Getting Properties from a ManagedObjectReference

[jguereca]

I am trying to figure out how to get a subset of properties from a ManagedObjectReference to HostSystem.

My current use case is that I am using a property collector to retrieve all VirtualMachines. One of the properties I am retrieving is the host property for the VirtualMachine. All I want to get is the name of the host that the VirtualMachine belongs to.

If anyone knows how I can do this in Java that would be a huge help!

[jguereca · Accepted solution]

I was able to figure this out.

In the vSphere Web Services SDK Programming Guide - VMware vSphere 6.7 starting on page 75, there is an Example: Inventory Traversal in Java that shows how to extend the TraversalSpec to a nested managed object.

Here is a snippet of that example

// extend from virtual machine to network TraversalSpec

tSpecVmN = new TraversalSpec();

tSpecVmN.setType("VirtualMachine");

tSpecVmN.setPath("network");

tSpecVmN.setSkip(false);

// add the network traversal specs

// to the virtual machine traversal;

// the accessor method (getSelectSet) returns a reference

// to the mapped XML representation of the list; using this

// reference to add the spec will update the selectSet list

tSpec.getSelectSet().add(tSpecVmN);