Comments on: Identify storage performance issues

By: Virtualization Short Take #38 - blog.scottlowe.org - The weblog of an IT pro specializing in virtualization, storage, and servers

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:08:20 +0000

[...] this post by Frank Denneman, I learned of VMware KB article 1008205 on how to use esxtop to identify storage [...]

By: Matthijs

Matthijs — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:25:52 +0000

Hi Frank!

Some greath articles on you site here! I have written something about ESX and performance logging as wel. You or some of your readers might find it valuable.

http://www.b3rg.nl/blog/blog-it/performance-logging-on-esx-using-esxtop.html

Keep those post comming!

Regards,

Matthijs

By: frankdenneman

frankdenneman — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:44:34 +0000

Excellent stuff! Thanks Craig!

By: Craig Risinger

Craig Risinger — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:30:04 +0000

Esxtop also runs in “batch” mode where it outputs metrics to a .csv file. Each row is a snapshot that has one column per metric.
Options:
-b = batch mode
-a = get ALL metrics (not just the default subset)
-n # = run for # of snapshots before stopping automatically (nice for running from crontab and not have to manually kill the process when done)
-d # = wait a delay of # seconds between performance snapshots

Be warned, though, if you use -a you will get many thousands of columns, and Excel won’t open it. Try using esxplot instead to open it. Alternatively, choose just the fields you want and save that in an esxtop.cfg file and specify that.

By: frankdenneman

frankdenneman — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:09:53 +0000

Hi Loren,

Thanks for the heads-up, I fixed the link.
It should work now

By: Loren

Loren — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:05:23 +0000

Hi Frank, thanks for the info. The KB link seems to be broken, though…