
According to Stephen Beaver, co-author of two books on virtualization, "Essential VMware ESX Server" and "Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration",
Tripwire Virtualization Evangelist, “virtualization is unique in that there can be thousands of unique configuration properties in a virtual infrastructure, and the number quickly goes up when you consider multiple objects. For example, a moderately small installation with two clusters, six ESX hosts, and 60 VMs will have 38,700 configuration properties for the clusters, hosts, and VMs.
vWire’s configuration automation gives virtual administrators new visibility to effectively monitor and manage configuration, change and performance data across the virtual infrastructure – all from within VMware vCenter™ Server.”