"Receiving GuestStats.SetNotificationTime request" in vmware.log every 20 seconds

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

In vmware.log of the VM, you will see the following messages

vmx - VigorTransportProcessClientPayload: opID=ProcessScheduledTaskFiring-3113c398-01-b6-7397 seq=928757: Receiving GuestStats.SetNotificationTime request.
vmx - VigorTransport_ServerSendResponse opID=ProcessScheduledTaskFiring-3113c398-01-b6-7397 seq=928757: Completed GuestStats request.
vmx - VigorTransportProcessClientPayload: opID=ProcessScheduledTaskFiring-3113c398-01-b6-7397 seq=928781: Receiving GuestStats.SetNotificationTime request.

Cause

These lines are related to the "GuestIntrospection" feature which allows the ESXi host to gather performance and health statistics from the guest VMs.
Specifically, these entries show the VMs sending a GuestStats.SetNotificationTime request to the ESXi host which informs the host how often the VM wants to send its performance data
This feature SetNotificationTime will run every 20 seconds.

Resolution

This is as per design.
This feature allows the ESXi host to gather performance and health statistics from the guest VMs.
Log flooding in hostd.log is fixed in 7.0U3o-ESXi 7.0 host goes not responding in vCenter and hostd logs reporting "SetVigorNotificationTime: Not connected"