#vmstat

Performance & Scaling

Linux performance triage in ten minutes: vmstat, iostat, pidstat and PSI, in that order

Kenji Watanabe · Jul 3, 2026 · 7 min read

When a Linux server is slow, the order of the first commands matters more than the tools. A ten-minute triage routine that tells CPU, memory, disk and network pressure apart, what each column actually means, and the mistakes that send people down the wrong path.

Incidents & Postmortems

The first five minutes on a sick Linux server: what to run and what it tells you

Daniel Tran · Jun 9, 2026 · 8 min read

When a server is slow and the dashboard is vague, a dozen standard commands narrow the problem to CPU, memory, disk, network or a single process in about five minutes. This is the order we run them in and how we read each output.