Solaris Server process Monitoring tool- prstat

We have different type of tools and command which are used in Solaris or other Unix system to monitor the system process. But if we are talking about only Sun Solaris server then we have very good process tool which is called "prstat".

In this post, we will find that how prstat is work on the Solaris platform.

⇾   !-[solaris]# prstat

When you run the above command on the command line you will get the below output on the CLI screen which are refreshing in every few seconds and sorting all the information regarding the system resource.

  PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP

 21322 root      11M 3236K cpu0    59    0   0:00:00 0.0% prstat/1

 21323 root      18M 4788K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% sshd/1

 22345 root      10M 2188K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% bash/1

   584 root       13M 3832K sleep   59    0   0:01:59 0.0% nscd/51

   154 root       13M 2068K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% syseventd/18

   183 root     1772K  776K sleep   59    0   0:00:13 0.0% utmpd/1

   538 root       11M 2572K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% picld/4

Total: 12 processes, 31 lwps, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00


This is a quick view of the prstat command but if you wanted to get a different view of the same info, like a summary of what users own these CPU consuming processes

⇾   !-[solaris]# prstat -a

If you run prstat with the -a option (prstat -a) you will get an output similar to the default one, but the last few lines of it will be used for providing a really useful report of the users consuming top system resources.


  PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP

 21322 root      11M 3236K cpu0    59    0   0:00:00 0.0% prstat/1

 21323 root      18M 4788K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% sshd/1

 22345 root      10M 2188K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% bash/1


 NPROC USERNAME  SWAP   RSS MEMORY      TIME  CPU

     5 root      52M   13M   1.3%   0:00:00 0.0%

    50 root      841M  571M    56%   0:22:22 0.0%

     2 daemon     17M 4520K   0.4%   0:00:04 0.0%

Total: 12 processes, 31 lwps, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

We have different type of syntax which we can used to monitor the Solaris server process which are listed below.

!-[solaris]# prstat -L  -> This shows thread per line instead of one process per line
!-[solaris]# prstat -s -> prstat output can be sorted using set of sub-options .sub options are                  cpu,pri,rss,size,time 

!-[solaris]# prstat -t  -> It provides complete users resource utilization.
!-[solaris]# prstat -Z  -> It provides summary per local zone.

Sun Solaris Processes Monitoring - prstat command

"PRSTAT" command basically used for monitoring the current memory and CPU utilization of Sun solaris local zones and global zone.

Using "prstat" command we can display the solaris zone process information. This command generate the reports information about the processes and zones.

The prstat statistics utility shows a summary of the processes that are using system resources currently. The prstat utility summarizes this information for an every 5 seconds by default and reports the statistics for that period.

Display the zones process information:

!-[solaris]# prstat -Z

 PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE   PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP

 18638 20159    2118M 1502M cpu43    10    0   0:00:44 2.4% oracle/7

 20927 24076    8784K 8136K cpu127    0    2   0:00:17 1.8% prstat/1

   897 24865     916M  512M sleep    59    0  27:52:32 0.7% java/95

 17511 26055     599M  285M sleep    59    0  35:08:33 0.6% java/115

 12540 26055     951M  341M sleep    59    0  31:00:01 0.5% java/101

 ZONEID    NPROC  SWAP   RSS MEMORY      TIME  CPU ZONE

     8     3427   73G   27G    21%  44:01:48 2.8% sunz01

     0      100  465M  132M   0.1% 507:26:46 2.6% global

     6     4056   86G   32G    25%  35:23:30 2.3% sunz02    

Total: 13382 processes, 36594 lwps, load averages: 9.11, 9.27, 9.47

Using above command "prstat -Z" we can monitor the server process utilization in every 5 second. This command is show you the global zone & their local zone process utilization only.

If you want to only specific zone process utilization then you can use the below command.

!-[solaris]# prstat -z sun01

This command output show you only process utilization of specific zone only.

Note:

-Z Reports information about processes and zones.

-z Reports information about a particular zone.

You can use the below syntax to monitor the Global zone as well as only specific zone.