Setup SAR on Alpine Linux

There are several good articles on setting up SAR for debian (sar on ubuntu/debian) and redhat systems but I could find few on Alpine (perhaps because it is simple).

In any event, here's my process for setting up sar to run periodically via cron to track server stats.

Install

Install with: apk add sysstat

Setup

Not a lot of setup is required, you may want to review the /etc/sysconfig/sysstat file for options.

Running Via cron

Create a cron task as you like to kick off sar periodically, the following will run sar every 2 minutes.

1# Run sar to gather stats
2*/2 * * * *   /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1
3# Additional run at 23:59 to rotate the statistics file
459 23 * * *   /usr/lib/sa/sa1 60 2

Logs

Alpine's sysstats logs are in /var/log/sa