[wplug] Understanding Load

[Jonathan Billings]

What kind of service does this system provide?  Anything that can leave a kernel thread in i/o wait for long periods (NFS, Apache httpd or others servers, for example) can increase the load numbers.  It isn't necessarily CPU-bound.  

Kevin Squire <gentgeen at wikiak.org> wrote:

>I have been diving into the performance of one of our servers lately.
>Trying to figure out if the hit in performance is due to one of the
>changes made at network level, server level, or is it just that the
>server is getting used more.
>
>On thing I am trying to understand is "Load" ... the systems (1min) load
>during the day can go as high as 80 ... but tends to bounce around 3-10
>
>We have a Intel® Xeon® Processor 3050 
>http://ark.intel.com/products/27204/Intel-Xeon-Processor-3050-%282M-Cache-2_13-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB%29
>
>It is Dual Core -- and from what I read here
>  http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages
>
>A load of < 2 is OK since it is a dual core.  What I am wondering:
>
>1) Is that right, < 2 is OK for this chip?
>2) Does the number of threads matter any? 
>3) If 2 is right... then where else can I look to see WHY my load tends
>to spend sooo much time in the double digits?
>
>
>
>-- 
>http://www.wikiak.org
>
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