Chapter 3. Performance Tools
| This chapter explains how to use the wealth of performance tools available for Linux. We also explain what the information from each tool means. Even if you are already using top or sar, you can probably learn some things from this chapter. You should make a habit of using these tools if you are not already doing so. You need to know how to troubleshoot a performance problem, of course, but you should also regularly look for changes in the key metrics that can indicate a problem. You can use these tools to measure the performance impact of a new application. Just like looking at the temperature gauge in a car, you need to keep an eye on the performance metrics of your Linux systems. The tools we cover are:
These tools can be run as a normal user. They all take advantage of the /proc filesystem to obtain their data. These performance tools are delivered with a few rpms. The procps rpm supplies top, free, and vmstat. The sysstat rpm provides sar and iostat. The top command is a great interactive utility for monitoring performance. It provides a few summary lines of overall Linux performance, but reporting process information is where top shines. The process display can be customized extensively. You can add fields, sort the list of processes by different metrics, and even kill processes from top. The sar utility offers the capability to monitor just about everything. It has over 15 separate reporting categories including CPU, disk, networking, process, swap, and more. The vmstat command reports extensive information about memory and swap usage. It also reports CPU and a bit of I/O information. As you might guess, iostat reports storage input/output (I/O) statistics. These commands cover a lot of the same ground. We discuss how to use the commands, and we explain the reports that each command generates. We don't discuss all 15 sar syntaxes, but we cover the most common ones. |
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 129