Server and network system administrators often use program interfaces that require multiple and repeated manual entry of commands. To perform routine everyday tasks, multiple navigation requests may be sent within a number of individual user interfaces or contexts. For example, a system administrator may traverse a visual representation of each of many remote systems in order to obtain system details for specific hosts or machines. To navigate to a virtual machine an administrator might use a proprietary browser to search/navigate through parts of a datacenter or networked system to find a status of a target virtual machine. The proprietary browser may first receive a listing of all hosts in the datacenter, and then prompt the administrator to scroll through a number of the virtual machines in one or more hosts before ultimately navigating to the target virtual machine.
Once navigation and status determination of the target virtual machine is complete, the administrator may have to switch context (e.g., select a different user interface component, different tool, or open an entirely different program) to initiate maintenance or system changes on the respective virtual machine. For example, to migrate a virtual machine to a different host may require separately determining a number of characteristics (e.g., disk space, processor availability, geographic location, software versions, etc.) about the virtual machine or source host and then determining characteristics of the target host.
Actions or commands incorporating multiple objects may require tedious repetition in navigating through one or more datacenters using a variety of different tools or programs to gather status or data on each of the objects. For example, to gather data or characteristics from multiple hosts in order to properly setup a migration may require numerous context switches in between programs or between user interface components of a single program. Upon gathering the status or data of each object, a user may then switch contexts to perform the action or command in another program or application. Routine tasks such as server migrations or system status checks can be slowed down by the many small delays in requesting data for each object in an infrastructure tree. Populating details for each object may load unnecessary or unrelated status or summary information of each object state. A system administrator may be interested in details of only the target object, and may be needlessly hampered by repeated status queries performed along the route to navigating to a target. These repeated and unnecessary status queries create a load for the server to process, which may slow down processing of valuable queries coming from one or more concurrent users. Navigation programs may request varying levels of detail for each object in a system, and even small amounts of extraneous requested details add up to larger productivity delays. Such inflexible command interfaces can incur unnecessary overhead that is compounded for frequently occurring administration tasks.