I'd like to recommend this book to get a current overview of monitoring tools: http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brendan-Gregg-ebook/dp/B00FL

I'd like to recommend this book to get a current overview of monitoring tools: http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brendan-Gregg-ebook/dp/B00FLYU9T2 http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brendan... While most sysadm books are years out of date, this one covers all the hot recent stuff like Dtrace and its equivalents on Linux, pidstat etc. Solid coverage and the author (from Joyent) knows his stuff. Available on Safari too.