I've been thinking about writing this article for a very long time now. But writing takes time, a family with wife and two daughters (2y and 4y) too ;-). So, anyway, I set aside one of them all time, and now it's time for a new article called "Know your vCenter DB!" which you are reading right now.

Now, the vCenter database is one awesome relational database. It actually holds ALL information which can be seen from the VI-Client connected to vCenter and even more!

The reason I'm writing this article is for two reasons: it's a personal keynote, and it presents information to you. We've got APIs, Powershell, clients... All tools which can be used to configure, administer and monitor your environment. Looking at the database is another way I wish to point out because first of all: it is bloody fast; second: fun to do and third: you'll learn some nice stuff about SQL Queries. How cool is that?!?

So, let's get started, OK?

The vCenter DB is a relational Database holding 88 tables , 23 views , 3 jobs kicking off 8 stored procedures. It collects all data being inserted and altered from the vCenter server and you can have an additional database when using Update Manager. Be aware that communication is in a one way stream, from the vCenter server to the database. While vCenter is running, it caches the database so changing the database, which is not recommended anyway, does not result in a change on vCenter (but can result in corruption, so please be careful). So the legal queries are 'select' queries, do not do inserts, updates, okay?