While going over TA1541 – Cool Little Things Marketing Did Not Tell You About vSphere 4.0 from this years VMworld, and came across this gem, a service console tool, that’s been there since ESX 3.5, and will report on all sorts of SCSI statistics.
[root@esxServerOfDoom root]# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -?
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats: invalid option — ?
VscsiStats — This tool controls vscsi data collection for virtual machine disk
disk I/O workload characterization. Users can start and stop online data
data collection for particular VMs as well as print out online histogram data.
Command traces can also be collected and printed.
Awesome, no? It gets better. This doc: “Using vscsiStats for Storage Performance Analysis” is a must read, as are the docs it links to:
- Storage Workload Characterization and Consolidation in Virtualized Enviornments. This paper serves as an excellent example of vscsiStats in action.
- vscsiStats: Fast and Easy Disk Workload Characterization on VMware ESX Server) and playing with the tool. Check out his presentation if you’d like more detail.
Go GO GO!