Performance - Sar - How to Plot Excel Chart (Complete Month)

In this blog I am going to talk about how to excel plot a chart using sar data in an easy 2 step process.

Step 1 - Extract Required Sar data in semicolon separated format

Below is a script which will help you extract data in the format you wish to.
The script is quite clear for the pros, however here is what I am doing

1. Creating a temporary file name variable for data.
2. Creating a CMD variable which is basically sadf comand by sysstat package, this command outputs sar data into semicolon seperated format.
3. Creating OPTION variable - this is basically what data you want to extract from the files. All the options are valid which are used in the "sar command" (so in place of -q you can give, -R, -r, -S, -H, -p etc etc). Do not remove the double '--'
4. Print the header into the file
5. Run the command for all files 


tempfile=sadf_`date "+%Y_%m_%d_%H_%M_%S"`.out
CMD="sadf -dt "
OPTION="-- -q" #This Option is sar option for Stat
#Print header into file
$CMD /var/log/sa/sa21 $OPTION | head -1 | awk '{print $2}' > ${tempfile}

for f in `ls -rt /var/log/sa/sa[0-9][0-9]` ; 
do 
$CMD $f $OPTION | sed -e '/LINUX-RESTART/d' -e '/hostname/d' >> ${tempfile} ;
done

(Note - the sed command deletes the linux restart entries and the headers which follow in the sar file after the restart.)
Now once you run this, you will have 1 month data into a single file with a semicolon format. 

Step 2 - Download the file and copy paste to excel.
The Second step is your excel skills, you copy the data to excel file separate the data using delimiter and plot your charts. 

1. Paste Data into excel and separate using semicolon

2. The data is all yours now and you should use your excel skills (hint - pivot chart or normal chart) to do this.

Here is an example 

Select The data And Create Pivot Chart

Fill in the Chart Details (Extreme Right)

Good luck working.