Working with esxtop

In addition to alarms and performance charts, VMware provides esxtop to help you monitor performance and resource usage. A great reason to use esxtop is the immediate feedback it gives you. Using esxtop, you can monitor all four major resource types (CPU, disk, memory, and network) on a particular ESXi host. Also, when using esxtop, you don't need vCenter Server to be able to monitor performance and resource usage. Figure 13.14 shows some sample output from esxtop.

FIGURE 13.14 esxtop shows real-time information on CPU, disk, memory, and network utilization.

To run esxtop, you will need to enable SSH on your ESXi host and connect to the secure shell. Once you are logged in, it can be started by simply entering esxtop. Once esxtop is running, you can use single-letter commands to switch among the various views.

Upon launch, esxtop defaults to showing CPU utilization. At the top of the screen are summary statistics; below that are statistics for specific VMs...