Figure out lots of I/O being generated on a particular LUN using esxtop

an example where he noticed a lot of I/O being generated on a particular LUN. How do you figure out who / what is causing this? Well it is not as difficult as you think it would be…

1. Open up esxtop (more details on my esxtop page)

2. Go to the “Device” view (U)

3. Find the device which is causing a lot of I/O

4. Press “e” and enter the “Device ID” in my case that is an NAA identifier so “copy+paste” is easiest here

5. Now look up the World ID under the “path/world/partition” column

6. Go back to CPU and sort on %USED (press “U”)

7. Expand (press “e”) the world that is consuming a lot of CPU, as CPU is needed to drive I/O

This should enable you to figure out which world is driving the high amount of I/Os. Now you can kill it, contact the user / admin causing it… nice right.