iostat

iostat is a command line tool that provides a detailed report regarding input/output (I/O) statistics of devices in a Unix-based system. It stands for Input Output Statistics.

The tool is often used for monitoring and analyzing the performance of disk and file system I/O in real-time.

iostat provides important information about the utilization, throughput, and latency of storage devices. It displays statistics for both block devices (disks) and character devices (terminals, serial ports).

By default, iostat shows the average I/O statistics since system boot. However, it can also be configured to display more granular data over regular intervals.

The tool presents statistics on various parameters such as read and write operations per second, kilobytes read/written, average service time, disk busy percentage, and more.

iostat is part of the sysstat package and is available for most Unix-like systems, including Linux.

It helps system administrators and developers identify potential points of congestion, bottleneck, or high load on storage devices.

The command line tool allows users to specify custom options to display additional information, such as per-partition statistics or statistics of specific devices.

Furthermore, iostat can generate reports in both human-readable and machine-readable formats, making it possible to store or process the data for further analysis and visualization.