I’m a firm believer that better decisions are made with better information. When you open up the Virtual Infrastructure Client and select Administration/VirtualCenter Management server configuration. From there select statistics in the left pane. You will see a right pane that looks something like this:
By default, Virtual Center has set the statistics level to 1. The levels can range from 1 to 4. Level 4 maintains the most stats on your environment and is typically used for debugging. I do however believe that there are a lot of benefits to increasing that level to 2 or 3. For a great list of all of the performance counters that are available at each level, refer to this doc . This change can be done on the fly with no impact to running VMs. I cannot stress enough the value of the Database Sizer located at the bottom of the frame pictured. Once you have changed the statistics to the levels you are comfortable with, before pressing OK, plug your VM and host values into the sizer so that you know you will have enough room in your database. The last thing you want is to run out of room on your database server because of the expanded growth.
For specifics on the Keep For field, that really is how long the individual data points are kept or "rolled up". The real time stats in the performance graphs are not archived and are kept for the past hour. Past day stats take the real-time stats and roll them up so that there is 1 data point for every 5 minutes. Thus, there are 12 data points per hour and 288 per day. Past week stats take the past day stats and roll them up so that there is 1 data point for every 30 minutes. Thus, there are 48 data points per day and 336 per week. Past month stats take the past week stats and roll them up so there is 1 data point per 2 hours. Thus, there are 12 data points per day and 360 per month (30-day month). Past year stats take the past month stats and roll them up so there is 1 data point per day. Thus, there are 365 data points per year.
For more information, take a look at the Basic Admin Guide for ESX 3.5 starting on page 286 or the Basic Admin Guide for 3.0.3 starting on page 274.
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