A distribution view is a graphical representation of aggregated data which shows how resources fall within those aggregation groups. This essentially means that vRealize Operations finds a way of graphically representing a particular metric or property for a group of objects.

In this example, it is the distribution of VM OS types in a given vSphere cluster. A distribution like a summary is very useful in displaying a small amount of information about a large number of objects.

Distribution views can also be shown as bar charts. In this example, the distribution of Virtual Machine Memory Configuration Distribution is shown in a given vSphere cluster. This view can help spot virtual machines configured with a large amount of memory.

An important point when creating distribution views is that the subject must be a child of the preview or target object. This means that you can only see a view for the distribution on one of the subject's parent objects.

Both visualization methods essentially group the subjects into buckets, with the number of buckets and their values based on the distribution type. The three distribution types are as follows:

• Dynamic distribution: vRealize Operations automatically determines how many buckets to create based on an interval, a min/max value, or a logarithmic equation. When dealing with varying data values, this is generally the recommended display.
• Manual distribution: Allows the administrator to manually set the range of each bucket in the display.
• Discrete distribution: Used for displaying exact values of objects rather than ranges. A discrete distribution is recommended if most objects only have a few possible values, such as properties or other binary values.