internal billing engine. The internal billing engine uses units to measure resource consumption; customers can track their resource consumption using the Unit Balance widget on the dashboard.
• Product pricing - how the products used by the customers are priced. 
• Resource consumption aggregation - the aggregation of the monitored resource consumption data. This can take the form of a total amount for a time period, or a maximum and minimum for the time period.
• Resource consumption monitoring - the provision of detailed billing information which allows customers to check their resource usage in detail.
• Invoicing and payment collection - the collection of payment from the customer.

Configuration
Scenario number	1	2	3

Scenario 1

In this example, Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator is used for resource usage metering only, with the external billing system handling all other aspects of product billing, as below:

The API call which we suggest using in this case is getMeasuredValues, which returns a list of measured values for the specified resources, customers, and billing entities.

The getMeasuredValues call requires the following information:

• measureKeys - defines which measurements are taken. Can be one or more of the following: 

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  Measurement key	Will return
  used.USERS	The current number of users linked to the customer.
  running.CPU	The current number of CPUs used by all the running servers of the customer.
  used.RAM	The current RAM, in megabytes, allocated to the customer.
  used.SERVER	The current number of servers in the customer account.
  running.SERVER	The current number of running servers in the customer account.
  running.RAM	The current RAM, in megabytes, used by all the running servers of the customer.
  used.CPU	The current number of CPUs allocated to the customer.
  used.DISK	The current number of disks allocated to the customer.
  used.IMAGE	The current number of images in the customer account.
  used.SNAPSHOT	The current number of snapshots used by the customer.
  used.STORAGEGB	The current storage, in gigabytes, allocated to the customer.
  used.IPv6_SUBNETS	The current number of IPv6 subnets allocated to the customer.
  used.IPv4_ADDRESSES	The current number of IPv4 addresses allocated to the customer.
  used.VDC	The current number of VDCs used by the customer.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_EXTERNAL_IN	The total network traffic, in megabytes, received by all of the customer's public/ip networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_INTERWORKING_OUT	The total network traffic, in megabytes, transmitted by the customer's interworking networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_PUBLIC_IN	The total network traffic, in megabytes, received by the customer's public networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_IP_OUT	The total network traffic, in megabytes, transmitted by the customer's IP only networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_PUBLIC_OUT	The total network traffic, in megabytes, transmitted by the customer's public networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_PRIVATE_OUT	The total network traffic, in megabytes, transmitted by the customer's private networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_EXTERNAL_OUT	The total network traffic, in megabytes, transmitted by the all of the customer's public/ip networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_INTERWORKING_IN	The total network traffic, in megabytes, received by the customer's interworking networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_OUT	The total network traffic, in megabytes, transmitted by the all of the customer's networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_IP_IN	The total network traffic, in megabytes, received by the customer's IP only networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_PRIVATE_IP	The total network traffic, in megabytes, received by the customer's private networks.
  used.NETWORK_TRAFFIC_IN	The total network traffic, in megabytes, received by all of the customer's networks.
  used.DISK_IO_WRITE	The total data, in megabytes, written to disk by the customer.
  used.DISK_IO_READ	The total data, in megabytes, read from disk by the customer.
  used.NETWORK_IP	The total number of IP only networks allocated to the customer.
  used.NETWORK_PRIVATE	The total number of private networks allocated to the customer.
  used.NETWORK_PUBLIC	The total number of public networks allocated to the customer.
  used.NETWORK_INTERWORKING	The total number of interworking networks allocated to the customer.
  traffic_out	The traffic, in megabytes, transmitted from the NIC.
  traffic_in	The traffic, in megabytes, received by the NIC.
  disk_read	The disk read data, in megabytes, done by the server.
  disk_write	The disk write data, in megabytes, done by the server.
  ram	The RAM, in megabytes, used by the server.
  cpu	The number of CPUs used by the server.
  running	An indication of whether the server is running (1), or stopped (0)

• resourceUUID - the UUID(s) of the resource(s) to measure values for.
• customerUUID - the UUID(s) of the customer(s) to measure values for.
• billingEntUUID - the UUID(s) of the billing entity/entities to measure values for. This setting is only applicable if you authenticate to the API as the master billing entity. For information about API authentication, see Authenticating to the APIs.
• timestamp - Unix timestamp.

The output consists of the following information:

• measuredValue - essentially a container element for the output data. The measuredValue type contains the following information: 

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  Component	Description	Example value	Information	Description	Example value
  resourceType	The type of the resource	Can be any of the following: CLUSTER CUSTOMER USER DISK SNAPSHOT FIREWALL NIC IMAGE SERVER SUBNET VDC NETWORK SSHKEY JOB PRODUCTOFFER FIREWALL_TEMPLATE BILLING_ENTITY GROUP ANY PAYMENTCARD PAYMENTMETHOD INVOICE PROMOTION REFERRAL_PROMOTION DEPLOYMENT_TEMPLATE DEPLOYMENT_INSTANCE BILLING_METHOD PRODUCT PRODUCT_COMP_TYPE FDL UNIT_TRANSACTION UNIT_TRANSACTION_SUMMARY PRODUCT_PURCHASE CURRENCY TRANSACTION_LOG PERMISSION PROMOCODE PURCHASED_UNITS REFERRAL_PROMOCODE IMAGEINSTANCE FETCH_RESOURCE MEASUREMENT
  timestamp	The timestamp of the measurement, as a Unix timestamp measuring the number of seconds from 00:00:01, 1 January 1970.	1379674148
  resourceUUID	The UUID of the resource from which the measurement was taken	3d5b1b87-9bd9-40e0-8b43-34923960de47
  customerUUID	The UUID of the customer owning the resource.	ab3574d3-1cd9-49f8-ae82-f554e652ac08
  billingEntityUUID	The UUID of the billing entity owning the customer.	814e66ac-b243-4e91-b39e-b176cf0071ec
  measureKey	The unique name identifying the measurement taken and acting as a key.	used.DISK_IO_READ
  measurement	The numeric representation of the measurement value, if appropriate.	23
  measurementType	The type of unit used with the measured value.	This can be one of the following:  Click here to expand... Information Description KB Kilobytes MB Megabytes GB Gigabytes NUMERIC A numeric unitless value STRING String value RESOURCE_UUID The UUID of a resource UNIT Units CURRENCY Currency TB Terabytes B Bytes
  measurementAsValue	The measured value.	Contains the following information:	Information	Description	Example value
  			description	The description of the value.	The total data read from disk by the customer.
  			hidden	The boolean value used to determine whether the value is hidden or shown.	Possible values are TRUE and FALSE.
  			key	The name of the value.	used.DISK_IO_READ
  			measureType	The type of unit used with the measured value.	This can be one of the following:  Click here to expand... Information Description KB Kilobytes MB Megabytes GB Gigabytes NUMERIC A numeric unitless value STRING String value RESOURCE_UUID The UUID of a resource UNIT Units CURRENCY Currency TB Terabytes B Bytes
  			name	A user-friendly version of the value's name.	Disk I/O read.
  			validator	A validator object. Only values that match the validator can be set.	This contains the following information: validateString - the string being validated. validatorType - the type of the validator. This can be one of the following: enum. Regular expression. Numeric integer. Numeric double.
  			value	The measured value.	0.0

Scenario 2

In this example, Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator is used for resource usage metering, product pricing, metered usage rating using the units system, and jointly monitoring the consumption of resources with the external billing system. The external billing system handles aggregation of resource consumption information, metered usage rating using currency, and invoicing, as below:

The API call which we suggest using in this case is listUnitTransactions, which returns a list of unit transactions matching the specified search criteria.