[CentOS] The iostat command

Hi All,

I am learning iostat command to understand disk I/O statistics.

We have 2 Centos 4 servers running where oracle is installed.We installed them 2 weeks ago. @ that time, These Servers performed well. But, Now We have come to know that these 2 Machines are quite slow when comparing to the first week.

So, Some say, run iostat to see statictics. I am not familiar with comamnd well.

I found below url

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/admin-guide/s1-r...

And, I have still not understood it fully.

Could you pls advice me , If you have experience with iostat?

In adition to that, What are the other tools I can use?

I have already used,

top , vmstat commands

Hope to hear from you.