Accessing Inventory Objects

To retrieve information from an inventory object, you start with
ServiceInstance
, the root object of the inventory. You access an object using a
TraversalSpec
in conjunction with a property collector, using the properties that identify an object’s position in the hierarchy.
  • Every managed entity has a
    parent
    property that identifies its relative position in the inventory hierarchy.
  • The
    Folder
    managed object has a
    childEntity
    property that identifies objects in a folder instance.
Figure 1 shows the
childEntity
and
folder
properties that define the default objects in the inventory of a standalone ESXi system. The inventory begins with the
ServiceContent.rootFolder
property. The
rootFolder
has a
childEntity
that consists of a managed object reference to a
Datacenter
managed object.
Instance Diagram of Root Folders in an Inventory
Shows service instance and content with child entities going to folders for
					datastore, host, network, and VM.