vimtop: To Monitor the performance and Resource Usage of services on vCenter Server Appliance

Vimtop is a tool similar to esxtop, which runs in the environment of the vCenter Server Appliance. By using the text-based interface of vimtop in the appliance shell, we can view the performance information and statistics about VCSA and the applications running under it and a list of vSphere services and their resource usage.

If you have ever used esxtop before with ESXi, then you would have a similar experience here. This will definitely be a handy a tool to be aware of when needing to troubleshoot performance issues or bottlenecks in the VCSA as useong vimtop we can monitor vCenter services in real time.

To launch vimtop, we first need access Appliance direct console or SSH to a VCSA 6.x system and type "vimtop" in either the appliance shell or in a regular bash shell.

To access the appliance shell, press ALT+F1 when you are accessing Appliance console (same like accessing DUCI of ESXi).

As you can see, when it launches, shows combination of cpu and memory related information and also the processes running on the appliance with resources used. Notice at the top we see the uptime, load averages, cpu breakdown, memory and swap related information.

As highlighted in last image, on this screen we can access Help by pressing H, Disk related info using K, Network info using O, Pause and refresh by pressing P and R keys etc.

When running in interactive mode, vimtop recognizes several other single-key command

All interactive mode panels recognize the commands listed on this page.

For detailed info about vimtop usage, please have a look at vimtop related topics in VMware Documentation Here.

That's it... :)