What is server load based on?

[Svaha]

Any one have an answer for this?

When I look at server status, the load is measured at 0.03, etc.

I know it can go well above 1.0, on some busy servers I have seen it hit double digits. for short periods.

So what exactly is considered a heavy load?

And what is the measurement standard?
i.e. if the load is 1.0, then 1.0 of what, exactly?

Todd

[hostcp3]

I would like to know what is high, one of our servers ran into trouble sometime ago and some users managed to just about stop the box it showed a load of *wait for it

Server Load 500.83 (1 cpu)

and WHM was still accessible lol, but a website took 20 mins to open, it was some persistant connections *lots of them, we changed apache and mysql config after that, lol

[serversonic]

If you server load is 500... you should probably be very concerned...

[jimcarter]

wow 500.83 must be a record
if your box is constantly over 5.00 for over 10 minutes then you are having a problem, usually anything below that isnt too bad,
Thanks

[Svaha]

500.83!
Bet your box had smoke pouring out the vents!

Jimcarter, thanks for the tip about over 5 for more than 10 minutes.

Any idea what exactly the load measuremant is based on? I mean, it's not like percentages, that would be easy i.e. a load of 90% is easy to understand, but a load of .03 or 1.0 or 5.0 (or 500.83...gads!) seems like an arbitrary figure.

What is this measurement based on, and what is the average it uses for comparison?

Just wondering.
Todd

[jimcarter]

it is the amount of CPU being used,
i.e. a load of 1.00 means that all of the CPU cycles are constantly being used,
below 1.00 means that there are free cycles available for other processes, and above 1.00 means that some processes may have to wait for available CPU power,
thanks

[hostcp3]

hahahaha,

your comments are funny but unfortunately true, this was a once off thing and our boxes constantly run at

Server Load 0.33 (1 cpu) current load with 250 websites.

smoke coming out, not sure, but I was very surprised it was still running, we were on to it within a short time.

Yes we were concerned not for the server but for our clients who could not get to their sites.. a client had purposely tried to kill the box, account terminated apache and mysql files configured end of story until the next time we are not looking every minute!

[Kyle]

Load average isn't 100% based on cpu usage. You can have a load average of 30 and have 50% of your cpu free. You have to take into account other things such as memory and hard disk bottlenecks.

From what I understand perfect load average is 1 and below for single cpu, and 2 and below for dual cpu. Anything higher than that and your server is not running things as fast as it possibly can.

[awsol]

Server load is based on many factors. Pretty much the load is affected by the current running proccess and their crunching. If the server is idle and over 1 you should be worried why the load is high with all idle proccesses.

[KingmanMe]

I always thought that the server load was the number of processes waiting for the CPU's attention.

Server Load 500.83 (1 cpu)

Wow, that's quite high Saw a load of 280 here once for a short while when things decided to go a bit mad but 500 is just insane