Question

I’m confronted with a bewildering array of linux boxen.

How do I find out how many processors they have, how many cores, how much RAM they have, how fast their disks are, how heavily loaded they are by competing people etc, etc?

Answer 1

1. If you want a static list, check for each characteristic with its own command and let your shell do the automation. That is, use /proc/cpuinfo for the CPU, /proc/meminfo for the memory, and /proc/loadavg for the computational load.
2. If you want to identify bottlenecks, have a look at atop.