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I am having some load issues with one of my servers, it's running Xen with various guests and with the current 7 it's at its limit.

However it tends to lag every now and then and we'd like to figure out what is causing this.

Is there some kind of application/tool that can analyze what process this is, and do this across multiple servers (Perhaps merge the data, or list it next to eachother).

Servers are running Debian 5.0 64-bit.

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When I see a slow down on most VM environments, its usually due to inadequate hard disk I/O. So pay attention to that as well. –  xeon Nov 17 '10 at 23:32
I did so, the IO wait or whatever its called was hovering between 1 and 3 percent, which from what I understand is acceptable. –  Xeross Nov 19 '10 at 9:44

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Munin is a good thing (I used it for years). However I prefer Collectd nowadays. For small(er) setups Munin is ok. Collectd should be used for special needs (eg. large setups, fine grained statistics).

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Hmm, it looks interesting and might even use less CPU than munin, however as it doesn't generate graphs only collects data, I would like to still have some kind of web frontend for it. –  Xeross Nov 21 '10 at 10:55
@Xeross: yeah it is true. –  cstamas Nov 21 '10 at 14:21
I will look into collectd once I have some free time to set it up, looks very promising. Just a bit more cumbersome to get the actual graphs. –  Xeross Dec 20 '10 at 13:53

Give this a shot:


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I <heart> munin. –  Sean Reifschneider Nov 18 '10 at 5:48
Yes it gives me CPU graphs but not the data I need (CPU usage of specific processes, including the usage of things that run through cron). –  Xeross Nov 19 '10 at 9:44

Munin is great, However i prefer Cacti!

To graph specific "processes" / "crons" is going to take some work on your behalf.

Basically.. You need to set it up in snmp, so that either cacti/munin can grab the stats through a certain OID..

Otherwise you will just get the standard "cpu" configuarition that is configured..

Hope this makes it clear :D

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Cacti also provides some more advanced notification features if I recall correctly, however I prefer munin because I can easily write plugins for that. –  Xeross Nov 19 '10 at 9:43

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