Understanding
Events
An
Event
is a data object type that
contains information about state changes of managed entities and other objects
on the server. Events include user actions and system actions that occur on
datacenters, datastores, clusters, hosts, resource pools, virtual machines,
networks, and distributed virtual switches. For example, these common system
activities generate one or more
Event
data objects:
- Powering a virtual machine on or off
- Creating a virtual machine
- Installing VMware Tools on the guest OS of a virtual machine
- Reconfiguring a compute resource
- Adding a newly configured ESXi system to a vCenter Server system
In the vSphere Client, information from
Event
objects generated on a
standalone ESXi hosts displays in the Events tab. For managed hosts,
information from
Event
objects displays in the
Tasks & Events tab.
Persistence of
Event
objects depends on the
system setup.
- Standalone ESXi hosts –Eventobjects are not persistent. Events are retained only for as long as the host system’s local memory can contain them. Rebooting a standalone ESXi host or powering off a virtual machine removesEventobjects from local memory.A standalone ESXi host might keep about 15 minutes worth ofEventdata, but this can vary depending on the processing load of the host, the number of virtual machines, and other factors.
- Managed ESXi systems.Eventobjects are persistent. Managed ESXi systems sendEventdata to the vCenter Server system that manages them, and the vCenter Server system stores the information its database.
You can use the event sample applications included
in the SDK package with either managed or standalone ESXi systems and with
vCenter Server systems.
Using an
EventHistoryCollector
, you can
obtain information about these objects as they are being collected on a
specific ESXi system, or from a specific historical period from the database.
See
Using an EventHistoryCollector.