On ESX 3.0.1 I can get esxtop, on the screen showing Disk information, to show the following columns:
PAECMD/s
PAECP/s
SPLTCMD/s
SPLTCP/s
I'm guessing the PAECMD and PAECP indicates some disk commands and copies to/from PAE'd memory addresses and the storage adapter. And I also guess this would have some performance implications since PAE is a kludge to enable 32-bit OS's and hardware to access memory above the 4GB limit.
And I would also guess the two SPLT colums show commands and copies that touch both direct and PAE'd memory.
Would someone please explain why ESX 3.0.1, running on EM64t hardware (PowerEdge 6850) would need PAE to address memory above 4GB? This could be a significant issue with hardware that has lots of memory. My server has 32GB, which would mean that about 87% of all memory accesses would have that performance hit of PAE.
Also, would someone please explain the effects on performace for values other than 0 being indicated for those four columns?
There is nothing in the man page for esxtop for those four columns and I'd like to know more about the information they convey.
