Metadata Fields

When appearing in machine-parsable formats, numeric statistics have these self-describing metadata fields:

units – What the numbers mean. Example values:

packets, bytes, KB for kilobytes, us for microseconds, and others as appropriate.

type – Indicates how to interpret the number.

static – The value is for configuration and is not expected to change frequently.
For instance: a reservation, or the maximum CPU speed.

instant – Instantaneous measurement of the current value. Expected to go up or down over time. For instance: current memory usage.

accumulate – Continuous sum of all data over time. Non-decreasing. The statistics consumer must compute the difference between two values at different times and convert it into a rate. For instance: CPU time used, bytes sent, memory swapped in.

Four examples below show the same statistic, encoded in different formats:

Text

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd stat raw text vnet 00:0c:29:1e:23:f3
size.tx = 38137
num.rx = 10920
size.rx = 1312789
reservation = 0
limit = -1

YAML

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd stat raw yaml vnet 00:0c:29:1e:23:f3
num.tx:
    type: accumulate
    units: packets
    value: 209
size.tx:
    type: accumulate
    units: bytes
    value: 38137
num.rx:
    type: accumulate
    units: packets
    value: 10920
size.rx:
    type: accumulate
    units: bytes
    value: 1312789
reservation:
    type: static
    units: MBps
    value: 0
limit:
    type: static
    units: MBps
    value: -1

XML (formatted here for presentation)

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd stat raw xml vnet 00:0c:29:1e:23:f3 
<metrics session="4004861987670969122">
<metric name="num.tx" type="accumulate" units="packets">209</metric>
<metric name="size.tx" type="accumulate" units="bytes">38137</metric>
<metric name="num.rx" type="accumulate" units="packets">10992</metric>
<metric name="size.rx" type="accumulate" units="bytes">1322161</metric>
<metric name="reservation" type="static" units="MBps">0</metric>
<metric name="limit" type="static" units="MBps">-1</metric>
</metrics>

JSON (formatted here for presentation)

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd stat raw json vnet 00:0c:29:1e:23:f3
{"num.tx":{"type":"accumulate","units":"packets","value":209},
 "size.tx":{"type":"accumulate","units":"bytes","value":38137},
 "num.rx":{"type":"accumulate","units":"packets","value":11068},
 "size.rx":{"type":"accumulate","units":"bytes","value":1331791},
 "reservation":{"type":"static","units":"MBps","value":0},
 "limit":{"type":"static","units":"MBps","value":-1}}