Performance Counter Metadata

Performance counters are organized by groups of system resources. Examples of performance counter groups are memory, CPU, and disk. The counter groups and specific counters used on any vSphere server depend on the server configuration. The vSphere API Reference contains a table for each counter group. The table includes the counter name, type of statistics being collected, unit of measurement, level, and so on. The vSphere API Reference page for the PerformanceManager managed object contains links to the tables.

The PerformanceManager.perfCounter property is an array of PerfCounterInfo data objects. Each object provides metadata for the collected data. A PerfCounterInfo object has a unique key, the counter ID. The actual performance data collected at runtime are identified by this counter ID. The following table lists the PerfCounterInfo properties.

PerfCounterInfo Data Object Properties
Property	Description
groupInfo	Name of the resource group to which this counter belongs, such as disk, cpu, or memory.
key	Unique integer that identifies the counter. Also called the counter ID. The value is unique and it is not static—it might, for example, change between system reboots. The counter key on an ESXi system might not be the same as the counter key for the same counter on the vCenter Server system managing the ESXi system. However, the system maps the keys from ESXi to vCenter Server systems automatically.
level	Number from 1 to 4 that identifies the level at which data values for this counter are aggregated.
nameInfo	Descriptive name for the counter. The name component of a fully qualified counter name, for example “granted” is the nameInfo property for the mem.granted.AVERAGE counter.
rollupType	Indicates how multiple samples of a counter are transformed into a single statistical value. Examples of rollup types are average, summation, and minimum. No conversion of values occurs for counters that specify absolute values, such as the total number of seconds that the system has been running continuously since startup. The PerfSummaryType is an enumeration containing valid constants for this property.
statsType	Type of statistical data that the value represents over the course of the interval, such as an average, a rate, the minimum value, and so on. The PerfStatsType is an enumeration containing valid constants for this property.
unitInfo	Unit of measure, such as megahertz, kilobytes, kilobytes per second, and so on. The ElementDescription’s key property is populated using one of the constants available in the PerformanceManagerUnit enumeration.

PerfCounterInfo Data Object Properties

Property

Description

groupInfo

Name of the resource group to which this counter belongs, such as disk, cpu, or memory.

key

Unique integer that identifies the counter. Also called the counter ID. The value is unique and it is not static—it might, for example, change between system reboots. The counter key on an ESXi system might not be the same as the counter key for the same counter on the vCenter Server system managing the ESXi system. However, the system maps the keys from ESXi to vCenter Server systems automatically.

level

Number from 1 to 4 that identifies the level at which data values for this counter are aggregated.

nameInfo

Descriptive name for the counter. The name component of a fully qualified counter name, for example “granted” is the nameInfo property for the mem.granted.AVERAGE counter.

rollupType

Indicates how multiple samples of a counter are transformed into a single statistical value. Examples of rollup types are average, summation, and minimum. No conversion of values occurs for counters that specify absolute values, such as the total number of seconds that the system has been running continuously since startup. The PerfSummaryType is an enumeration containing valid constants for this property.

statsType

Type of statistical data that the value represents over the course of the interval, such as an average, a rate, the minimum value, and so on. The PerfStatsType is an enumeration containing valid constants for this property.

unitInfo

Unit of measure, such as megahertz, kilobytes, kilobytes per second, and so on. The ElementDescription’s key property is populated using one of the constants available in the PerformanceManagerUnit enumeration.