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Cool Tool: VisualEsxtop

Duncan Epping · Jul 8, 2013 ·

My ESXTOP page is still one of the most visited pages I have, it actually comes in on a second spot just right after the HA Deepdive. Every once in a while I revise the page and this week it was time to add VisualEsxtop to the list of tools people should use. I figured I would write a regular blog post first and roll it up in to the page at the same time. So what is VisualEsxtop?

VisualEsxtop is an enhanced version of resxtop and esxtop. VisualEsxtop can connect to VMware vCenter Server or ESX hosts, and display ESX server stats with a better user interface and more advanced features.

That sounds nice right? Lets have a look how it works, this is what I did to get it up and running:

  • Go to “http://labs.vmware.com/flings/visualesxtop” and click “download”
  • Unzip “VisualEsxtop.zip” in to a folder you want to store the tool
  • Go to the folder
  • Double click “visualesxtop.bat” when running Windows (Or follow William’s tip for the Mac)
  • Click “File” and “Connect to Live Server”
  • Enter the “Hostname”, “Username” and “Password” and hit “Connect”
  • That is it…

Now some simple tips:

  • By default the refresh interval is set to 5 seconds. You can change this by hitting “Configuration” and then “Change Interval”
  • You can also load Batch Output, this might come in handy when you are a consultant for instance and a customers sends you captured data, you can do this under: File -> Load Batch Output
  • You can filter output, very useful if you are looking for info on a specific virtual machine / world! See the filter section.
  • When you click “Charts”  and double click “Object Types” you will see a list of metrics that you can create a chart with. Just unfold the ones you need and double click them to add them to the right pane

There are a bunch of other cool features in their like color-coding of important metrics for instance. Also the fact that you can show multiple windows at the same time is useful if you ask me and of course the tooltips that provide a description of the counter! If you ask me, a tool everyone should download and check out.

If you have feedback, make sure to leave a comment on the flings site as the engineers of this tool will be tracking that to see where improvements can be made.

 

Related

Management & Automation, Server esxtop, fling, performance

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. leonhardtla says

    8 July, 2013 at 09:55

    Interesting tool, thanks!

  2. Uttam Kumar says

    8 July, 2013 at 10:53

    Cool Tool so far !!

  3. Matt says

    8 July, 2013 at 11:53

    I can’t figure out how to connect to a vCenter Server – any ideas? I can connect to my hosts just fine, though. Cool tool!

  4. rAY says

    8 July, 2013 at 13:02

    GOOD STUFFS. but i keep receiving error the Java not recognized and i have added into the path variable..but still persists.. any idea?

  5. CW says

    8 July, 2013 at 15:15

    Try adding this to the begining of the batch file. you may need to change the JRE version and location.

    set path= C:\Program Files (x86)\Java;C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7;C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7
    \bin;%path%

  6. Santosh Bhandarkar says

    9 July, 2013 at 07:11

    Very Nice ! Thanks

  7. ruud pulles says

    9 July, 2013 at 12:55

    Nice

  8. Kiran Agrahara says

    9 July, 2013 at 19:51

    I am trying to find out the CPU utilization for a particular VM. How do I see the CPU utilization rates per VM?

  9. virtualquebec says

    10 July, 2013 at 03:19

    very nice tool, tanks.

  10. Andrew Mauro says

    15 July, 2013 at 06:36

    Really cool

  11. anthony says

    31 July, 2013 at 19:39

    I have the path set
    set path= C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_05\bin;%path%

    and the program keep frozen….any idea ???

  12. Declan says

    26 September, 2013 at 14:46

    keeps crashing after 30 seconds

  13. Victor says

    15 January, 2014 at 08:46

    Hi Duncan,
    I can use it to connect to ESXi version 5.1, but cannot connect to ESXi verstion 5.5. Does this verstion of VisualEsxtop NOT support vSphere 5.5?
    Is there any upgraded version of VisualEsxtop?

    • Duncan Epping says

      15 January, 2014 at 09:54

      Haven’t used it for a while to be honest… don’t know. I haven’t seen an update internally even, will ask around for you!

  14. Peter says

    22 January, 2014 at 12:21

    Hi,
    Is this sure that “visual esxtop” is not working on vCenter 5.5 and esxi 5.5?

    • Victor says

      23 January, 2014 at 05:26

      At least I can’t connect to esxi5.5. When I connect to esxi5.1, it can connect very fast and successfully.
      But when connecting to esxi5.5, it show an error:”Connection failed:/ by zero”

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

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