Amazing ! 25 Linux Performance Monitoring Tools

http://linoxide.com/monitoring-2/linux-performance-monitoring-tools

Over the time our website has shown you how to configure various performance tools for Linux and Unix-like operating systems. In this article we have made a list of the most used and most useful tools to monitor the performance for your box. We provided a link for each of them and split them into 2 categories: command lines one and the ones that offer a graphical interface.

Command line performance monitoring tools

1. dstat - Versatile resource statistics tool

A versatile combination of vmstat, iostat and ifstat. It adds new features and functionality allowing you to view all the different resources instantly, allowing you to compare and combine the different resource usage. It uses colors and blocks to help you see the information clearly and easily. It also allows you to export the data in CVS format to review it in a spreadsheet application or import in a database. You can use this application to monitor cpu, memory, eth0 activity related to time.

2. atop - Improved top with ASCII

A command line tool using ASCII to display a performance monitor that is capable of reporting the activity of all processes. It shows daily logging of system and process activity for long-term analysis and it highlights overloaded system resources by using colors. It includes metrics related to CPU, memory, swap, disks and network layers. All the functions of atop can be accessed by simply running:

# atop

And you will be able to use the interactive interface to display and order data.

3. Nmon - performance monitor for Unix-like systems

Nmon stands for Nigel's Monitor and it's a system monitor tool originally developed for AIX. If features an Online Mode that uses curses for efficient screen handling, which updates the terminal frequently for real-time monitoring and a Capture Mode where the data is saved in a file in CSV format for later processing and graphing.

 More info in our nmon performance track article.

4. slabtop - information on kernel slab cache

This application will show you how the caching memory allocator manages in the Linux kernel caches various type of objects. The command is a top like command but is focused on showing real-time kernel slab cache information. It displays a listing of the top caches sorted by one of the listed sort criteria. It also displays a statistics header filled with slab layer information. Here are a few examples:

# slabtop --sort=a
# slabtop -s b
# slabtop -s c
# slabtop -s l
# slabtop -s v
# slabtop -s n
# slabtop -s o

More info is available kernel slab cache article

5. sar - performance monitoring and bottlenecks check

The sar command writes to standard output the contents of selected cumulative activity counters in the operating system. The accounting system, based on the values in the count and interval parameters, writes information the specified number of times spaced at the specified intervals in seconds. If the interval parameter is set to zero, the sar command displays the average statistics for the time since the system was started. Useful commands:

# sar -u 2 3
# sar –u –f /var/log/sa/sa05
# sar -P ALL 1 1
# sar -r 1 3
# sar -W 1 3

6. Saidar - simple stats monitor

Saidar is a simple and lightweight tool for system information. It doesn't have major performance reports but it does show the most useful system metrics in a short and nice way. You can easily see the up-time, average load, CPU, memory, processes, disk and network interfaces stats.

Usage: saidar [-d delay] [-c] [-v] [-h]
-d Sets the update time in seconds
-c Enables coloured output
-v Prints version number
-h Displays this help information.

7. top - The classical Linux task manager

top is one of the best known Linux utilities, it's a task manager found on most Unix-like operating systems. It shows the current list of running processes that the user can order using different criteria. It mainly shows how much CPU and memory is used by the system processes. top is a quick place to go a check what process or processes hangs your system. You can also find here a list of examples of top usage . You can access it by running the top command and entering the interactive mode:

Quick cheat sheet for interactive mode:

• GLOBAL_Commands: ?, =, A, B, d, G, h, I, k, q, r, s, W, Z
• SUMMARY_Area_Commands: l, m, t, 1
• TASK_Area_Commands Appearance: b, x, y, z Content: c, f, H, o, S, u Size: #, i, n Sorting: <, >, F, O, R
• COLOR_Mapping: , a, B, b, H, M, q, S, T, w, z, 0 - 7
• COMMANDS_for_Windows:  -, _, =, +, A, a, G, g, w

8. Sysdig - Advanced view of system processes

Sysdig is a tool that gives admins and developers unprecedented visibility into the behavior of their systems. The team that develops it wants to improve the way system-level monitoring and troubleshooting is done by offering a unified, coherent, and granular visibility into the storage, processing, network, and memory subsystems making it possible to create trace files for system activity so you can easily analyze it at any time.
Quick examples:

# sysdig proc.name=vim

# sysdig -p"%proc.name %fd.name" "evt.type=accept and proc.name!=httpd"

# sysdig evt.type=chdir and user.name=root

# sysdig -l
# sysdig -L

# sysdig -c topprocs_net

# sysdig -c fdcount_by fd.sport "evt.type=accept"

# sysdig -p"%proc.name %fd.name" "evt.type=accept and proc.name!=httpd"

# sysdig -c topprocs_file

# sysdig -c fdcount_by proc.name "fd.type=file"

# sysdig -p "%12user.name %6proc.pid %12proc.name %3fd.num %fd.typechar %fd.name" evt.type=open

# sysdig -c topprocs_cpu

# sysdig -c topprocs_cpu evt.cpu=0

# sysdig -p"%evt.arg.path" "evt.type=chdir and user.name=root"

# sysdig evt.type=open and fd.name contains /etc

More info is available in our article on how to use sysdig for improved system-level monitoring and troubleshooting

9. netstat - Shows open ports and connections

Is the tool Linux administrators use to show various network information, like what ports are open and what network connections are established and what process runs that connection. It also shows various information about the Unix sockets that are open between various programs. It is part of most Linux distributions A lot of the commands are explained in the article on netstat and its various outputs. Most used commands are:

$ netstat | head -20
$ netstat -r
$ netstat -rC
$ netstat -i
$ netstat -ie
$ netstat -s
$ netstat -g
$ netstat -tapn

10. tcpdump - insight on network packets

tcpdump can be used to see the content of the packets on a network connection. It shows various information about the packet content that pass. To make the output useful, it allows you to use various filters to only get the information you wish. A few examples on how you can use it:

# tcpdump -i eth0 not port 22
# tcpdump -c 10 -i eth0
# tcpdump -ni eth0 -c 10 not port 22
# tcpdump -w aloft.cap -s 0
# tcpdump -r aloft.cap
# tcpdump -i eth0 dst port 80

You can find them described in detail in our article on tcpdump and capturing packets

11. vmstat - virtual memory statistics

vmstat stands for virtual memory statistics and it's a memory monitoring tool that collects and displays summary information about memory, processes, interrupts, paging and block I/O. It is an open source program available on most Linux distributions, Solaris and FreeBSD. It is used to diagnose most memory performance problems and much more.

More info in our article on vmstat commands.

12. free - memory statistics

Another command line tool that will show to standard output a few stats about memory usage and swap usage. Because it's a simple tool it can be used to either find quick information about memory usage or it can be used in different scripts and applications. You can see that this small application has a lot of uses and almost all system admin use this tool daily :-)

13. Htop - friendlier top

Htop is basically an improved version of top showing more stats and in a more colorful way allowing you to sort them in different ways as you can see in our article. It provides a more a more user-friendly interface.

You can find more info in our comparison of htop and top

14. ss - the modern net-tools replacement

ss is part of the iproute2 package. iproute2 is intended to replace an entire suite of standard Unix networking tools that were previously used for the tasks of configuring network interfaces, routing tables, and managing the ARP table. The ss utility is used to dump socket statistics, it allows showing information similar to netstat and its able display more TCP and state information. A few examples:

# ss -tnap
# ss -tnap6
# ss -tnap
# ss -s
# ss -tn -o state established -p

15. lsof - list open files

lsof is a command meaning "list open files", which is used in many Unix-like systems to report a list of all open files and the processes that opened them. It is used by most Linux distributions and other Unix-like operating systems by system administrators to check what files are open by various processes.

# lsof +p process_id
# lsof | less
# lsof –u username
# lsof /etc/passwd
# lsof –i TCP:ftp
# lsof –i TCP:80

You can find more examples in the lsof article

16. iftop - top for your network connections

iftop is yet another top like application that will is based on networking information. It shows various current network connection sorted by bandwidth usage or the amount of data uploaded or downloaded. It also provides various estimations of the time it will take to download them.

For more info see article on network traffic with iftop

17. iperf - network performance tool

iperf is a network testing tool that can create TCP and UDP data connections and measure the performance of a network that is carrying them. It supports tuning of various parameters related to timing, protocols, and buffers. For each test it reports the bandwidth, loss, and other parameters.

If you wish to use the tool check out our article on how to install and use iperf

18. Smem - advanced memory reporting

Smem is one of the most advanced tools for Linux command line, it offers information about the actual memory that is used and shared in the system, attempting to provide a more realistic image of the actual memory being used.

$ smem -m
$ smem -m -p | grep firefox
$ smem -u -p
$ smem -w -p

Check out our article on Smem for more examples

GUI or Web based performance tools

19. Icinga - community fork of Nagios

Icinga is free and open source system and network monitoring application. It’s a fork of Nagios retaining most of the existing features of its predecessor and building on them to add many long awaited patches and features requested by the user community.

More info about installing and configuring can be found in our Icinga article.

20. Nagios - the most popular monitoring tool.

The most used and popular monitoring solution found on Linux. It has a daemon that collects information about various process and has the ability to collect information from remote hosts. All the information is then provided via a nice and powerful web interface.

You can find information on how to install Nagios in our article

21. Linux process explorer - procexp for Linux

Linux process explorer is a graphical process explorer for Linux. It shows various process information like the process tree, TCP/IP connections and performance figures for each process. It's a replica of procexp found in Windows and developed by Sysinternals and aims to be more user friendly then top and ps.
Check our linux process explorer article for more info.

22. Collectl - performance monitoring tool

This is a performance monitoring tool that you can use either in an interactive mode or you can have it write reports to disk and access them with a web server. It reports statistics on CPU, disk, memory, network, nfs, process, slabs and more in easy to read and manage format.

More info in our Collectl article

23. MRTG - the classic graph tool

This is a network traffic monitor that will provide you graphs using the rrdtool. It is one of the oldest tools that provides graphics and is one of the most used on Unix-like operating systems. Check our article on how to use MRTG for information on the installation and configuration process

24. Monit - simple and easy to use monitor tool

Monit is an open source small Linux utility designed to monitor processes, system load, filesystems, directories and files. You can have it run automatic maintenance and repair and can execute actions in error situations or send email reports to alert the system administrator. If you wish to use this tool you can check out our how to use Monit article.

25. Munin - monitoring and alerting services for servers

Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool that can help analyze resource trends and see what is the weak point and what caused performance issues. The team that develops it wishes it for it to be very easy to use and user-friendly. The application is written in Perl and uses the rrdtool to generate graphs, which are with the web interface. The developers advertise the application "plug and play" capabilities with about 500 monitoring plugins currently available.