Efficient way to traverse vcenter inventory and retrieve properties

Question

I'm using yavijava and am required to traverse a vCenter and build a list of all hosts and VMs on it. For each host and VM, I need to retrieve a few properties such as the name, amount of RAM/CPU etc. My current code looks like this:

ManagedEntity[] hosts = new InventoryNavigator.searchManagedEntities("VirtualMachine");
for(int i=0;i<hosts.length;i++) {
  String name = hosts[i].getName();
  String xxx = hosts[i].XXXXX;
.....

And so on for the VMs too.

My question is, is there a more efficient way to do this considering the fact that there are a significant number of objects and each call (such as getName) sends a new request to vSphere?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 29 '15 at 19:37

You will want to build a property collector manually and depending on the inventory you will want to create an inventory system to relate the objects. I have a sample on github for clusters: https://github.com/yavijava/yavijava_cluster_prop_example

    RetrieveOptions options = new RetrieveOptions();
    options.setMaxObjects(100);
    String[] vmProps = new String[2];
    vmProps[0] = "name";
    vmProps[1] = "runtime.host";
    PropertySpec vmSpec = new PropertySpec();
    vmSpec.setAll(false);
    vmSpec.setType("VirtualMachine");
    vmSpec.setPathSet(vmProps);

    String[] hostProps = new String[4];
    hostProps[0] = "name";
    hostProps[1] = "summary.hardware.numCpuCores";
    hostProps[2] = "summary.hardware.cpuModel";
    hostProps[3] = "summary.hardware.memorySize";
    PropertySpec hostSpec = new PropertySpec();
    hostSpec.setAll(false);
    hostSpec.setType("HostSystem");
    hostSpec.setPathSet(hostProps);

    String[] clusterProps = new String[2];
    clusterProps[0] = "name";
    clusterProps[1] = "parent";
    PropertySpec clusterSpec = new PropertySpec();
    clusterSpec.setAll(false);
    clusterSpec.setType("ClusterComputeResource");
    clusterSpec.setPathSet(clusterProps);

    ObjectSpec oSpec = new ObjectSpec();
    oSpec.setObj(clusterMe.getMOR());
    oSpec.setSelectSet(com.vmware.vim25.mo.util.PropertyCollectorUtil.buildFullTraversalV4());
    PropertyFilterSpec[] pfSpec = new PropertyFilterSpec[1];
    pfSpec[0] = new PropertyFilterSpec();

    ObjectSpec[] oo = new ObjectSpec[1];
    oo[0] = oSpec;

    pfSpec[0].setObjectSet(oo);
    PropertySpec[] pp = new PropertySpec[3];
    pp[0] = vmSpec;
    pp[1] = hostSpec;
    pp[2] = clusterSpec;

    pfSpec[0].setPropSet(pp);
    RetrieveResult ret = serviceInstance.getPropertyCollector().retrievePropertiesEx(pfSpec, options);

    for (ObjectContent aRet : ret.getObjects()) {
        if(aRet.getObj().type.equalsIgnoreCase("ClusterComputeResource")) {
            printInfo(aRet);
        }
        if(aRet.getObj().type.equalsIgnoreCase("HostSystem")) {
            System.out.println("Host Info: ");
            printInfo(aRet);
            System.out.println("#######################");
        }
        if(aRet.getObj().type.equalsIgnoreCase("VirtualMachine")) {
            System.out.println("VirtualMachine: ");
            printInfo(aRet);
            System.out.println("#######################################");
        }
    }
}

private static void printInfo(ObjectContent objectContent) {
    // This is super generic here... To actually relate the objects so you
    // know which HostSystem a VirtualMachine lives on you need to implement
    // some kind of inventory system and use the MOR from the HostSystem
    // and the MOR from the vm.runtime.host
    for(DynamicProperty props: objectContent.getPropSet()) {
        System.out.println(props.val);
    }
}

Thanks Michael. This is exactly what I was looking for. I couldn't find any documentation on the properties available for a certain object. For example, summary.hardware.memorySize, How do I get properties of say the first network card? — darkstar, Jul 30 '15 at 06:50
The properties are all listed in the SOAP docs for the given object. For example: http://www.yavijava.com/docs/vim.VirtualMachine.html These collectors can get really advanced. — Michael Rice, Jul 30 '15 at 16:49
Oh yes, I wanted to know how to translate that to the dot notation for say, multiple network cards on a VM. — darkstar, Jul 31 '15 at 05:20
For vmnics they are part of config.hardware.device that will be an array of devices. You need to find instance of VirtualEthernetCard Once you have that you could access the properties from http://www.yavijava.com/docs/vim.vm.device.VirtualEthernetCard.html — Michael Rice, Jul 31 '15 at 07:03

Efficient way to traverse vcenter inventory and retrieve properties

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