Dear all,

I have a virtual machine with the following specs:

Core 2 DUO 3.2 GHZ 4 GB RAM hdd: IDE 320 GB 32 bit OS: centos 5.2

I'm using it for local development with a number of Virtual hosts, and a big mysql database.

the prob:

At times, with no specific reason. system becomes extremly slugish. http requests takes forever to be served. Even ssh connections takes time to connect, and a simple command such as "clear" takes anywhere between 3 to 10 seconds to execute.

i've checked TOP, over and over again and it's always within the following:

CPU load average is max 10 % , and at that specific time it's never above 30 % RAM: swap is never used, there's always around 1.5 GB of free memory

so it's not a matter of CPU nor RAM. so my next thought were that HDD is maxing out on the hosting physical server. i checked on the physical server, and HDD I/O is within normal range. and other VMs workign on the same physical server are running smoothly..

so what can i do more to troubleshoot? this is happening more than it should without any scenario in common.

any advice on how to troubleshoot would be greatly appreciated...

PS: any command that may show I/O in KB/MB on the HDD ?