Get-EsxTop – Another Look

One of the lesser used PowerCLI cmdlets must be the Get-EsxTop cmdlet.

It’s not that the Get-EsxTop cmdlet is not very useful, on the contrary. In my opinion, the main reason for it’s infrequent use might be the complexity involved to actually use the data it returns. Add to that a somewhat lacking documentation, and the Ugly Duckling of the PowerCLI cmdlets is born.

But just like in the story, this cmdlet has the potential to grow up, and transform into a beautiful swan.

Get-EsxTop post

I already did some Get-EsxTop posts in the past, see Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 1 and Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 2 – The wrapper. But a recent thread in the VMTN PowerCLI Community made me rethink how the Get-EsxTop cmdlet could be put to better use. The author of the thread wanted to compare the results returned by Get-EsxTop with the data displayed in esxtop. He also compared the calculated Get-EsxTop metrics with those returned by the Get-Stat cmdlet, and there were some serious discrepancies!

Continue reading Get-EsxTop – Another Look

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 2 – The wrapper

In an earlier post, see Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 1, I described my first experiences with the new Get-EsxTop cmdlet. While the use of the cmdlet is rather straightforward, the data it returns is not so easy to interprete. Luckily Carter intercepted a secret cable that allows us to actually use the data returned by the cmdlet.

The following is my first attempt to write a wrapper around the Get-EsxTop cmdlet. The idea is to have a script that produces statistical data similar to what resxtop produces.

Continue reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 2 – The wrapper

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 1

The PowerCLI Dev Team gave us an early XMas present yesterday. They released PowerCLI 4.1.1 build 332441 or PowerCLI 4.1 Update 1 as it is called in the Release Notes.

As usual there is a nice collection of new cmdlets and improvements on existing cmdlets in this new PowerCLI 4.1.1 build. Two of the new cmdlets that jump out for me are the Get-EsxCli and the Get-EsxTop cmdlets.

Although both cmdlets are still marked as ‘experimental’, they both open up a complete new area for automation. In this post I’ll have a closer look at the Get-EsxTop cmdlet and what you can do with it.

Continue reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to Get-EsxTop – Part 1