vSphere 6.0 performance metric limitations in the database (config.vpxd.stats.maxQueryMetrics)

A change I noticed right away between vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0 is the introduction of a default limiter when it comes to performing database queries for performance metrics.

When querying vCenter 6.0 for performance data, there is a system in place by default that limits the number of entities that are included in a database query. As performance charts in the vSphere Web and C# client depend on this performance data, you may sometimes see an error when attempting to view overview or advanced charts because of this change.

In my case, I am using some custom code to query performance metrics using vSphere APIs and noticed the issue right away, as I was trying to gather a large amount of data.

VMware state that the reason for the change is to protect the vCenter database from receiving intensive or large queries.

If you wish to work around this, or remove the limit, you’ll need to introduce a new key/value pair advanced setting in the advanced settings area for your vCenter server instance. The key should be named “config.vpxd.stats.maxQueryMetrics” (without the quotes) and should have a value set of -1 to disable the limit. This could also be set to a value of 100 for example to limit the entities included in a database query to 100.

A further edit should be made to the web.xml file, however in my case I was not concerned with the limit affecting the client, as I was using the API, and making the first change seemed to do the trick for me.

You can read more about this setting by using this link to the official VMware KB article