The vmstat performance tool

I’ve know about this tool for a while. What I didn’t know was that it can be used to create dynamic reports about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, and cpu activity. The first report produced gives averages since the last reboot.  Additional reports give information on a sampling of length delay. The process and memory reports are instantaneous in either case.

You can use vmstat 5 5 at the Service Console to ask for 5 samples of data at an interval of 5 seconds like so.

man vmstat will give you more information about the other fields and usage