vCenter Monitor->Performance Granularity

[miguelsn]

Hi,

I have a monitoring application that gathers data also from vSphere, however the granularity of this is 30-minute, which is too far apart.

Logging into the vSphere client portal, going to Datastores -> Select any Datastore -> "Monitor" tab -> Click on "Overview" shows the graph with readings taken 30-minutes apart.

Any idea how can I make these readings be taken more frequently?

 

Thank you.

[Branislav Abadzhimarinov]

The granularity depends roughly on 3 things:

1. The configured Data Collection Intervals in vCenter. Look at https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-70-monitoring-performance-guide.pdf the section "Data Collection Intervals". In the vSphere UI they are configurable in vCenter -> Configure -> Settings -> General press edit on the right hand side. You have to be very very careful with those because increasing granularity will require more database space in the VCDB. Also it if you have large inventory the amount of data will grow significantly if you reduce the granularity.

2. The application you use to gather the data. Some apps may have their own collection granularity configuration and might not directly consume everything available in VCDB so look at the collection app documentation of that.

3. The provider of the data. Some providers are capable of providing stats with granularity down to 20 seconds (ESX real time data shown under Host -> Monitor - Overview -> Real-time. Other are capable of providing granularity down to 30 minutes (for example storage stats in Datastore -> Monitor -> Overview -> Space. 30 minutes limitation mostly applies to storage counters.