Collectl a sys admin dream come true

For a variety of reasons we feel that Linux is head and shoulders better than Windows in virtually every way. But in order to really squeeze the best performance out of a system or diagnose a performance related issue you used to have to rely on many different tools to give you the bits and pieces on information you would need.

Enter “collectl” (Yes that is an L on the end of collect). Collectl is indispensable to any system admin. It replaces sar, vmstat, top, atop, iostat, and many other tools that I USED to use. Now instead of having to rely on those various tools that did 80% of what I needed I just use collectl.

Collectl was the brain child of Mark Seger over at HP’s Scalable Computing & Infrastructure group. He developed this as a tool to monitor huge clusters of HP servers, but saw the benefit that the “average” linux user could get from using this tool.

The best part of collectl is that it is CONSTANTLY being updated and improved. This means that you have access to data and reporting that is available in many of the newest kernels. So many of the other tools out there simply don’t keep up and so get left by the wayside as the rapid development of the kernel continues.

An example of this is when I need realtime IO breakdown of processes that simply can’t be had without the data in a newer kernel. No other monitoring software out there supported what the kernel was kicking out except collectl.

Collectl is a free product. You can read up on it, or download it for free at the following URL -

http://collectl.sourceforge.net/

• Posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009

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