5.8

Procedure
1. Click Administration.
2. Select Machines Manager > Licensed Machines > Licensed Virtual Environments.
3. Select the vCenter Server instances and click Collect on the VCM toolbar.
4. On the Collection Type page, select Machine Data and click OK.
5. On the Machines page, verify that the Selected list includes all the vCenter Server instances from which
you are collecting and click Next.
6. On the Data Types page, select the Virtualization vCenter Server data types that you want to collect
from the vCenter Server instances and click Next.
7. On the Important page, resolve any conflicts and click Finish.
What to do next
n Review the collected virtualization data. Click Console and select Virtual Environments > vCenter.
n (Optional) Schedule vCenter Server collections. See "Configure vCenter Server Scheduled Collections"
on page 35.
vCenter Custom Information Filter
Use the collection filter wizard and the Custom Information data type to collect vCenter Custom
Information (VCI) data from your VCM managed machines. You include your PowerShell or Python
script in the vCenter Custom Information script-based collection filter, which extends the data that VCM
collects.
CAUTION Be careful when you use CDATA in scripts. Because VCM uses CDATA to encode the
filters, do not include the literal strings for the CDATA open and close tags in your script and do not
include nested CDATA. Instead, use the following commands and concatenate the $cdstart and
$cdend variables to the data to map into a CDATA block in the results. For example:
[string]$cdstart = ("<!" + "[CDATA" + "[")
[string]$cdend = ("]" + "]" + ">")
Additional information applicable to vCenter Custom Information Filters
The PowerCLI boiler plate code inherently deserializes parameters into power shell object and connects to
vCenter during VCI filter execution in the Managing Agent when Script Type POWERCLI PowerShell v2.0
Text Output is selected while creating VCI filters.
Write an appropriate PowerCLI script in the required format to fetch the data. You can see already
existing canned filter for information on how to fetch data from vCenter and format it. The existing
functions (for example,ToCMBase64String) that are being used in the canned scripts but not defined in the
scripts, are part of the boiler plate code. These functions can be used while creating other filters, if the
selected script type is POWERCLI PowerShell v2.0 Text Output.
The python boiler plate code inherently deserializes parameters into python object and connects to the
vCenter during VCI filter execution in the Managing Agent when Script Type Python 2.7.2 Text Output is
selected while creating VCI filters.
Useful Points to Python Script Writers:
Configuring VMware Cloud Infrastructure
VMware, Inc.
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