Managed Entities in the Inventory

The inventory consists of the managed entities on the server.

A managed entity is a managed object that extends the ManagedEntity managed object type. ManagedEntity is an abstract class that defines the base properties and operations for vSphere managed objects such as datacenters and hosts. See ExtensibleManagedObject Hierarchy for an overview. The following managed object types extend the ManagedEntity superclass.

• Datacenter – Contains other managed entities, including folders, virtual machines, and host systems. A vCenter Server instance can support multiple datacenters, but an ESX/ESXi host supports only one datacenter.
• Datastore – Represents logical storage volumes on which to store virtual machine files and other data.
• Distributed Virtual Switch – Interface for the VMware distributed virtual switch (DVS).
• Folder – Contains references to other entities, for example, other folders (Folder) or hosts (HostSystem).
• HostSystem – Provides access to a virtualization host platform.
• Network – Abstraction for a physical or virtual network (VLAN).
• VirtualMachine – Represents a single virtual machine.
• ResourcePool – Allows you to combine CPU and memory resources from multiple hosts and to establish rules for dividing those resources among all virtual machines associated with these hosts.
• ClusterComputeResource – Represents a cluster of HostSystem objects. Administrators create clusters to combine the CPU and memory resources of hosts and to set up VMware HA or VMware DRS for those clusters. See the Resource Management Guide, which is part of the vSphere documentation set.
• ComputeResource – Abstracts a host system’s physical resources and allows you to associate those resources with the virtual machines that run on the host.
• VirtualService – Container for one or more virtual machines an associated object package using open virtual format (OVF).

Managed entities offer specific operations that vary depending on the entity type. For example, a VirtualMachine managed entity provides operations for creating, monitoring, and controlling virtual machines. You can power a virtual machine on or off (PowerOnVM, PowerOffVM) and you can capture state (Snapshot). A HostSystem entity provides operations for entering and exiting maintenance mode (EnterMaintenanceMode_Task, ExitMaintenanceMode_Task) and for rebooting the server (RebootHost_Task).

The ManagedEntity base class includes several properties that are inherited by each subclass, such as a name property, whose data type is a string. ManagedEntity also includes a few operations that are inherited by each subclass (Destroy_Task, and Reload, for example). VirtualMachine and HostSystem extend the ManagedEntity class, so each subclass has a name property inherited from ManagedEntity.