Guest Statistics Interfaces

You have a choice of three interfaces to fetch the new statistics: the guest SDK library, CLI, or raw RPC.

Guest SDK Library

The Guest SDK library now offers two new functions, get and free.

VMGuestLib_StatGet

/* Semi-structured hypervisor statistics collection, for troubleshooting.

*/

VMGuestLibError

VMGuestLib_StatGet(const char *encoding, // IN

const char *stat,    // IN

char **reply,        // OUT

size_t *replySize); // OUT

■	encoding – “text” or “xml” or “json” or “yaml” – if not specified, “text” is the default.

■	stat – the statistic to print. See examples below.

■	reply – a pointer to be set with a buffer containing the formatted reply. All current formats return null-terminated C strings, but future formats may not; the caller should treat the buffer as binary unless the format is known. The buffer must later be freed by a call to VMGuestLib_StatFree().

■	replySize – a pointer to receive the size of data in the buffer.

VMGuestLib_StatFree

To free the memory returned by VMGuestLib_StatGet, call VMGuestLib_StatFree().

void

VMGuestLib_StatFree(char *reply, size_t replySize);

■	reply – the pointer that was supplied by the reply parameter of VMGuestLib_StatGet().

■	replySize – the size that was supplied by the replySize parameter of VMGuestLib_StatGet().

Example: C code with StatGet and StatFree functions shows these two function calls used in a sample routine:

Example: C code with StatGet and StatFree functions

/*

* Retrieves semi-structured statistics on ESXi host.

*/

static int

StatGetRaw(const char *encoding, // IN

const char *stat,   // IN

const char *param)  // IN

{

   int exitStatus = EXIT_SUCCESS;

   VMGuestLibError glError;

   char *result = NULL;

   size_t resultSize = 0;

   char *arg = g_strdup_printf("%s %s", stat, param);

 

   glError = VMGuestLib_StatGet(encoding, arg, &result, &resultSize);

   if (glError != VMGUESTLIB_ERROR_SUCCESS) {

      exitStatus = EX_TEMPFAIL;

   } else {

      g_print("%*s", (int)resultSize, result);

   }

   VMGuestLib_StatFree(result, resultSize);

   g_free(arg);

   return exitStatus;

}

 

Command Line Interface

The command name varies with each of the three OS types available, but all three have a -v option to show the VMware Tools version number.

Linux: vmware-toolbox-cmd stat raw <encoding> <stat>

Mac: vmware-tools-cli stat raw <encoding> <stat>

Windows: VMwareToolboxCmd.exe stat raw <encoding> <stat>

These commands are provided for debugging and scripting; the implementation is a wrapper on top of the VMGuestLib_StatGet() call described above.

Raw RPC interface

The raw RPC interface varies for one of the three OS types available.

Linux: vmtoolsd --cmd="guestlib.stat.get <encoding> <stat>"

Mac: vmtoolsd --cmd="guestlib.stat.get <encoding> <stat>"

Windows: vmtoolsd.exe --cmd="guestlib.stat.get <encoding> <stat>"

This is a raw form of the statistics API. Function calls or CLI are preferred.