iostat how do I set up a logging

Question

Hi there I am pretty newbie in servers, would appreciate your help. How do I set up an iostat logging? as my Disk IO spikes strange at some random time to very high levels. Thanks.

Answer 1

IOSTAT provides stats for individual block devices, and won't tell you which process is actually driving IO. However, it's useful for characterizing your I/O access patterns. You can generate a large log-file with this command:

iostat -x sda -c 2 -t > stats.log

This will monitor sda (-x sda) every 2 seconds (-c 2) with a timestamp (-t). The logfile is not pretty, but it'll get you there.