Introduction to iostat , vmstat and
netstat
iostat , vmstat and netstat are three most commonly used tools for performance monitoring . These comes built in with the operating system and are easy to use .iostat stands for input output statistics and reports statistics for i/o devices such as disk drives . vmstat gives the statistics for virtual Memory and netstat gives the network statistics .
iostat
reports terminal and disk I/O activity and CPU
utilization. The first line of output is for the time
period since boot & each subsequent line is for
the prior interval . Kernel maintains a number of counters
to keep track of the values.
iostat's
activity class options default to tdc (terminal,
disk, and CPU). If any other option/s are specified, this default
is completely overridden i.e. iostat -d will report only statistics
about the disks.
Basic
synctax is iostat <options> interval
count
option - let you
specify the device for which information is needed like disk , cpu or
terminal. (-d , -c , -t or -tdc ) . x options gives the extended
statistics .
interval
- is
time period in seconds between two samples . iostat 4 will give
data at each 4 seconds interval.
count - is
the number of times the data is needed . iostat 4 5
will give data at 4 seconds interval 5 times
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$ iostat -xtc 5 2
extended disk
statistics tty cpu
disk r/s
w/s Kr/s Kw/s wait actv svc_t
%w %b tin tout us sy wt id
sd0
2.6 3.0 20.7 22.7 0.1 0.2 59.2
6 19 0
84 3 85 11 0
sd1
4.2 1.0 33.5 8.0 0.0 0.2
47.2 2 23
sd2
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.0 0
0
sd3
10.2 1.6 51.4 12.8 0.1 0.3 31.2
3 31
The fields have the following meanings:
disk
name of the disk
r/s reads per second
w/s
writes per second
Kr/s
kilobytes read per second
Kw/s
kilobytes written per second
wait
average number of transactions waiting for service (Q length)
actv
average number of transactions
actively
being serviced (removed from
the
queue but not yet
completed)
%w
percent of time there are transactions
waiting
for service (queue non-empty)
%b
percent of time the disk is busy
(transactions
in progress)
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The
values to look from the iostat output are:
- Reads/writes
per second (r/s , w/s)
- Percentage
busy (%b)
- Service
time (svc_t)
If
a disk shows consistently high reads/writes along with , the percentage busy (%b) of the disks
is greater than 5 percent, and the average service time (svc_t) is greater
than 30 milliseconds, then one of the following action needs to be taken
1.)Tune the
application to use disk i/o more efficiently by modifying the disk
queries and using available cache facilities of application servers .
2.) Spread the file
system of the disk on to two or more disk using disk striping feature of
volume manager /disksuite etc.
3.) Increase the
system parameter values for inode cache , ufs_ninode , which
is Number of inodes to be held in memory. Inodes are cached globally (for
UFS), not on a per-file system basis
4.) Move the file
system to another faster disk /controller or replace existing disk/controller
to a faster
one.
vmstat - vmstat
reports virtual memory statistics of process, virtual memory, disk,
trap, and CPU activity.
On multicpu systems , vmstat averages the number of CPUs into the output. For per-process statistics .Without options, vmstat displays a one-line summary of the virtual memory activity since the system was booted.
syntax:
On multicpu systems , vmstat averages the number of CPUs into the output. For per-process statistics .Without options, vmstat displays a one-line summary of the virtual memory activity since the system was booted.
syntax:
Basic
synctax is vmstat <options> interval count
option - let you
specify the type of information needed such as paging -p ,
cache -c ,.interrupt -i etc.
if
no option is specified information about process , memory ,
paging , disk ,interrupts & cpu is displayed .
interval
-
is time period in seconds between two samples . vmstat 4 will
give data at each 4 seconds interval.
count - is the
number of times the data is needed . vmstat 4 5 will
give data at 4 seconds interval 5
times.
The following command displays a summary
of what the system
is doing every five seconds.
example% vmstat 5
procs
memory page disk faults cpu
r b w swap free re mf pi p fr de sr s0 s1 s2 s3 in
sy cs us sy id
0 0 0 11456 4120 1 41 19 1
3 0 2
0 4 0
0 48 112 130 4 14 82
0 0 1 10132 4280 0 4 44 0
0 0 0 0
23 0
0 211 230 144 3 35 62
0 0 1 10132 4616 0 0 20 0
0 0 0 0
19 0
0 150 172 146 3 33 64
0 0 1 10132 5292 0 0 9
0 0
0 0 0 21
0 0 165 105 130 1 21 78
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The
fields of vmstat's display are
procs
r in run queue
b blocked for resources I/O, paging etc.
w swapped
memory (in Kbytes)
swap - amount of swap space currently available
free - size of the free list
page ( in units per second).
re page reclaims - see -S option for how this field is modified.
mf minor faults - see -S option for how this field is modified.
pi kilobytes paged in
po kilobytes paged out
fr kilobytes freed
de anticipated short-term memory shortfall (Kbytes)
sr pages scanned by clock algorithm
disk ( operations per second )
procs
r in run queue
b blocked for resources I/O, paging etc.
w swapped
memory (in Kbytes)
swap - amount of swap space currently available
free - size of the free list
page ( in units per second).
re page reclaims - see -S option for how this field is modified.
mf minor faults - see -S option for how this field is modified.
pi kilobytes paged in
po kilobytes paged out
fr kilobytes freed
de anticipated short-term memory shortfall (Kbytes)
sr pages scanned by clock algorithm
disk ( operations per second )
There are slots for up to four disks, labeled with a single letter and
number.
The letter indicates the type of disk (s = SCSI,
i = IPI, etc) . The number is
the logical unit number.
faults
in (non clock) device interrupts
sy system calls
cs CPU context switches
cpu - breakdown of percentage usage of CPU time. On multiprocessors this is an a
faults
in (non clock) device interrupts
sy system calls
cs CPU context switches
cpu - breakdown of percentage usage of CPU time. On multiprocessors this is an a
verage across all processors.
us user time
sy system time
id idle time
us user time
sy system time
id idle time
A. CPU issues:
Following
columns has to be watched to determine if there is any cpu issue
- Processes
in the run queue (procs
r)
- User time (cpu us)
- System time
(cpu sy)
- Idle time (cpu id)
procs cpu
r b w
us sy id
0 0 0
4 14 82
0 0 1
3 35 62
0 0 1
3 33 64
0 0 1
1 21 78
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Problem
symptoms:
1.) If the number
of processes in run queue (procs r) are consistently greater than the
number of CPUs on the system it will slow down system as there are more
processes then available CPUs .
2.) if this
number is more than four times the number of available CPUs in the system then
system is facing shortage of cpu power and will greatly slow down the
processess on the system.
3.) If the
idle time (cpu id) is consistently 0 and if the system
time (cpu sy) is double the user time (cpu
us)
system is facing shortage of CPU resources.
Resolution
:
Resolution
to these kind of issues involves tuning of application procedures to make
efficient use of cpu and as a last resort increasing the cpu power or
adding more cpu to the system.
B.
Memory Issues:
Memory
bottlenecks are determined by the scan rate (sr) . The scan
rate is the pages scanned by the clock algorithm per second. If the scan rate (sr) is
continuously over 200 pages per second then there is a memory shortage.
Resolution
:
1. Tune the
applications & servers to make efficient use of memory and cache.
2. Increase system
memory .
3. Implement
priority paging in s in pre solaris 8 versions by adding line "set
priority paging=1" in
/etc/system. Remove this line if upgrading from Solaris 7 to 8 &
retaining old /etc/system file.
netstat
displays the contents of various network-related
data structures in depending on the options selected.
netstat
<option/s>
multiple
options can be given at one time.
Options
-a - displays the
state of all sockets.
-r - shows the system routing tables
-i - gives statistics on a per-interface basis.
-m - displays information from the network memory buffers. On Solaris, this shows statistics
-r - shows the system routing tables
-i - gives statistics on a per-interface basis.
-m - displays information from the network memory buffers. On Solaris, this shows statistics
forSTREAMS
-p [proto] - retrieves statistics for the specified protocol
-s - shows per-protocol statistics. (some implementations allow -ss to remove fileds with a value of 0 (zero) from the display.)
-D - display the status of DHCP configured interfaces.
-n do not lookup hostnames, display only IP addresses.
-p [proto] - retrieves statistics for the specified protocol
-s - shows per-protocol statistics. (some implementations allow -ss to remove fileds with a value of 0 (zero) from the display.)
-D - display the status of DHCP configured interfaces.
-n do not lookup hostnames, display only IP addresses.
-d (with -i)
displays dropped packets per interface.
-I [interface]
retrieve information about only the specified interface.
-v
be
verbose
interval
- number for continuous display of statictics.
$netstat
-rn
Routing Table: IPv4 Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- ------ --------- 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.11 U 1 1444 le0 224.0.0.0 192.168.1.11 U 1 0 le0 default 192.168.1.1 UG 1 68276 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 1 10497 lo0 |
This
shows the output on a Solaris machine who's IP address is 192.168.1.11 with a
default router at 192.168.1.1
A.) Network availability
The
command as above is mostly useful in troubleshooting network accessibility
issues . When outside network is not accessible from a machine check the
following
1. if the default
router ip address is correct
2. you can
ping it from your machine.
3. If router
address is incorrect it can be changed with route add commnad
. See man route for more
info .
route
command examples:
$route add default <hostname>
$route add default <hostname>
$route add 192.0.2.32 <gateway_name>
If
the router address is correct but still you can't ping it there may be
some network cable /hub/switch problem and you have to try and eliminate
the faulty component .
B.) Network Response
$
netstat -i
Name
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Mtu
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Net/Dest
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Address
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Ipkts
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Ierrs
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Opkts
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Oerrs
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Collis
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Queue
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lo0
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8232
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loopback
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localhost
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77814
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0
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77814
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0
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0
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0
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hme0
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1500
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server1
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server1
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10658566
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3
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4832511
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0
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279257
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0
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This
option is used to diagnose the network problems when the connectivity is
there but it is slow in response .
Values
to look at:
- Collisions
(Collis)
- Output
packets (Opkts)
- Input
errors (Ierrs)
- Input
packets (Ipkts)
The
above values will give information to workout
i.
Network collision rate as follows :
Network
collision rate = Output collision counts / Output packets
Network-wide
collision rate greater than 10 percent will indicate
- Overloaded
network,
- Poorly
configured network,
- Hardware
problems.
ii.
Input packet error rate as follows :
Input
Packet Error Rate = Ierrs / Ipkts.
If
the input error rate is high (over 0.25 percent), the host is dropping packets.
Hub/switch cables etc needs to be checked for potential problems.
C. Network socket
& TCP Cconnection state
Netstat gives
important information about network socket and tcp state . This is
very useful in
finding out the
open , closed and waiting network tcp connection .
Network states
returned by netstat are following :
CLOSED
---- Closed. The socket is not being used.
LISTEN ---- Listening for incoming connections.
SYN_SENT ---- Actively trying to establish connection.
SYN_RECEIVED ---- Initial synchronization of the connection under way.
ESTABLISHED ---- Connection has been established.
CLOSE_WAIT ---- Remote shut down; waiting for the socket to close.
FIN_WAIT_1 ---- Socket closed; shutting down connection.
CLOSING ---- Closed, then remote shutdown; awaiting acknowledgement.
LAST_ACK ---- Remote shut down, then closed ;awaiting acknowledgement.
FIN_WAIT_2 ---- Socket closed; waiting for shutdown from remote.
TIME_WAIT ---- Wait after close for remote shutdown retransmission.
LISTEN ---- Listening for incoming connections.
SYN_SENT ---- Actively trying to establish connection.
SYN_RECEIVED ---- Initial synchronization of the connection under way.
ESTABLISHED ---- Connection has been established.
CLOSE_WAIT ---- Remote shut down; waiting for the socket to close.
FIN_WAIT_1 ---- Socket closed; shutting down connection.
CLOSING ---- Closed, then remote shutdown; awaiting acknowledgement.
LAST_ACK ---- Remote shut down, then closed ;awaiting acknowledgement.
FIN_WAIT_2 ---- Socket closed; waiting for shutdown from remote.
TIME_WAIT ---- Wait after close for remote shutdown retransmission.
Example:
#netstat -a
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if
you see a lots of connections in FIN_WAIT state tcp/ip
parameters have to be tuned because the
connections
are not being closed and they gets accumulating . After some time system may
run out of
resource
. TCP parameter can be tuned to define a time out so that connections can be
released and
used
by new connection.