ESXTOP

Intro
Thresholds
Howto – Run
Howto – Capture
Howto – Analyze
Howto – Limit esxtop to specific VMs
References

This page is solely dedicated to one of the best tools in the world for
ESXi: esxtop.

Intro

I am a huge fan of esxtop! I used to read a couple of pages of the esxtop

bible every day before I went to bed, not anymore as the doc is
unfortunately outdated (yes I have requested an update various times.).
Something I, however, am always struggling with is the “thresholds” of
specific metrics. I fully understand that it is not black/white, performance
is the perception of a user in the end.

There must be a certain threshold however. For instance it must be safe

to say that when %RDY constantly exceeds the value of 20 it is very
likely that the VM responds sluggish. I want to use this article to “define”
these thresholds, but I need your help. There are many people reading
these articles, together we must know at least a dozen metrics lets
collect and document them with possible causes if known.

Please keep in mind that these should only be used as a guideline when
doing performance troubleshooting! Also be aware that some metrics are
not part of the default view. You can add fields to an esxtop view by
clicking “f” on followed by the corresponding character.
I used VMworld presentations, VMware whitepapers, VMware
documentation, VMTN Topics and of course my own experience as a
source and these are the metrics and thresholds I came up with so far.
Please comment and help build the main source for esxtop thresholds.

The interactive esxtop utility can be used to provide I/O metrics over various devices attached
to a VMware ESX host.
Configuring monitoring using esxtop
To monitor storage performance per HBA:

1.Start esxtop by typing esxtop at the command line.

2.Press d to switch to disk view (HBA mode).

3.To view the entire Device name, press SHIFT + L and enter 36 in Change the name
field size.

4.Press f to modify the fields that are displayed.

5.Press b, c, d, e, h, and j to toggle the fields and press Enter.

6.Press s and then 2 to alter the update time to every 2 seconds and press Enter.

7.See Analyzing esxtop columns for a description of relevant columns. For more

information, see Interpreting esxtop Statistics.

Note: These options are available only in VMware ESX 3.5 and later.

To monitor storage performance on a per-LUN basis:

1.Start esxtop by typing esxtop from the command line.

2.Press u to switch to disk view (LUN mode).

3.Press f to modify the fields that are displayed.

4.Press b, c, f, and h to toggle the fields and press Enter.

5.Press s and then 2 to alter the update time to every 2 seconds and press Enter.

6.See Analyzing esxtop columns for a description of relevant columns. For more

information, see Interpreting esxtop Statistics.

To increase the width of the device field in esxtop to show the complete naa id:

1.Start esxtop by typing esxtop at the command line.

2.Press u to switch to the disk device display.

 3.Press L to change the name field size.

Note: Ensure to use uppercase L.

 

4.Enter the value 36 to display the complete naa identifier.

To monitor storage performance on a per-virtual machine basis:

1.Start esxtop by typing esxtop at the command line.

2.Type v to switch to disk view (virtual machine mode).

3.Press f to modify the fields that are displayed.

4.Press b, d, e, h, and j to toggle the fields and press Enter.

5.Press s and then 2 to alter the update time to every 2 seconds and press Enter.

6.See Analyzing esxtop columns for a description of relevant columns. For more

information, see Interpreting esxtop Statistics.

Note: If the number of lines displayed exceeds the window size you can press 2 to select and
navigate between the lines you wish to remove. Press 4 on a highlighted line to remove it. 

Analyzing esxtop columns

Refer to this table for relevant columns and descriptions of these values: