Tasks represent system activities that do not complete immediately, such as migrating a virtual machine. For example, powering off a virtual machine is a task. You can perform this task manually every evening, or you can set up a scheduled task to power off the virtual machine every evening.
You can view tasks that are associated with a single object or all objects in a vSphere environment. By default, the task list for an object also includes tasks performed on its child objects. You can filter the task list by entering the object that you want in the Target column filter.
If you are logged in to a vCenter Server instance that is part of a vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode group, the Server column in the task list displays the name of the vCenter Server system on which the task is performed.