How to check ESXi remediation hasn’t hung if percentages are static for a long time

command-line-interfacevmware-esxivmware-vsphere

I'm using ESXi 5.5 and vCenter 6.5 with vSphere Update Manager. I successfully staged about 20 updates (new host deploy) and set it to remediate. I know this can take a long time, but the percentages are static for many hours. Is there a way to check (via command line or otherwise) if it's actually hung or if it's doing anything?

It would be nice to also get a more realistic idea about how much it's got to go, but that isn't essential, I mainly want to be sure that I can leave it be, and it's working properly on the patches, even if slowly.

On Windows I can watch update-related files being accessed and update-related processes I/O counts, in task manager/perfmon, as they do their disk and process I/O, and on Linux or BSD I can use various well-known tools (but they aren't included in ESXi). What's the equivalent with command line or other tools, in vSphere?

Best Answer

I didn't get an answer here so I asked on VMware communities. The best answer I got was that there's a VMware "fling" called visualesxtop (on the VMware flings website, best found via Google in case URL changes), which produces graphical and tabular monitoring data for an esxi host. Works great!