UsageType represents distinct measured usage metrics generated by the cloud service. UsageTypes may be generated by provisioned resources such as hours of VM running time generated by the VM or implicitly, such as data transfer, which does not get explicitly provisioned but usage is incurred nevertheless. When generated by provisioned resources, usage can be attributed to that resource. Otherwise, usage is typically accrued at the ownership scope, which could be user or account.

To understand cloned usage types, consider monitoring which is would be modeled as an add-on resource type to a VM. The actual monitoring usage is derived from running VM hours. However, such usage is not generated unless monitoring is provisioned on a target VM. So, CPBM will automatically generate a cloned usage type identical to the target usage type but only if the resource type that generates it has been provisioned as an add on. As with resource types, cloned usage types may refer to usage types from another service using the syntax <service_id/name>.

It is useful to note that there are a few implicit discriminators for usage types. All filters and all resource component selections (based on their corresponding discriminator attributes) are valid discriminators for usage types. Cloned usage types inherit all discriminators of their target.