Get-View vs Get-VM - view is slower!

[sastre]

Hi,

I have a simple command which takes around 30 seconds to run using Get-VM:

(Get-VM | Where-Object { $_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" }).Count

I decided to try and use Get-View to speed things and and tested the following:

(Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Filter @{"Runtime.PowerState"="PoweredOn"} | Measure-Object).Count

... however it seemed slow.

So I decided to test the most simple of commands:

Measure-Command -Expression { Get-VM }
Measure-Command -Expression { Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine }

Get-VM took 26 seconds
Get-View took 30 seconds!

This test was conducted in two separate PowerCLI windows (because running get-view after get-vm / vice versa seems to affect times), both having just connected with connect-viserver.

What is going on? :smileylaugh: Anyone have any ideas? :smileyconfused:

Thanks!

[RvdNieuwendijk]

Use the Get-View -Property parameter and specify only those properties that you want to retrieve. This will make the Get-View cmdlet much faster.

Regards, Robert

[sastre]

Thanks for your reply 🙂

Brand new PowerCLI sessions for all:

Ran twice:

Measure-Command -Expression { Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Property Runtime.PowerState -Filter @{"Runtime.PowerState"="PoweredOn"} }

Time: 26 seconds and 28 seconds.

Ran once:

Measure-Command -Expression { Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Property Name }

Time: 26 seconds

Confusing. So far no faster. The only time I've seen Get-View be faster is if you've run Get-VM *before* in the same Powershell/CLI session (but then any get-vm will be faster too...).

[LucD]

Do these times stay the same when you fetch properties from the returned objects ?

Pipe the objects to a Select-Object and specify a couple of properties.

The first command in a session always takes a bit longer to execute.

Do these times stay the same when you execute them multiple times in the session ?

Try executing them in a loop.