As you may already aware, there won’t be any numbered version of the Windows based vCenter Server and you have to start using the VMware vCenter Server Appliance in the future. With the use of the VCSA you might need to check the performance issues in your vCenter Server Appliance and here is a great tool which you can use to check the performance of the appliance. Actually, it’s the vCenter version for the ESXTOP.
If you are familiar with ESXITOP then this might not be a big deal, but having knowledge with vimtop might be really useful when you are checking the performance statistics in their vCenter Server Appliances. Basically, it’s a command line tool and ssh or bash shell should be enabled prior to start the vimtop tool.
To enable the ssh in the appliance you can use the management interface (VAMI) or vSphere Web client, to enable ssh with vSphere web client just follow these steps to access the System Configuration: Home > System Configuration > Nodes > Select the vCenter Node > Manage > Access and can be enabled the service simply editing the access options.
Once one of these services are enabled open up a SSH session using putty or any ssh other ssh client and type “vimtop” in the appliance shell
This window will appear on the interface, this is much similar to the ESXITOP output
“up/down” and “left/right” arrow keys can be used to select the rows and columns of the output window
To get the help menu type letter “H“, these details are self explanatory and respective letter is within the brackets
This menu will appear on the screen and keys which can be used with vimtop will be displayed and explained. Use letter “H” again to exit from the menu
These are the Options displayed in the Help menu
| Key (case doesn’t matter) | Description |
| h/H | show/hide Help message |
| ^- & -v | select item(row) and scroll the list of available rows |
| PGUP & PGDOWN | select first/last row and scroll the list to the beginning/end |
| +/- | expand/colapse currently selected item(row) |
| select column and scroll the viewport | |
| HOME & END | select first/last column and scroll the viewport to the beginning/end |
| ESC | clear selection or return to main view |
| DEL | remove currently selected column |
| move left & right currently selected column | |
| l/L | set column length (width) |
| x/X | set default column length (width) |
| z/Z | clear current sort order |
| a/A | add selected column in ascending order or to switch column to ascending order62.86 |
| d/D | add selected column in descending order or to switch column to descending order.49 |
| c/C | add new columns |
| n/N | show/hide name headers |
| u/U | show/hide units in header |
vimtop output is real time updating and letter “P” key can pause the output, it’s really useful when you are reading the output values
Value refresh period can be changed with letter “s” key and small menu will appear at the bottom of the window
Type the value for the refresh interval in seconds as below, I just typed 23 as an example
You can write the configuration output to a xml file and it will be stored under /root/vimtop directory. By default directory is empty
Use “W” key to write the config file to a xml file and store it in the /root/vimtop directory
xml file will be created
To see the statistics of the running Processes use letter “r” key
Use letter “k” key to see the Disks performances and Statistics
Statistics will be displayed as below
To view the Network Statistics and Performance use letter “o” key in the keyboard
Network statistics will be displayed as below
Page up and down keys can be used to go to the top and bottom of the columns as below
“Page Up” key is to select the top raw of the output
“Page Down” key to select the bottom raw of the output
Use “m” to see the memory statistics and it will display at the top of the output
Letter “n” to hide the Name headers and display the headers
Once it hide the Name Headers it will look like this
To add the new columns in the respective statistics section use “c” key, a new menu will appear as below and select the section which needs to be added and hit “Space Bar” to add/hide columns
Once you add the column it will display as below
These columns can be added to the output in the process section
| Column Name | Description |
| PID | Process identifier |
| CMD | Command name used to start the process as it is seen by the under |
| CMDLINE | The full command line of this process, used during startup |
| NAME | User readable name of the process5.16 |
| THREADS | Number of native threads currently running in the process |
| %CPU | Current CPU usage in percent for this process |
| MHZ | Current CPU usage in MHz for this process |
| CPU | Total CPU time used by the process during last measurement cycle |
| SYS | CPU time spent by process in the system (kernel) routines |
| USR | CPU time spent by process in the user land |
| %MEM | Physical memory usage in percent for this process |
| MEM | Physical (resident) memory used by this process |
| VIRT | Total virtual memory size of this process (the complete working set including resident and swapped memory) |
| SHR | Size of the shared code – these are any shared objects (so or DLL) loaded by the process |
| TEXT | Code segment size of the process without any shared libraries |
| DATA | Data segment size of the process (for managed process, like JVM, this includes the managed code also) |
| FD | Total number of file descriptors opened by the process |
| FILS | Number of all file objects opened by the process (sum of files, directories and links) |
| FILE | Number of regular files currently opened by the process |
| DIR | Number of directories currently opened by the process |
| LNK | Number of symbolic links currently opened by the process |
| DEVS | Number of devices (char or block) opened by the process |
| CHAR | Number of descriptors opened to character devices |
| BLCK | Number of descriptors opened to block devices |
| CHNS | Number of all communication channels opened by the process (eithe sockets or FIFOs) |
| SCKS | Number of sockets (TCP, UDP, raw) currently opened by the process |
| FIFO | Pipes (named or not) opened by the process |
These Columns can be added in the disks statistics section
| Column Name | Description |
| DISK/PART | Storage disk identifier / Disk partition identifier |
| IOS | Number of I/O operations currently in progress on this partition (should go to zero) |
| IOTIME | Milliseconds spent doing I/O operations on this partition (increases or a nonzero number of I/O operations) |
| LAT | Partition access latency (in milliseconds) calculated using the total amount of time spend doing I/O divided by the total amount of I/O oprations, done during last measurement interval / Disk access latency (in milliseconds) calculated using the total amount of time spend doing I/O divided by the total amount of I/O operations, done during last measurement interval |
| READS | Number of reads issued to this partition and completed successfully during last measurement interval |
| RDMRG | Adjacent to each other reads on this partition, merged for efficiency / Adjacent to each other reads on this, merged for efficiency |
| READ | Number of reads per second issued to this partition / Number reads per second issued to this disk |
| RDSCTRS | Number of sectors read successfully from this partition during last measurement interval / Number of sectors read successfully from this disk during last measurement interval |
| WRITES | Number of writes issued to this partition and completed successfully during last measurement interval / Number of writes issued to this disk and completed successfully during last measurement interval |
| WRMRG | Adjacent to each other writes on this partition, merged for efficiency / Adjacent to each other writes on this disk, merged for efficiency |
| WRITE | Number of writes per second issued to this partition / Number of writes per second issued to this disk |
| WRSCTRS | Number of sectors wrote successfully to this partition during last measurement interval / Number of sectors wrote successfully to this disk during last measurement interval |
These Columns can be added in the Network Statistics Section
| Column Name | Description |
| TRGPT | Total throughput of this interface (Rx + Tx) in kilobytes |
| RATE | The activity of this network interface in kBps |
| RXED | Amount of data (in kilobytes) received during last measurement interval |
| RXRATE | Rate of received data through this interface in kBps |
| TXED | Amount of data (in kilobytes) transmitted during last measurement interval |
| TXRATE | Rate of data transmission through this interface in kBps |
| RXMCAST | Number of multicast packets received on this interface during last measurement interval |
| RXDROP | Number of data rx-packets dropped during last measurement interval |
| TXDROP | Number of data packets dropped upon transmission during last measurement interval |
| DROPPED | Number of dropped packets through this network interface because of running out of buffers during last measurement cycle |
| ERRS | Total number of faults (Tx and Rx) on this interface rface |
| RXERRS | The sum of receive errors, rx-fifo errors and rx-frame errors |
| TXERRS | The sum of transmit errors, tx-fifo errors and carrier errors |
| FIFOERRS | FIFO overrun errors on this interface caused by host being busy to serve the NIC hardware |
| CLLSNS | Collisions detected on the transmission medium |
To select the Optimal column width use “x” key
Set the columns to the ascending order use letter “a” key, for descending order use “d” key. This is how it looks like
To display the output in white use “`” key and it will look like this
The usage of the vimtop will depend on the situation and I hope this article will provide an insight of the usage of vimtop tool.
Article Short Link: https://tcrum.net/usevimtop
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