@baber , A VM isn't a single Object, each VM will have several different types of Objects associated wtih it (e.g. namespace, vmdks, vswp)
1. Yes - the Object is the whole thing (e.g. a vmdk) where a component is just a part of the data that makes up the vmdk (e.g. single data-replica or a stripe of one).
2. That depends entirely on how many stripes it has which is determined by it's size and/or the Stripe-width of the policy applied to it (anything >250GB gets striped into smaller components e.g. a 200GB FTT=0 vmdk would have 1 component, but a 300GB one would have 2 components).
3. See 2. (e.g. a 200GB FTT=1 vmdk would have 3 components but a 300GB one would have 5 components) but also depends on whether RAID5 (min 4 components) or RAID1 (min 3 components).
4. How many Objects a VM is associated with depends entirely on the VM and its configuration e.g. I could attach 100 vmdks to a VM and then take snapshots for all of these and thus have at least 201 Objects associated with it.
