Figure 4-7 shows a typical vmstat command sampling every 30 seconds from an active and very stable system. The first vmstat line returned is supposed to be the average since the system was rebooted. This is why the first line commonly looks very different from the rest of the lines, and why we usually do not include the first line in our analysis.

Figure 4-7. Sample vmstat output sampling every 30 seconds. The CPU system is active, but not too active, with plenty of excess capacity.

While vmstat can be used to monitor many system aspects, our current focus is the CPU subsystem. The utilization-related columns are at the far right of the report (Figure 4-7):