Collection Levels

Collection levels determine how much statistical data is gathered during each collection interval.

You can assign a collection level of 1 to 4 to each collection interval enabled on your vCenter Server, with 4 containing the most data counters. By default, all collection intervals are enabled at collection level 1, which has the lowest impact on the vCenter Server and hosts.

Table 3 lists the collection levels available for the vCenter Server.

Table 3. Collection Levels

Collection Level	Includes the Following Metrics
Level 1	■ Cluster Services (VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler) – all metrics ■ CPU – cpuentitlement, totalmhz, usage (average), usagemhz ■ Disk – capacity, maxTotalLatency, provisioned, unshared, usage (average), used ■ Memory – consumed, mementitlement, overhead, swapinRate, swapoutRate, swapused, totalmb, usage (average), vmmemctl (balloon) ■ Network – usage (average) ■ System – heartbeat, uptime ■ Virtual Machine Operations – numChangeDS, numChangeHost, numChangeHostDS
Level 2	■ Level 1 metrics ■ CPU – idle, reservedCapacity ■ Disk – All metrics, excluding numberRead and numberWrite. ■ Memory – All metrics, excluding memUsed and maximum and minimum rollup values. ■ Virtual Machine Operations – All metrics
Level 3	■ Level 1 and Level 2 metrics ■ Metrics for all counters, excluding minimum and maximum rollup values. ■ Device metrics
Level 4	All metrics supported by the vCenter Server, including minimum and maximum rollup values.

Note

Minimum and maximum rollup types are denoted in the collection level value for a data counter by parentheses. For example, the average CPU usage value is calculated and displayed at collection level 1 and the minimum and maximum CPU values are displayed at collection level 4. This is written in the data counter descriptions as 1 (4).

 

Generally, you need to use only collection levels 1 and 2 for performance monitoring and analysis. Levels 3 and 4 provide granularity that is typically useful only for developers.

Unless the vCenter Server is set to a collection level that contains a data counter, the data for that counter is not stored in the database nor is it rolled up into a past-day statistic on the host. The counter is not displayed in the performance charts.

You can specify a collection level for each statistics interval. The collection level set for a interval cannot be greater than the collection level set for the collection interval preceding it. For example, if the Month interval is set to collection level 3, the Year interval can be set to collection level 1, 2, or 3, but not to collection level 4. This is a vCenter Server dependency.

For information about configuring collection levels and collection intervals, see Configuring Statistics Settings in the vSphere Client Help.