There are many views to esxtop. To change between these views, please use the following legend
c = cpu
m = memory
n = network
i = interrupts
d = disk adapter
u = disk device
v = disk VM
p = power mgmt
x = vsan
V = only show virtual machine worlds
e = Expand/Rollup CPU statistics, show details of all worlds associated with group (GID)
k = kill world, for tech support purposes only!
l = limit display to a single group (GID), enables you to focus on one VM
# = limiting the number of entities, for instance the top 5
The Memory panel displays server-wide and group memory utilization statistics. As on the CPU panel, groups correspond to resource pools, running virtual machines, or other worlds that are consuming memory
The first line, found at the top of the Memory panel displays the current time, time since last reboot, number of currently running worlds, and memory over commitment averages. The memory over commitment averages over the past one, five, and fifteen minutes appear. Memory over commitment of 1.00 means a memory over commitment of 100 percent.
Important Metrics:
MEMSZ – This is the value, in MB, of the configured guest memory.
GRANT – This is the amount of memory that has been granted to the world group.
%ACTV – This is the percentage of active guest memory.
%MCTLSZ – This is the percentage of guest memory reclaimed by the balloon driver. If this is high, it can be a sign of memory contention on the host.
SWCUR – Current swap usage. If this is high it is a sign of memory contention on the host.
Please refer to the below guide from VMware for all the memory panel metrics.