The concept is pretty simple. It’s like the top program, but instead of CPU and memory usage, it monitors disk I/O. If you have a system that is extremely slow to respond, but can’t seem to figure out what is going on, give iotop a try. You’ll probably have to install it, as I’ve never found a system with iotop installed by default, but it should be in the software repository of just about every Linux distro.
Difference between virtualization technologies (KVM and OpenVZ)
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is, on the other hand a full virtualization solution for Linux containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). Using KVM, one can have Linux and Windows virtual machines running side by side on the same hardware. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: own kernel, a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc. Since it has its own virtualized hardware, the virtual server will act completely on its own.