Improving Performance in Virtualization Manager Version 4.0

Auto-collapse is a performance feature that limits the amount of information that is initially displayed
in any page view. Ideally, Virtualization Manager displays all systems that result from the fan-out of a
collection, but this can decrease performance because of the resources required to discover, transmit,
and render all the information. As a result, by default, up to the first 60 systems (in alphabetical
order by ancestor root nodes) are displayed in an expanded form (that is, their descendants are
visible). After this threshold is reached, any additional systems are shown in collapsed form (that is,
their descendents are not visible). This feature helps maintain good performance with hierarchies that
contain large numbers of systems.
The benefits of auto-collapse vary widely depending both on the depth and breadth of each hierarchy
displayed and on the number of hierarchies. For example, rendering a collection of 500 standalone
servers results in the display of 500 containers, and auto-collapse is not possible because no
ancestor/descendant relationships are present. However, displaying a single VC Domain with an
enclosure that contains 16 blades with 20 virtual machines each (a total of 338 entities) results in the
collapsed display of at least some of those blades so that their virtual machines are not visible by
default.
Because you can expand any collapsed system, you can also negate the benefits of the auto-collapse
feature. Therefore, to maintain performance, first collapse the systems that you do not want to display
before you expand the systems that you do want to display.
Use of Existing Subcollections
The All VSE Resources collection already includes several predefined subcollections and queries.
To view these, expand the All VSE Resources collection in the left pane of the HP SIM window:
For example, to view information about only an ESX host or virtual machine, select the VM Hosts or
VMs query to display that subset of the All VSE Resources collection.
Keep in mind, however, that fan-out can still occur. Depending on the perspective you select, a virtual
machine in one of these queries can result in the discovery of its parent VM Host. Similarly, if that host
is a server blade, of the parent enclosure, parent VC Domain, and parent VC Domain Group.