Gathering Data with a
ViewManager Object
You can use a vSphere view object in a
PropertyCollector
filter to simplify access to a subset of inventory
objects. For example, ContainerView
collects
information about all VirtualMachine objects in a datacenter, and ListView
tracks information about Task
objects while an
operation is in progress. The
ViewManager
’s ListView
method allows you to customize your view
with an input object list, the ContainerView
method lets you view all objects in a folder, datacenter, resource pool, or other
container of managed objects, and the InventoryView
method lets you monitor the entire inventory.A best practice is to use the smallest
view you can create. This will be the most efficient way to retrieve data with the
PropertyCollector.
The
ViewManager
has the following
property:
- viewList– An array of view references. Each array entry is a managed object reference to a view created by this View Manager.
The view acts as a virtual parent object to the set, which provides the
following benefits:
- The view can collect objects from different parts of the inventory and make them available under the same parent.
- All objects in the set are accessible by doing a single traversal step, rather than a chain of several steps starting at the root folder.
A best practice when using views is to call
the
DestroyView()
method when a view is no longer needed. This practice
frees memory on the server.See Retrieve Properties from a Set of Managed Objects with a View for an example that
uses the
ContainerView
method to access
Inventory data. For more information about the vSphere inventory, browse the
managed object definitions in the
vSphere Web Services API Reference
.