This is our on-going series of commands and performance monitoring in Linux. Vmstat and Iostat both commands are available on all major Unix-like (Linux/Unix/FreeBSD/Solaris) Operating Systems.
If vmstat and iostat commands are not available on your box, please install sysstat package. The vmstat, sar and iostat commands are the collection of package included in sysstat – the system monitoring tools. The iostat generates reports of CPU & all device statistics. You may download and install sysstat using source tarball from link sysstat, but we recommend installing through YUM command.
Linux Vmstat and Iostat Commands