solution : esxtop -R fails with VsiCache_Init():Failed

You can run esxtop in replay mode.  Replay mode  will allow you  to playback the data of a vm-support command by way of esxtop statistics

We played with esxtop -R and got the same error over and over again.

VsiCache_Init():Failed to open(esx.somewhere.be-2012-11-28–12.23/hungvm/vsi/vsi.0): No such file or directory
esxtop: cannot find esx.somewhere.be-2012-11-28–12.23/hungvm/vsi/vsi.0, all vm-support snapshots have been used

Googling around brought me to an explanation that the datastore was full. This was not the case. In the end we found the explanation :
……    We forgot the ./reconstruct.sh step..

To summarize: here are the steps to use the esxtop -R on a vsphere 5.x host

1. vm-support -p -w /vmfs/volumes/somewhereouttheredatastore/
   this creates a tar file e.g esx.somewhere.be-2012-11-28–12.23.tgz
2. cd to that directory where the tar is located: e.g :
   cd /vmfs/volumes/somewhereouttheredatastore/
3.  untar this
   tar -zxvf esx.somewhere.be-2012-11-28–12.23.tgz
4. after that cd to that directory
5. cd /vmfs/volumes/somewhereouttheredatastore/esx.somewhere.be-2012-11-28–12.23
6. ./reconstruct.sh
7. after that run esxtop -R
   esxtop – R .
   (or esxtop -R /vmfs/volumes/somewhereouttheredatastore/esx.somewhere.be-2012-11-28–12.23 )

 

Keep in mind that the syntax is different in other versions. The above syntax is for version 5.x