pshell get-esxtop for VCPU information

In the past month or so since PowerCLI V4.1.1 has been released there has been some great work but the VMware community in writing powershell scripts that work with some of the new features.  One of those being a pretty critical one, ESXtop.  With the latest version you can now leverage powershell to get ESXtop information.  This means (with some more work from the VMw comm) leveraging powershell instead of vMA/ESX/i!

The script I wrote attached here was first developed by @LucD22.  He did a great article (http://www.lucd.info/2010/12/03/hitchhikers-guide-to-get-esxtop-part-1/) on showing the new abilties via PowerCLI.  I go on below to explain a few of the changes and updates..

It is my goal that this script is a first of many that will be more VCE specific for being able to leverage powershell to understand performance for your virtual infrastructure and Vblocks.  However, the script in its current form pulls from Virtual Center and ESX/i servers directly and is hardware agnostic.  The future as I see it would have PowerCLI in being a central utility in gathering performance information.

My additions to LucD's work were around a few things.  First, I simplified the runtime a bit by adding the ability to specify a VM, and by way of talking to a VC instance will then login to the proper ESX/i host to gather ESXtop information.  As well, there were improvements made in getting very accurate VCPU performance stats, ie. %USED, %RUN, %RDY.  I also show an example in the script comments for launching the script and having it output to CSV and the screen.  With this feature tuned a bit more, this method of gathering ESXtop data could be the new method contrary to using vMA or launching ESXtop directly on ESX/i systems.  One more thing.. leverage the "-once" switch to be able to publish data to graphing tools like PowerGadgets =)

Anyways, much more to come here and enjoy!  -2010

12/31/10 Updated the script to pull world names from topology info