“How to monitor your Linux servers with nmon” article provides some details on how to use the comprehensive server monitoring tool “nmon” (Nigel’s Monitor) to keep an eye on your server or two. If you have more than a handful of servers, you’d probably opt out for a full blown monitoring solution, like Zabbix, but even with that, nmon can be useful for quick troubleshooting, screenshots, and data collection.
I’ve heard of nmon before and even used it occasionally. What I didn’t know was that it can collect system metrics into a file, which can then later be analyzed and graphed with the nmonchart tool.
That’s pretty handy. The extra bonus is that these tools are available in most Linux distributions, so there is no need to download/compile/configure things.