Thank you for your suggestion!
I wanted to save it to the local data store so I may test on shared storage unaffected.
esxtop -d 10 -a -b -n 2520 > "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1 (1)/esxtopiometer_05142015.csv"
I will mark this thread correct and complete.
I do wonder why the /tmp space makes a difference though?
I am not proficient in Linux, but was expecting that /tmp would be on local data tore?
Thanks again!