How to Completely Disable ‘Sysstat’ (System Performance Tools) in Ubuntu Server

Sysstat is a powerful collection of performance monitoring tools for Linux (including the venerable sar, iostat, and mpstat commands). In Ubuntu Server, installing the sysstat package often enables a background daemon and a cron job (or systemd timer) that wakes up every 10 minutes to collect and log detailed metrics about CPU, memory, and disk utilization to /var/log/sysstat/. While this historical data is invaluable for diagnosing complex performance bottlenecks, it introduces unnecessary disk I/O and consumes a tiny fraction of CPU cycles. If you rely on a centralized, modern monitoring stack (like Prometheus, Datadog, or Zabbix) to handle your metrics, the local Sysstat daemon is entirely redundant and should be disabled.

This guide explains how to completely disable the Sysstat data collection daemon in Ubuntu Server.

Disable Sysstat Data Collection

Unlike standard services, Sysstat in Ubuntu relies on a specific configuration file in the /etc/default/ directory to determine whether its data collection cron/timer is permitted to run.

1. Log into your Ubuntu Server via SSH or local console with sudo privileges.
2. First, we must edit the default configuration file. Open it using a text editor like nano:

   sudo nano /etc/default/sysstat

3. Locate the line that reads:

   ENABLED="true"

4. Change that line to explicitly disable collection:

   ENABLED="false"

5. Save the file (in nano, press Ctrl+O, Enter, then Ctrl+X).

Stop and Disable the Systemd Timer

In modern Ubuntu releases (20.04 LTS and newer), Sysstat collection is triggered by a systemd timer rather than a traditional cron job. To ensure it is completely paralyzed, we must stop and disable the timer.

1. Stop the active timer immediately:

   sudo systemctl stop sysstat-collect.timer

2. Disable the timer so it does not load during the boot sequence:

   sudo systemctl disable sysstat-collect.timer

3. (Optional) Mask the service to guarantee it cannot be started by other processes:

   sudo systemctl mask sysstat-collect.timer

   sudo systemctl mask sysstat.service

The Sysstat package remains installed—meaning you can still run commands like iostat or mpstat manually to view real-time data—but the server will no longer wake up in the background to write historical performance logs to your disk, saving valuable I/O operations.