Tracking resources with sysstat

Last updated: June 09, 2011

Sysstat utilities are a collection of monitoring tools for linux that can be installed through package management software such as yum for CentOS or apt-get on Ubuntu.
 

CentOS - Install and set to start on boot.

[root@example /]# yum install sysstat -y ; chkconfig sysstat on
[root@example /]# service sysstat start


Ubuntu - Install and set to start on boot.

root@example:~# apt-get install sysstat -y ; update-rc.d sysstat defaults

With Ubuntu you will need to enable the collection of system activity through /etc/default/sysstat by changing ENABLED="false" to ENABLED="true" and then start sysstat.

root@example:~# service sysstat start


The cronjob

By default will run every 10 minutes, but can be modified through /etc/cron.d/sysstat if preferred.

# run system activity accounting tool every 10 minutes
*/10 * * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa1 1 1


Basic commands

# Load averages including run queue and numproc.
[root@example /]# sar -q

# Memory utilization
[root@example /]# sar -r

# Disk activity, displaying I/O and transfer rate
[root@example /]# sar -b

Tags: sysstat, monitoring, resources