I like the way you show how Dstat can be useful by a nice screenshot and a story. In fact something I always wanted to do was create some scenarios (and related Dstat commands) that show the reasoning and functionality of Dstat. Your example is a good one.

However Dstat is an evolving project and in the meantime we have plugins that show disk utilization rates (–disk-util) and other plugins showing more information that iostat provides as well. This would be perfect to explain you what disk is causing iowait situations.

The true strength of Dstat compared to similar tools is that it is written in python and writing your own plugins is quite easy. Which gives you a wealth of possibilities to correlate system events and counters. I am limited by my own experiences but I hope other people contribute some plugins that extend Dstat in ways that I never envisioned.

If you come across other scenarios, blog about them and send me a note Thanks again !