Question : ESXi 4: Understanding resxtop Output on Disk Performance

Hi folks!

I am attempting to use the resxtop utility in the vSphere CLI to collect performance data from a number of VMware ESXi 4 servers. (Note: These is the free ESXi server, not the paid ESX server). My goal is to collect data in batch mode, save it to CSV files, and then use a Python script to parse the files for the information we need.

So far, I've been doing pretty well and most of the output from resxtop makes sense to me. I've been using the vSphere Resource Management Guide to help me. However, when it comes to the disk stats, I am getting a bit confused.

As an example, we have a server that has two physical SATA drives in it. I am looking to find overall performance stats on the physical drives, such as how much load they are under, how many reads and writes are occuring per second, how many requests are failing or being dropped, etc. In the vSphere Client, those drives are identified as vmhba1 and vmhba32.

However, when I run resxtop, I don't see those designations anywhere. Instead, in the "Physical Disk" section's output, I am seeing things like DEV-vmhba0:0:0, PH-vmhba0:C0:T0:L0, WD-vmhba-:0:0-1024, etc. There are many different desginations listed, each with their own stats on performance, and all identifying as physical disks.

Can anyone help to decipher this portion of the resxtop output for me and/or direct me toward the output fields that will give me the information I am looking for?

Thanks,
Tom

Answer : ESXi 4: Understanding resxtop Output on Disk Performance

VMHBA(x) is VMWare's nomenclature for the Storage Adapter. If you open your VMWare Client, click on ESXi host server, click on the Configuration tab, and then click on Storage Adapters it will tell you what physical device it corresponds to. PH-vmhba0:C0:T0:L0 would be the path to the volume connected to the physical device.