One of my colleagues (Thanks Horst) pointed me to this option I had never noticed with ESXTOP “-l”. The option has been added to avoid high CPU utilization as the result of a large amount of LUNs during collection of the storage statistics.
kb 1005894
Add a lock mode (-l) to esxtop to help optimize CPU utilization.In a large ESX Server deployment that includes many LUNs, esxtop usesa lot of CPU while accessing storage statistics.
To alleviate this problem, you can use the -l option with esxtop to enable lock mode. This option locks the entities (worlds, virtual CPUs, LUNs, NICs, and so on) for which statistics are displayed. Any new entities created during the esxtop session will not have statitistics displayed.
Batch mode (-b) also implies lock mode.
Keep functioning, remarkable job!