The Problem

I often use esxtop to review realtime performance metrics of various aspects of my virtual infrastructure.  One annoying thing is that I cannot view multiple ESX hosts in a single esxtop session.  That would be such a nice feature to have, really.

The Solution

My solution is to use Linux screen command to accomplish side-by-side viewing of multiple esxtop output windows.
Screen does not come with ESX(I) but I have access to the ESX hosts from one of my management servers that runs a Linux distribution and has screen installed.  So I use PuTTy to access the Linux management server, and then from there launch screen and create two windows to then ssh to my ESX servers.

How I Did It

SSH to my Linux server and start screen.

1. Created two windows (Ctrl-a c)
2. Named each window (Ctrl-a A) ESX#
3. Split the window vertically in screen (Ctrl-a |)
4. On the first split, I SSH’d to the first ESX box
5. Then Ctrl-a Tab to get to the second region of my vertical split
6. Issue Ctrl-a 1 to access screen window #2
7. SSH to second ESX server and run esxtop command.

Ctrl-a A	new window
Ctrl-a n	next window
Ctrl-a p	previous window
Ctrl-a S	split terminal horizontally
Ctrl-a |	split terminal vertically
Ctrl-a :resize	resize current region
Ctrl-a :fit	fit screen size to new terminal size
Ctrl-a :remove	remove region
Ctrl-a tab	move to next region
Ctrl-a A	set window title
Ctrl-a	select window from list