Introduction to the PropertyCollector

The PropertyCollector service interface provides a way to monitor and retrieve information about managed objects, such as whether a virtual machine is powered on or whether a host in a cluster is offline.

The PropertyCollector uses one or more filters to determine the scope of collection and it has methods to retrieve data. A filter uses a set of data objects that specify the following information:

• Starting point for inventory traversal during the collection operation.

• Inventory traversal path.

• Objects and properties from which data will be collected.

A vSphere server creates a default PropertyCollector for every session, and allows you to create multiple, additional PropertyCollector objects. Create additional PropertyCollector objects, using one per thread, to perform concurrent collection operations.