Essay on Inventory Trees

The inventory tree shows the hierarchical arrangement or structure of objects in four main views. These views include hosts and clusters, VM and templates, storage, and networking. While the inventory tree shows the parent and child relationships in the above for views, vSphere Web Client Navigator presents these relationships in the form of a graph. The graph-based view of the inventory can allow the users to navigate the VMware from an object back to its related objects irrespective of the type of objects. Both the inventory tree and the navigators can be accessed from the vSphere web client to browse and select the desired object to use the inventory tree, the users open the vSphere web client, and from home, the center can be seen. Clicking the center exposes the inventory tree tab, and under the inventory tree tab, one can click any of the four categories either: hosts and clusters, VM and templates, storage, and networking. There is a triangle next to every object that can be clicked to show the child objects and each child object can be clicked to access the information about each of the objects.

Options in Inventory Tree

Each of the objects has options such as summary, monitor, manages and related objects. For example, summary enables the users to view the basic status of the objects plus its configuration. Clicking "monitor" allows the users to view alarms related to that object. The performance data, how the objects allocate resources and events related to that object. Finally, clicking "manage" enables the users to configure object settings, alarmism tags and any permission related to that object. One can also manipulate access control for specific objects, match the symptoms of the alert to particular alerts of correction or create accustom nested group.

Folder path

The inventory tree also has folder paths. A folder is a container that can be used to refine the grouping of any object within an inventory. The folders are mainly used to provide the users with a natural structure for permission application. One can apply permission to each folder depending on the importance or sensitivity of the information in each folder. One can use the folders to organize virtual machines as well as the templates regarding their functions. One can also use the folders to group all the datacenters by either their geographic location. The most common inventory objects include datacenters, virtual machines or and the computer resources such as clusters and hosts (Marshall, Orchard, Atwell & Lowe, 2015). However, it is important to note that objects can only be grouped within a folder if they are of the same type.

Management pack

To create an inventory tree, a management pack must be installed into vSphere such as vRealize operations manager. A management pack may include one or more data adapters and content. The contents of management pack include inventory tree, a dashboard for managing the inventory tree, views as well as alert definitions. The inventory tree can be used as a tool for troubleshooting. For example, users can use the parent-child relationship to identify the type of issue and the objects that are affected by an issue. For example, if the issue affects the child, the parent can be traced for troubleshooting, or if the parent is affected, the affected objects can be located for further corrective actions.

Reference

Marshall, N., Orchard, G., Atwell, J., & Lowe, S. (2015). Mastering VMware vSphere 6. NewYork: Wiley.