We're seeing problems with xymon iostat hanging on heavily loaded, massively large database servers. These boxes are on Oracle RAC clusters with EMC storage devices attached. iostat -x shows 16572 lines. When the box starts to have problems for *other* reasons, all of the iostat commands start hanging or taking forever, further bogging the system down. And making xymon look really bad ...

I'm wondering - what does xymon do with all this information?

How much of it can I turn off without confusing the server?

(part of a PS from 12:13, showing some iostats that have been running for over half an hour)

ps -ef|grep iostat

xymon 102 98 2 11:55:47 ? 7:18 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 16934 16931 0 12:10:00 ? 0:04 iostat -c 300 2 xymon 16911 1 0 11:51:02 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 xymon 566 1 0 12:05:38 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 xymon 16931 1 0 12:10:00 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -c 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatcpu.db6.bo3. xymon 16932 1 0 12:10:00 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 xymon 15575 15566 2 12:00:47 ? 5:53 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 15566 1 0 12:00:47 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 xymon 1349 1344 2 11:45:55 ? 9:34 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 17276 17271 2 11:40:55 ? 10:55 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 16935 16932 2 12:10:00 ? 2:57 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 17271 1 0 11:40:55 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 xymon 1344 1 0 11:45:55 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 xymon 572 566 2 12:05:38 ? 5:13 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 16914 16911 2 11:51:02 ? 8:24 iostat -dxsrP 300 2 xymon 98 1 0 11:55:47 ? 0:00 sh -c iostat -dxsrP 300 2 1>/export/home/xymon/client/tmp/hobbit_iostatdisk.db6 <etc>