Patent ID: 8799897

Claim:
A method comprising: storing, by a computer system in a storage device, a billing policy, or indication thereof, including a cost assigned to a computing resource in a physical computing device, the physical computing device being found in a physical infrastructure of a data center; determining, by the computer system, an instantiation of a virtual machine in a virtual infrastructure after storing the billing policy including the cost assigned to the computing resource in the physical computing device; receiving, by the computer system, information for a provisioning of the virtual machine with the physical computing device in the physical infrastructure of the data center in response to the instantiation; upon receiving the information for the provisioning of the virtual machine, automatically retrieving, by the computer system, the billing policy from the storage device; and automatically, by the computer system, creating a virtual machine billing policy specific to the virtual machine using the billing policy including the cost for the computing resource upon instantiation of the virtual machine in the virtual infrastructure without an input to create the virtual machine billing policy after the virtual machine was provisioned, wherein the virtual machine was not previously assigned the virtual machine billing policy before instantiation and provisioning, and the virtual machine billing policy is used to determine a charge for the virtual machine based on usage of the computing resource in the physical computing device.