5 Minute Linux Admin/DBA – What OS tools to use to monitor your database server

So typically here is what I do when I log on to a server that is having perf issues:

1.Run Top… give it a quick once over… I check for :

1.find the amount of memory,

2.the load average

3.Current CPU

4.look to see if other processes are stealing CPU time.

5.Is the system waiting on IO

6.Are you swapping
2.Run Iostat -x 10

1.Look for the busy disk, make sure that await+srvtm is < 5ms, <10ms if the disk stinks.

2.Look at the r/s -vs- w/s to get a general feel for what the box is doing.
3.Uname -a

1.What? Yep I check to make sure the kernel on the server is up to date and that the client is running a 64 bit OS
4.Run Sar

1.I Run SAR without any parms to get todays cpu, and look for spikes in sys+usr as well as high periods of IO

2.I run SAR -n DEV and look to see how saturated the network pipe is

3.I run sar -f /var/log/sa[day] to get a previous days numbers so I can compare today with that other day.
5.Check the disk space

1.df -h