How To Generate SAR Report on RHEL 7

Overview

The System Activity Report or SAR report; collects, reports and save(s) CPU, Memory amp; I/O usages at regular intervals.

“sar” command supports generating different types of reports on fly and these reports can be exported as well. In this guide we will explain sar command execution with various attributes.

SAR will collate and give information about below;

• Block Device Statistics
• Paging Statistics
• Swap Statistics
• CPU Utilization Statistics
• Memory Utilization Statistics
• Interrupt Statistics
• Network Statistics
• Power Management Statistics
• Report I/O Statistics
• Report hugepages utilization statistics

SAR – Reports Generation

One of the main purpose “SAR” package is to generate System activity reports on fly and export those reports in different format.

SAR Command – Syntax

sar -[Options] [Interval] [Iteration Count]
sar -[Options] -s [hh:mm:ss] -e [hh:mm:ss] [Interval] [Iteration Count]
sar -o [Output filename] [interval] [Iteration Count] > /dev/null 2>&1 &

SAR Command – Examples

SAR Command	Purpose
sar -r 10 5	Memory utilization statistics every ten seconds for 5 times.
sar -r -s 10:00:15 -e 10:15:00	Memory utilization statistics report between specific timeframe.
sar -o /tmp/mem_stats -r -u 2 5 >/dev/null 2>&1 &	Memory utilization statistics into output file.

CPU Utilization Statistics

To generate CPU Utilization statistics, run the command;

sar -u

sar -u [ALL] 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for CPU utilization statistics every 2 seconds. “ALL” represents all CPU related fields should be shown.

Memory Utilization Statistics

To generate CPU Utilization statistics, run the command;

sar -r

sar -r 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for Memory utilization report every 2 seconds.

Block Device Statistics

To generate block devices statistics, run the command;

sar -d

sar -d 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for each Block Device(s) report every 2 seconds.

Hugepage Utilization Statistics

To generate hugepage utilization statistics, run the command;

sar -H

sar -H 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for huge pages info every 2 seconds.

Interrupt Statistics

To generate interrupt statistics, run the command;

sar -I 15 2 2

sar -I SUM 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for all interrupts report every 2 seconds.

Network Statistics

To generate network statistics, run the command;

sar -n DEV 2 2

sar -n [options] 2 2

Network Statistics Options

Option	Purpose
DEV	Network interfaces
EDEV	Network interfaces (errors)
NFS	NFS client
NFSD	NFS server
SOCK	Sockets (v4)
IP	IP traffic (v4)
EIP	IP traffic (v4) (errors)
ICMP	ICMP traffic (v4)
EICMP	ICMP traffic (v4) (errors)
TCP	TCP traffic (v4)
ETCP	TCP traffic (v4) (errors)
UDP	UDP traffic (v4)
SOCK6	Sockets (v6)
IP6	IP traffic (v6)
EIP6	IP traffic (v6) (errors)
ICMP6	ICMP traffic (v6)
EICMP6	ICMP traffic (v6) (errors)

Kernel, INode and File Statistics

To generate inode, file and other kernel table statistics, run the command;

sar -v 2 2

Swap Space Utilization Statistics

To generate swap space utilization statistics, run the command;

sar -S

sar -S 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for swap usage info report every 2 seconds.

I/O Statistics

To generate input/output (I/O) statistics, run the command;

sar -b

sar -b 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for I/O transfer rates info every 2 seconds.

Paging Statistics

To generate paging statistics, run the command;

sar -B

sar -B 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for paging usage info report every 2 seconds.

Run Queue Length and Load Average Statistics

To generate queue length and load averages statistics, run the command;

sar -q

sar -q 2 2

Note: The above command will run 2 times for load & queue usage info report every 2 seconds.

Field	Purpose
runq-sz	Run queue length (number of processes waiting for run time).
plist-sz	Number of processes and threads in the process list.
ldavg-1	System load average for the last minute.
ldavg-5	System load average for the past 5 minutes.
ldavg-15	System load average for the past 15 minutes.

Swap Space Utilization Statistics

To generate swap space utilization statistics, run the command;

sar -S

sar -S 2 2

SAR Report – Write Output File

To store “sar” report to a data file, data file is stored in binary format and can be read by sar command, to store the report/data into a file run the command;

sar -o /tmp/cpu_utilization_output_file -u 2 5 >/dev/null 2>&1 &

SAR Report – Read Output File

To read “sar” data file, run the command;

sar -f /tmp/cpu_utilization_output_file

SAR Report – Read Specific Day Report

All the data files are stored in the directory “/var/log/sa/” by default it's configured for 28 days. In order to read a specific day’s report, run the command;

sar -f /var/log/sa/saXX

sar -f /var/log/sa/sa10

Note: Day of the month is represented by saXX, where xx means day of month.

SAR Report – Read Specific Day and Time Report

All the data files are stored in the directory “/var/log/sa/” by default it’s configured for 28 days. In order to read a specific day and time report, run the command;

sar -f /var/log/sa/saXX -s 21:00:00 -e 22:00:00

sar -f /var/log/sa/sa10 -s 21:00:00 -e 22:00:00

Note: Day of the month is represented by saXX, where xx means day of month.

Slideshare Information

Step by step document with screenshots is uploaded to slideshare.

How to Install Configure and Use sysstat utils on RHEL 7 from VCP Muthukrishna