vmstat videos

vmstat(1M) is a widely used tool for system performance analysis, but also one that tricky to understand. I’ve recently been giving performance talks, which include a quick explanation of metrics from common tools including vmstat. Afterwards it has been stressed to me how useful that has been for the audience, and so to share this more widely we’ve made some short videos.

The videos that follow are for vmstat(1M) on Solaris-based operating systems, including Joyent’s SmartOS. All are available here: vmstat videos, and embedded below:

vmstat: Key Fields

vmstat: All the Fields

vmstat: Scope

For further information, I recommend reading the source code behind vmstat and the metrics, and also the book Solaris Performance and Tools (which I co-authored). That book includes a detailed explanation of the vmstat metrics and of the Operating System internals which they reflect, and shows how other tools including DTrace can provide further information.

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Posted on April 27, 2011 at 12:12 pm by Brendan Gregg · Permalink
In: Performance, Solaris · Tagged with: ,

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  1. Written by How to Use vmstat for Performance Analysis « Joyeur
    on April 28, 2011 at 4:01 pm
    Permalink

    [...] and Brendan took the time to put together some video guides to using vmstat to monitor systems for performance analysis. Brendan explains key fields in the video above, but also covers all the data output and how to [...]


  2. Notice: get_the_author_email is deprecated since version 2.8! Use get_the_author_meta('email') instead. in /home/knmngmprl21d/public_html/blogs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3467
  3. Written by Brendan's blog » mpstat videos
    on June 18, 2011 at 5:24 pm
    Permalink

    [...] been filming short videos on performance topics, and previously posted a series of videos on vmstat. Here I discuss mpstat(1M), which is useful for investigating CPU performance per [...]


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